HJAR Sep/Oct 2024

54 SEP / OCT 2024  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS Hospital Rounds Parker Family Donates $2M Toward Arkansas Children’s Hospital Expansion Arkansas Children’s announced a $2 million gift from Lynn and Don Parker and their children to the Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) expansion project and have committed a $1 million planned gift to the ACH Jonesboro Clinic, further enhanc- ing the facility’s ability to provide exceptional care to children in the northeast Arkansas region. The support from donors like the Parkers enables Arkansas Children's to build a new gen- eration of care with its $318 million expansion proj- ect at both hospitals, announced in 2023. The plan will expand bed capacity, transform inpatient and outpatient surgical approaches with the addition of an ambulatory center, redesign clinical spaces to promote multidisciplinary care and create an inviting and accessible campus experience. With the Parker family donation, companies, individ- uals and organizations have donated $12.1 mil- lion toward the $253.2 million expansion project at ACH. “Arkansas Children’s served 180,000 children last year —more children than ever before,” said Marcy Doderer, FACHE, president and CEO of Arkansas Children’s. “Arkansas Children’s his- toric expansion will increase access to pediat- ric care, enhance exceptional outcomes for kids and elevate patient experience on both hospi- tal campuses.” Arkansas Children’s Propels Research into Deadly Fungus Using More than $3 Million in NewNIH Funding A pair of infectious disease experts are estab- lishing an emerging research program at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute (ACRI) to address a germ considered to be the leading cause of death for patients with weakened immune systems. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have awarded grants worth more than $3 million to ACRI principal investigators Praveen Juvvadi, PhD, and William Steinbach, MD, who also serves as chief pediatrician at Arkansas Children’s and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Medicine. Juvvadi is also an associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at UAMS. Aspergillus fumigatus is a relatively common fungus found in the environment in places like decaying leaf litter. It is a leading cause of death among people with compromised immune sys- tems, a population that includes children with chronic illnesses. The fungus’ mortality rate exceeds 40%. Healthcare teams have trouble fighting Aspergillus fumigatus because the germ adapts and becomes stronger against currently available treatments. Today, scientists do not fully understand how this fungus thrives, but Juvvadi and Steinbach have identified mechanisms they believe may be responsible for its rapid growth and repro- duction. The NIH funding will help them under- stand the mechanism of how protein phosphatase calcineurin and protein kinase A drive Aspergil- lus fumigatus’ growth, contribute to its spread, and strengthen its ability to resist antifungal medications. “The World Health Organization recently named Aspergillus fumigatus as among the most critical fungal threats facing the world. For children with compromised immune systems, this research will embody Arkansas Children’s mission of creating a healthier tomorrow,” Steinbach said. “These find- ings could promise a future that many of those patients are not guaranteed today.” Juvvadi and Steinbach hope their findings will lead to the identification of newer drug targets and contribute to the development of new treat- ments that directly attack these mechanisms, mak- ing it more difficult for the fungus to survive. Their NIH funding will flow through two grants: a five-year, $2.8 million R01 award and a two-year, $438,000 R21 award. “We are thrilled with NIH’s support of this work through two awards in the same cycle,” Juv- vadi said. “This funding will help us reach critical insights into Aspergillus fumigatus’ survival strat- egies and bring us one step closer to develop- ing life-saving therapies for patients as they fight this infection.” UAMS First in Nation to Offer Groundbreaking Therapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is the first medical facility in the United States to provide an innovative therapeutic treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). The SAINT neuromodulation system, developed by Magnus Medical, Inc., has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat adults with depression who have not achieved improvement in their condition from the use of antidepressant medications. SAINT works by leveraging structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to inform a pro- prietary algorithm that pinpoints the optimal ana- tomical target for precise neurostimulation in indi- viduals with major depression. The treatment is performed on an accelerated, five-day timeline, reducing the patient’s treatment time from weeks to days. In previous clinical tri- als, treatment with SAINT for MDD resulted in a significant reduction in depressive symptoms at four weeks post-treatment following the five-day treatment protocol. Currently, SAINT can only be provided to patients who are being treated as inpatients. “We are thrilled to be the first site in the nation to offer the breakthrough SAINT neuromodulation system for individuals suffering from depression, and I am very optimistic that this new approach will change people’s lives,” said Laura B. Dunn, MD, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Psychiatric Research Institute at UAMS. Patients in the SAINT treatment protocol undergo an MRI scan in the Brain Imaging Research Center, which takes approximately 45 minutes, to pinpoint the optimal anatomical target for precise transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The TMS treatment consists of 10 sessions per day for five consecutive days. Each session includes 10 minutes of stimulation followed by a 50-minute rest period. Arkansas Children's Promotes Ryan Solomon to SVP of Hospital Operations for ACH Arkansas Children’s has promoted Ryan Solo- mon, JD, MPS, to senior vice president of hos- pital operations for Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. Solomon joined Arkansas Children’s a decade ago and has most recently served as interim SVP and chief administrator at Arkansas Children’s Northwest. He previously served as vice president