HJAR Sep/Oct 2025

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  SEP / OCT 2025 31 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalAR.com Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and appointing replacements who have historically espoused anti-vaccine viewpoints. The lawsuit asks for preliminary and permanent injunc- tions to enjoin Secretary Kennedy’s rescissions of Covid vaccine recommendations and a declara- tory judgment pronouncing the change in recom- mendations as unlawful. The lawsuit charges that a coordinated set of actions by HHS and Secretary Kennedy were designed to mislead, confuse, and gradually desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti- science rhetoric, and that he has routinely flouted federal procedural rules. These actions include blocking CDC communications, unexplained can- cellations of vaccine panel meetings at the FDA and CDC, announcing studies to investigate non- existent links between vaccines and autism, uni- laterally overriding immunization recommenda- tions, and replacing the diverse members of ACIP with a slate of individuals biased against sound vaccine facts. The anonymous individual plaintiff in the law- suit is a pregnant woman who is at immediate risk for being unable to get the COVID-19 vac- cine booster because of the secretarial directive, despite her high risk for exposure to infectious diseases from working as a physician at a hospital. UAMSWelcomes 3 New Sports Medicine Physicians to Northwest Arkansas Primary care sports medicine physicians Kyle Arthur, MD, Jake Martin, MD, and Jacob Smith, MD, MPH, recently joined UAMS Health Ortho- paedics and Sports Medicine in Northwest Arkansas. Arthur, who was the very first graduate of the UAMS sports medicine fellowship program in Fayetteville in 2016, is returning home to Arkan- sas and to UAMS since serving as team physician for the South Carolina Gamecocks at the Univer- sity of South Carolina. He will now be team phy- sician for multiple University of Arkansas Razor- back sports. Arthur is an Arkansas native and fellowship- trained sports medicine physician who earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and a Bach- elor of Science in chemistry at Harding Univer- sity in Searcy. He earned a medical degree from UAMS in Little Rock and completed both a fam- ily medicine residency and a sports medicine fel- lowship at UAMS in Northwest Arkansas. Arthur is board-certified in family medicine and sports medicine. He specializes in nonoperative sports medicine and orthopaedic injuries, concussion management, regenerative medicine, and ultra- sound-guided injections. Smith and Martin are recent graduates of the UAMS sports medicine fellowship program. Martin is a fellowship-trained sports medicine physician who earned a Bachelor of Arts in math- ematics and a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. He earned a medical degree from St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada and completed a family medicine residency at UAMS in North- west Arkansas, where he served as chief resident. Smith, a former pitcher for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks baseball team, is a fel- lowship-trained sports medicine physician who earned a Bachelor of Science in kinesiology with honors at the University of Arkansas, where he graduated magna cum laude. He earned a med- ical degree and a Master of Public Health degree from UAMS in Little Rock. He completed a family medicine residency at the John Peter Smith Hos- pital Network in Fort Worth, Texas. He founded 1and1, which is a faith-based nonprofit organi- zation that develops baseball infrastructure and enhances sports medicine throughout Nicaragua and Colombia. Through these efforts, he was the third North American appointed to the World Baseball and Softball Confederation’s Medi- cal Commission and focuses on Latin America outreach. All three physicians see patients at the UAMS Health Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Clin- ics on Van Asche in Fayetteville and on Monroe Avenue in Lowell. UAMS Research Highlights Community-Driven Approaches to Combat Food Insecurity Two studies led by researchers from the Uni- versity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) spotlight the daily struggles of food-insecure Arkansans and offer new insights into commu- nity-driven solutions to address hunger in one of the nation’s most food-insecure states. The research, conducted through UAMS’s Insti- tute for Community Health Innovation, reveals the profound effects of food insecurity on communi- ties and explores the impact of pilot programs tai- lored to the cultural needs of Hispanic and Mar- shallese communities. In one of the studies, “Daily Reality of Food Insecurity: A PhotoVoice Study,” published in the Kyle Arthur, MD Jake Martin, MD Jacob Smith, MD, MPH