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“ONE HEALTH in Action” ANNOUNCMENT: International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) - Global Outreach  www.iamse.org   Peter G. Anderson, DVM, PhD, Professor of Pathology and Director of Pathology Undergraduate Education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, shares his photographs from a recent trip to Zambia Africa.  Dr. Anderson was selected as a member of the Fulbright Specialist Program.  This Fulbright Foundation sponsored program promotes linkages between U.S. academics and their counterparts at universities abroad. The program is designed to award grants to qualified U.S. faculty in select disciplines to engage in short-term collaborative 2 to 6 week projects at higher education institutions in over 100 countries worldwide.  Dr. Anderson made this trip to Zambia as part of the UAB Sparkman Center for Global Health Initiatives ongoing program to support health sciences educational activities in Zambia.  The Sparkman Center has an ongoing relationship with the University of Zambia School of Medicine.  The overall goal of these activities is to expand and enhance models of medical education in Sub-Saharan Africa. These models are intended to yield increasing number of new health care workers, strengthen medical education systems in the countries in which they exist, and build clinical and research capacity in Africa as part of a retention strategy for faculty of medical schools and clinical professors.  The strategy of this initiative is to build human capacity for health in Africa by strengthening the medical education system in an environment that values and nurtures basic science and research and which will contribute to the sustainability and quality of the overall effort.  Click here to view selected photographs of the University of Zambia School of Medicine, the Chobe National Park, and Victoria Falls. Please see previous posting about Dr. Anderson: “ONE HEALTH in Action” - First Flexible Coil Balloon Expandable Intracoronary Stent Development for Humans - Tuesday, February 09, 2010 The One Health initiative website has been advised by Peter G. Anderson, DVM, PhD, Professor & Director of Pathology Undergraduate Education and Pre-Clerkship Curriculum Coordinator at the Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine, that the “One Health Initiative” web link has been added to the front page of PEIR (http://peir.net).   Moreover, it should be noted that Dr. Peter G. Anderson, a veterinarian, represents a prime and significant historic example of “ONE HEALTH in Action”.  Dr. Anderson was part of the team that developed the first flexible coil balloon expandable intracoronary stent approved by the FDA for human use. This monumental development occurred in the early 1990’s and now – almost 100% of patients who undergo the balloon angioplasty procedure also get a stent. These stents can be coated with drugs to help the blood vessel heal after the balloon procedure to prevent scar tissue from forming leading to restenosis.  Today the drug coated stents that Dr. Anderson helped develop and holds a patent for the stents which are being used extensively to decrease morbidity and mortality in patients worldwide.   Gary Roubin, BVSc (equiv. DVM), MB(equiv. MD), PhD, an internationally renowned interventional cardiologist (currently at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, where he has been the Chairman of the Department of Interventional Cardiology and Director of the Cardiovascular Interventional Suites since 2004), worked to develop the first “balloon expandable intracoronary stent” used in the USA. Dr. Roubin came to the University of Alabama in 1989 where Dr. Anderson was the pathologist who participated in the animal studies using pigs. This animal data was sent to the FDA and eventually the stent was approved for human use.  Dr. Anderson says, “While we [i.e., Drs. Roubin and Anderson] were waiting for approval for the FDA – we did get a “provisional” approval to use the stents in people if it was a life threatening situation.  So, here at UAB we deployed many of the stents before they were formally approved by the FDA.” “And, I did the autopsies on the people who died after stent implantation”, said Dr. Anderson. “So, with Gary Roubin as corresponding author, we published the first paper describing the pathology of these balloon expandable flexible coil stents in people.”   Dr. Anderson went on to say, “Gary is the cardiologist who was the innovator in developing the stents and has continued to be an internationally recognized leader in interventional cardiology.  An interesting side note – Gary Roubin was originally from Australia. He started out as a veterinarian – then he went back to school to be a physician, received a PhD degree in physiology, trained in cardiology and then he came to the U.S.  So, Gary Roubin started out as a veterinarian and then went on to be an internationally renowned interventional cardiologist.”