Fiscal Year 2007 - Department of Medicine - University of ...

Chairman’s Comments
With this issue of the annual report we
celebrate the exceptional talents of
our state’s blues musicians—both past
and present—and we pay tribute to the Mississippi
Delta, often known as the “Birthplace of the Blues.”
Throughout this report we feature the artwork
of Gary Patterson and Marion Barnes with
their paintings of musicians and life in the Delta.
These works are part of a collection commissioned
by Faser Tripplett, MD, and we are grateful to Dr.
Tripplett for allowing us to share them with you.
The blues emerged, in large measure, because
of our history of cotton plantations, slavery,
and sharecropping. It is a part of our history in
which we take no comfort. And it is a part of our
history where the effects continue to be felt. The
Mississippi Delta has some of the highest rates of
poverty in the nation, high rates of certain diseases,
and suffers from a widespread lack of access to
health care.
As the only academic health sciences institution
in the state, we are committed to addressing the
health needs of the residents of the Mississippi
Delta—and in this report, we highlight some of our
recent initiatives.
I am pleased to report the accomplishments
during this past year of our faculty and staff members.
Although this past year was one in which we
again experienced budget constraints, we nonetheless
were able to increase our number of clinical office
visits and top our last year’s record of annual
external research funding. These accomplishments
represent the extraordinary commitment of our faculty
to the mission of the Medical Center.
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