Greetings! 

I hope that you are all adjusting to the “safe at home” guideline and staying healthy.  These are really challenging times for all of us, but I have to say that I have been inspired by the large number of our trainees, staff, and faculty who have stepped up in so many different ways to help with the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Along with the group of GIM leaders and Victor Gonzalez, the administrator in GIM who helps to assemble the newsletter each month, we have decided to use our April Newsletter to celebrate your contributions. 

We realize that this is in no way a comprehensive list and want to extend a huge thank you not only to all of you who are contributing to UCLA’s response to Covid-19, but also to those of you who are keeping our core GIMHSR business of caring for our patients, educating students, and conducting research going strong.  We have heard good news from NIH about a number of new research grants that are about to be funded and we have a number of new proposals on the launch pad this month, but more about that later. 

Please stay safe and remember to stay connected with your colleagues in any way that you can. 

With deep admiration,

Carol 

Maria A. Han, MD, MS, Chief Quality Officer, UCLA Department of Medicine (Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center, WW) is coordinating communication about COVID efforts to outpatient GIM-HSR clinicians who practice in the DMPG.  Her daily e-mails cover general clinical guidance including information for patients and ID recommendations about possible treatments, testing guidance, telehealth updates, and other issues such as donations of PPE and availability of research trials. 


 

Ashley Busuttil, MD FHM, Associate Section Chief, Hospital Medicine, is representing the DOM for surge planning for the hospital system.  Over 30 faculty, including 25 GIM-HSR faculty and all 7 of our internal medicine National Clinical Scholars Program fellows have volunteered to assist with ward patient care during the COVID crisis, at Ronald Reagan Medical Center, UCLA Santa Monica Hospital, the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, and Olive View UCLA Medical Center. 

Links:  General inpatient surge plan and ICU surge contingency plan.
 

Neil Wenger, MD, Professor of Medicine in GIM-HSR, is leading Advance Care Planning efforts encompassing input from GIM-HSR primary care and hospitalist faculty, as well as colleagues in critical care and emergency medicine. 

He also co-authored a March 26 LA Times Op-Ed piece, along with former GIM Division Chief Martin Shapiro, entitled "As hospitals become overwhelmed with coronavirus, how do we decide who gets treatment?"

Alice Kuo, MD, PhD, MBA, Chief of the Section of Medicine and Pediatrics, GIM-HSR, and Associate Director, UCLA Preventive Medicine, is part of the Incident Command Center group. Her area of focus is on coordinating health care worker testing and quarantine policies with local, regional, and national guidance.

Daniel Kozman, MD, MPH Associate Program Director, Medicine-Pediatrics & Preventive Medicine is coordinating the resident clinic response at the Simms Mann Federally Qualified Health ClinIc, including initiating a telehealth visit program.

GIM-HSR faculty and DOM Regional leads Eric Curcio, MD, (Santa Monica and ETC), Adam Cavallero, MD  and Jeff Borenstein, MD (North Valley), Evelyn Curls, MD (South Bay) and Sheila Naghshineh, MD (Westwood) meet daily to organize and evaluate the outpatient COVID response.
 

Donation and Possible Sources of PPE

An in-kind donation item list is here.  These items can be brought or shipped to:
UCLA Health COVID-19 Collection Center
16001 Strathern Street, Van Nuys, CA 91406
Hours for Drop-Offs: Monday – Saturday 9 a.m. – 2 p.m.

For offers of items for sale, direct inquiries to: COVIDPPESupport@mednet.ucla.edu
 

Child and Senior Care Resources
 
UCLA has contracted with Bright Horizons to assist faculty and staff with finding child and senior care resources.  Visit clients.brighthorizons.com/uclahealth for more details.
 

In just under 2 weeks, an entire army of residents rallied to help support the Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) team, in answering thousands of pages about COVID-19 from our UCLA Health primary care physicians, their fellow healthcare workers, and also assisted with ordering tests. These residents include Drs. Adrian Mayo, Ana Rivera, Andrea MacDonald, Brian Hagan, Chesca Barrios, Evan Shih, Gwen Day, Jamie Yao, Jesse Ross, Jessica Channick, Jiwen Li, Julianna Gardner, Kieran Holzhauer, Laura Glassman, Lauren Sullivan, Natalie Howlett, Lovelee Brown, Maura Williams, Megan May, Melissa Abel, Mimi Kennelly, Paul Shao, Prerna Gupta, Shire Beach, Jeff Fujimoto, Samira Nourbakhsh, Annie Wang, Aileen Bui, Ben Noor, Eric Mendez, Eian Prohl, Soniya Rabadia, Margaret Mongare, Michelle Chong, Rahul Kamath, and Whitney Nelson. Coordination of this group was done by our very own Primary Care Chief, Azra Bhimani. 

Dr. Jesse Ross also authored an opinion piece "Resident Response During Pandemic: This Is Our Time" published April 1 in Annals of Internal Medicine.  Congratulations!


Our Internal Medicine National Clinician Scholars Drs. Katherine Chen, Carlos Irwin Oronce, Jacob Quinton, Etsemaye Agonafer, Tiffany Kenison, Alicia Morehead-Gee, and Christopher Scannell have volunteered to serve as backup attendings at RRUMC and the VA.  Their fellow specialist scholar surgeons, ER physicians and pediatricians are also ready to serve.


Several of our Medicine Pediatrics residents and Preventative Medicine fellows have literally been working round the clock on the coordination of testing for Health Care Workers, as well as the follow-up and contact tracing. These individuals should be highlighted: Casey Nagel, Michael Troy, Amos Lichtman, Jessie Lucier, Abigail Arons, and Marguerite Thorpe. 

Additionally, a shout out to our faculty that volunteered to serve on the very first COVID team at Reagan, another Chief Resident, Jennifer Chang, and R3 Amir Razmjou. Additional faculty include Ed Lee, John Mafi and Faysal Saab. Residents serving on the first teams include Jayasree Sundaram and Wen-Ching Tran.

Social distancing photo: (clockwise from top left) Residents Abigail Arons, Amos Lichtman, Jessica Lucier, Michael Troy, Casey Nagel, and Marguerite Thorpe