The University of Alabama Board of Trustees approved a UAB Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center on September 16, with plans for it to grow into a regional resource. Assistant Professor of Surgery Ernesto R. Drelichman, MD, will serve as the center's initial director. The board noted that an estimated 1 million Americans have chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and that the Southeast offers no other multidisciplinary IBD center. Birmingham's central location will also serve UAB well geographically as a resource for surrounding states.

The IBD Center will provide a technical and intellectual infrastructure with clinical, educational, and research resources to provide opportunities to patients, scientists, and health care providers. Specifically, it will bring together UAB programs of national and international stature that participate in evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of IBD, including radiology, gastrointestinal surgery, pathology, gastroenterology, internal medicine, and nutritional science. The program will also develop office-based endoscopy for diagnosis, preoperative disease localization, therapy, and postoperative surveillance. This coordinated approach will result in fewer return patient visits and decreased time from initial visit to definitive therapy. Novel approaches to diagnosis and medical and surgical therapy will be offered through the clinic and through clinic-related trials.

"This is a tremendous opportunity," says Dr. Drelichman, who in May received a Protective Life Clinical Grant of $80,000 toward the center. "Currently, patients travel to the Cleveland or Mayo clinics for comprehensive integrated care. Our plan is to combine UAB's established programs in IBD education, research, and clinical practice to form a national center of excellence."

Protective Life Clinical Initiatives

The Protective Life Insurance Company recently announced recipients of its 2005 Protective Life Clinical Initiatives (PLCI). Two applications were funded to support development of interdisciplinary clinical initiatives within the School of Medicine and the UAB Health System. In addition to Dr. Drelichman, Mohamad A. Eloubeidi, MD, has been named principal investigator for $278,545 in PLCI funds to create an ambulatory endoscopic ultrasonography unit (endoscopic and endobronchial ultrasound) for minimally invasive staging of patients with lung cancer.

"The objective of this new initiative is to introduce endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration to the clinical armamentarium in staging lung cancer patients," says Dr. Eloubeidi, who directs the UAB Endoscopic Ultrasound Program. "This technology has only recently been introduced in the U.S., and few centers are actually performing it. In combination with traditional endoscopic ultrasound, this dual multidisciplinary approach offers minimally invasive, complete and cost-effective staging of lung cancer patients."

Protective Life provides financial services through the production, distribution, and administration of insurance and investment products throughout the U.S. It has assets of approximately $28.6 billion.