Bioentrepeneur/Haas Event and other things;-)

Hello Foundations class this is my inaugural post to "the blog" so please bear with me.

First, I just wanted to remind everyone of the Haas Event "Bioentrepeneurship roundtable" tomorrow evening at 6pm. I registered yesterday and it sounds as if it should be pretty informative. The other bonus is that its in Redwood City, that's right on the peninsula about ten minutes from Palo Alto. I recognize that the Big Game is this weekend, but I promise that it's safe. The attendance fee is $35 which includes dinner, and its advertised as being pretty interactive, so I think it'll be interesting. Looking for company though. Here's the link:

http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=168599

Second, the NIH Health Disparities Summit is on Dec. 16-18. It will be held in New Harbor, MD which is right outside of Washington DC in a beautiful new complex that overlooks the Potomac River. I'm going to attend and I was blessed to have an abstract accepted for presentation. I've heard that its truly a great meeting and the registration is actually free. So once again it would be nice to have some company. I can even promise a personal tour of DC considering its 15 miles from where I grew up. Here's the link:

http://www.blsmeetings.net/2008healthdisparitiessummit/reg.cfm

Lastly, the data that I will be presenting at the summit was published in the Annals of Surgery this month. It has to do with diversity in the academic surgical workforce. Annals of Surgery is one of our most well respected surgical journals and it truly is an honor to get it published. They even wrote a little editorial about it. I went to Kim and Dr. Bloom with my idea to pursue this last July when Hari, Lyonel, and I started summer school (remediation) ;-). They were very supportive of the idea and then in September Jeff looked at one of the original drafts and was also supportive. So basically what I'm getting at is that if there is a research idea that you want to look into and are passionate about, the support is here at UC Berkely SPH/HPM and this article is proof of that. I would love to get your opinion on it if you find the time to read it. Its been well received by the other surgeons with whom I've spoken, which also serves as proof that many physicians care about health care disparities and public health initiatives more then might be expected/advertised ;-) Here are the links:

Article: http://www.annalsofsurgery.com/pt/re/annos/abstract.00000658-200811000-00003.htm;jsessionid=JjpWX8vQ0SRHkLDd1b2TYPm7pXnQMWCs01hXZrJrzQJtDXFb5rhy!620075815!181195628!8091!-1

Editorial: http://www.annalsofsurgery.com/pt/re/annos/abstract.00000658-200811000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JjpHPZgLyRV31Yp2kHLQkTl5CNQByy846Q57GSpv5k10fnPQ09TG!-409308177!181195629!8091!-1

Let me know if you can't get to it and I can send you the PDF. Well that's it. I hope to see some of you Thursday evening in Redwood City.