People with sickle cell disease, their families, healthcare professionals, and the public are invited to the 2017 annual Sickle Cell Symposium on Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The symposium is free for the general public, and $20 for healthcare providers who want continuing education credit.
The central topic of the symposium is “Stem Cell Transplant as a Cure for Sickle Cell Disease: Who, When, and How?”
Meeting on the 12th floor of the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Sickle Cell Symposium is presented by Future Builders Inc. and Arkansas Black Nurses Association, in collaboration with the UAMS Adult Sickle Cell Clinical Program.
Registration is required. To register for the symposium, and for more information, go to sicklecell.uams.edu, or email Donna Ezell, RN, at DJEzell@uams.edu.
Keynote speaker Kathryn Yarkony, PhD, APRN, will give an overview of the bone marrow transplant program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she is the lead transplant coordinator. Then Pooja Motwani, MD, co-director of the UAMS Adult Sickle Cell Clinical Program, will discuss what the opportunity for bone marrow transplant means for UAMS adult sickle cell patients.
Bone marrow transplants are one of the procedures used to restore stem cells. Recent advances in “half-matched” bone marrow transplantation have allowed for a much broader range of donors, allowing just about any patient to be eligible for the procedure. This means a donor can be found for nearly every patient who needs a bone marrow transplant to be cured. As a national referral center for the procedure, Johns Hopkins annually performs about 300 bone marrow transplants.
Yarkony has been the lead transplant coordinator at Johns Hopkins since January of 2016, and has worked there in various nursing roles since 2007. She earned her doctorate in physiology from Johns Hopkins in 1996. Yarkony is a member of the Oncology Nursing Society, and a representative to the National Cancer Institute for Oncology Nursing Research.