|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
When Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005, Richard Hadden, MD, was set to open the Healthmark Center, a research facility in Gulfport, Miss., with a mission to investigate and treat the severe problems of obesity, hypertension, and diabetes in one of the nation's poorest states.
In 2005, 9.8% of Mississippi residents said they had been informed by a doctor that they had diabetes, tying the state (with Alabama) for third in the nation in terms of prevalence, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.1 Nearly two-thirds of all Mississippians were overweight or obese in 2005, the highest rate of any state.1
The timing for Healthmark was right, says Hadden, director of strategic venture development at University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in Hattiesburg. Hadden's Pinion Research Group acquired the former Garden Park Hospital for $1 from previous owner HCA Inc. Pinion then spent $1 million to convert the hospital into a learning center that would house a nursing school and team of biomedical researchers.
Hadden planned to preserve some hospital wards so nursing students and other researchers could apply their training to treating real-world patients with obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. "We would have research, education, and clinical all there," says Hadden, a longtime biomedical researcher and entrepreneur.
Through Pinion and the USM Research Foundation, with some private funding, the university intended to coordinate research efforts at the center, with care guidelines established by USM's School of Human Performance and Recreation and health research goals to be set jointly by researchers and the School of Community Health.
By late August 2005, the building was nearly ready to be occupied. "When the hurricane hit, I had just signed off on the punch list for construction," Hadden recalls. Then the world changed with the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
AN EMERGENCY MISSION
The Healthmark Center survived Katrina mostly intact, but a 32-foot storm surge flattened large swaths of the Mississippi coastline—including USM's Gulf Park Campus in Long Beach.
Three days after the hurricane, and despite losing his own home, Hadden offered to turn Healthmark into a temporary home for the Gulf Park Campus, an adjunct to the main Hattiesburg campus, 65 miles inland. Within a week, he and university officials were coordinating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for recovery assistance.
Despite a severe labor shortage caused by mass evacuations and housing losses, Pinion reconfigured 25,000 square feet of Healthmark space within 6 weeks to accommodate the Gulf Park Campus. "It was kind of like the wild west down here," Hadden recalls.
Operations and classes are now being held at Healthmark while the Gulf Park Campus in Long Beach is being rebuilt.
"It's going to be close to 5 years before the university completely vacates [the Healthmark] space," says Pat Joachim, PhD, USM's associate provost for the Gulf Coast. And with a new university president having taken over in May, some policy decisions are subject to change, Joachim adds.
AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
At this point, no definite timeline exists for getting Healthmark's chronic-disease project back on track. "It's disappointing to have to defer, but we're just happy we could help the university out with its core mission," Hadden says.
Still, some aspects of the original plans are materializing, albeit away from the coast. For instance, the School of Human Performance and Recreation hired lipid metabolism expert Jesus Rico-Sanz, PhD, to teach graduate courses in cardiovascular physiology and conduct research on type 2 diabetes, as part of a partnership between USM and Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg. Rico-Sanz is working closely with endocrinologist Richard Galloway, MD, medical director of Forrest General's Live Well wellness center.
Getting people to change their lifestyles in the name of health has lost
much of its urgency along a coastline that still bears deep physical scars
from the hurricane. Nevertheless, Hadden is hopeful. In his view, every day of
recovery is a good day for southern Mississippi. 
References
CiteULike 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||
|
| DOC News | Diabetes | Diabetes Care | Clinical Diabetes | Diabetes Spectrum |
