Dr. Michael Bowen and Dr. Donald Glass have been appointed Dedman Family Scholars in Clinical Care at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Bowen is an assistant professor of internal medicine, clinical science and pediatrics, and Glass is an assistant professor of dermatology.
The Dedman Foundation gave $12 million in 2009 to establish the Dedman Family Endowed Program for Scholars in Clinical Care at UT Southwestern. The gift, made to Southwestern Medical Foundation, was matched to create a $24 million endowment that allows UT Southwestern to recruit promising early-career physicians to the medical center to be mentored by senior clinicians and clinical scientists.
“It has been an immensely rewarding opportunity for our family to build off the incredible success of UT Southwestern’s basic research capabilities and encourage the synergy between research and clinical care,” said Bob Dedman, President of DFI Management Ltd. “Through the Dedman Family Scholars program, we are realizing that more researchers effectively funded gives us more shots on goal and increases the likelihood of success. We believe that translational research can speed discoveries and provide greater opportunities for researchers and clinicians to advance medical science. It has been important for us, as a family, to give back in ways that help build a better community. It is our hope that the Scholars will be the clinical leaders in our future and that their learnings will be the basis on which we continue to advance in clinical care.”
A Tennessee native, Bowen has a strong interest in primary care and chronic disease management, including the screening and management of Type 2 diabetes. After his residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, he completed the VA Quality Scholars Fellowship Program, where he received training in health services research and quality improvement. Bowen received the Kaufman Prize in Medicine from Vanderbilt, which recognizes humaneness, dedication and unselfish service in the study of medicine.
His research focuses on the development, evaluation and implementation of electronic-medical-record-based interventions to improve health outcomes in patients with Type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. He is using data available within the electronic medical record system to develop an approach to identify patients at risk for diabetes and promote diabetes screening in clinical practice.
Originally from the Bahamas, Glass received his medical and doctoral degrees from Baylor College of Medicine. He interned at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts before training in the department of dermatology at UT Southwestern, completing his residency in 2011.
At UT Southwestern, Glass studies keloids (exuberant scarring of the skin) and how they occur. He is investigating the genes that predispose people to develop keloids, which can be can be painful and itchy as well as disfiguring. He has an interest in studying diseases that affect patients of color, and keloids occur disproportionately more often within these groups.
Developing keloids can be an inherited trait within families, and Glass is compiling a registry of individuals and affected families to collect samples and information for further study. There is no current treatment to prevent keloids from occurring or from reforming if they are surgically removed. By better understanding why these scars occur, Glass said, he hopes to devise more effective preventive treatments.
“The enormous vision of the Dedman family is evident in the way the Dedman Family Scholars program has been structured – from its rigorous selection process to its length of funding to its built in collaboration between young researchers and senior faculty,” said Kathleen Gibson, President of Southwestern Medical Foundation. “The end result is that this program is seeding the leading clinicians of our future while, at the same time, producing high quality research in the areas represented by now many scholars. This is a tremendous example of strategic and high impact giving. We could not be more grateful to the Dedman family for their generosity in supporting this noble work,” said Kathleen M. Gibson, President of Southwestern Medical Foundation.