From uncertainty to understanding
One of the defining responsibilities of academic medicine is to confront uncertainty. Patients and families, students and trainees, and colleagues and mentors come to us every day asking: Why is this happening? What does this mean? What can we do? Questions like these are a call to action: to seek deeper understanding and find newer, better solutions.
As I reviewed this issue of Medicine Iowa, I was struck by how each feature story addressed uncertainty with its own important question:
- Why are women and girls disproportionately affected by anxiety and depression, and what can we learn about the brain that may treat or prevent these conditions?
- How can we better treat an ultra-rare kidney disease that for years left patients with few options?
- What is the most effective therapy for debilitating pain and fatigue associated with fibromyalgia?
- How can we care for children born with life-threatening heart conditions in ways that make life easier for parents and families?
- And when poisonings, overdoses, or toxic exposures place lives at risk, how do we deliver specialized expertise to patients and providers across an entire state?
The stories you’ll read highlight scientific discovery, the creation of programs and services, and the dedication of clinicians, researchers, and others who refuse to accept that today’s challenges limit tomorrow’s possibilities.
This is what academic medicine is all about. Research helps us uncover the causes of disease and keys to better health. Clinical innovation transforms standard practice into new therapies and revised models of care. Education prepares the next generation to tackle questions we’ve not yet imagined.
Sometimes answers lead to even harder questions. And sometimes answers become the latest treatments, new scientific insights, and game-changing breakthroughs.
This fall issue spotlights researchers who’ve spent years pursuing answers, clinicians who’ve built new programs to address unmet needs, and patients whose lives have been changed thanks to investments and commitments made long before they ever walked through our doors. In each case, answers arrived by turning uncertainty into understanding. And by turning understanding into action.
