A message from our dean
Greetings and Happy Holidays!
As we approach the end of the calendar year, already midway through the holiday season, I wanted to relay my hope that all of you will find opportunities in the coming days and weeks to take a breath and a break from your busy schedules to enjoy whatever is most meaningful to you.
Forcing yourself to take that break can be a challenge for some of us; I struggle with this myself. But even short spurts of recharging, whatever that looks like for you, can make a world of difference, not just to your own state of well-being, but to all of those in your orbit. Bringing that “A-game” every day is hard! I understand that not everyone celebrates the holidays, and that for some, this season is one of the most difficult of the year because of hardships experienced or lost loved ones. I hope those of you in that situation will reach out if you need support.
As another year winds to its close, I wanted to note some college highlights from 2024.
- Our open heart surgery program for dogs celebrated the anniversary of its first procedure in late August. Still going strong, the program has now offered life-saving care to roughly 50 dogs.
- Our new state-of-the-art veterinary learning health care system, funded at $750,000 over three years as part of a strategic funding initiative sponsored by the President’s Office, is well underway. This ambitious program involves the creation of an AI-enabled digital imaging platform for veterinary medicine and One Health. Thus far, we have assembled a team of hospital administrators, data scientists, clinical experts, and researchers; have begun extracting, standardizing, harmonizing and automating data exported from Cornerstone into the Veterinary Informatics Warehouse; have begun integrating the AI-enabled digital imaging platform into the data warehouse; and have already begun using the collected data to improve operational efficiency, quality improvement, patient safety, and personalized patient care. All of this progress marks significant steps toward establishing a robust learning health system that will drive continuous advancements in veterinary medicine and One Health.
- Following national searches, two talented new department chairs joined the college family this year. Dr. Jada Lewis, a UF Health neuroscience researcher, joined us in May to become chair of our Department of Physiological Sciences. Dr. Clay Mathews, a diabetes researcher with expertise in immune-mediated diseases, came on board in September as chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology.
Although hurricane season has now passed, this issue features a story highlighting our UF Veterinary Emergency Treatment Service, or UF VETS, and the incredible role they play as a resource to the whole state.
This issue also has a moving story about the way in which one of our UF veterinary students went the extra mile to help a volunteer her course team was assigned, with the result that the volunteer was able to fulfill her lifelong dream of publishing a book. The Bridge, UF Health’s intranet portal, featured this article in its Empathy Corner section recently, and many have commented that they were moved by the story.
I wish everyone a wonderful coming year and am grateful to everything you each contribute to your colleagues, your college, and the broad veterinary community of which we are all a part.
Sincerely,
Dana
Dana N. Zimmel, D.V.M.
Dean and Professor