Message from Chair Ben Clyburn, M.D.

To our generous donors and friends,

As we reflect on the past academic year, we would like to share with you some of our accomplishments and thank you for your financial support. We could not have made these advances without your help.

Some particularly noteworthy departmental highlights from this past year include the following:

• In October, thanks to the generosity of our many loyal donors, we celebrated the successful completion of the Jay Brzezinski, M.D., Clinician Educator Endowed Professorship campaign and the appointment of MUSC’s Andrew Schreiner, M.D., as the first holder of the Brzezinski Professorship.
• The Department of Medicine formed a new Division of Hospital Medicine led by Interim Division Director Marc Heincelman, M.D.
• In the 2020-2021 U.S. News & World Report rankings, several Department of Medicine programs ranked among the top 10% in the country with our nephrology, rheumatology, and gastroenterology programs all recognized as high-performing. MUSC Hollings Cancer Center maintained its presence among the ranked programs, coming in at No. 39.
• The MUSC Susan Pearlstine Sarcoidosis Center of Excellence was formally recognized by the World Association for Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Diseases (WASOG) as a Sarcoidosis Center of Excellence.
• MUSC became the only institution in the country to house both a Digestive Disease Research Core Center (DDRCC), which supports the research of established scholars, and a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence in Digestive and Liver Disease (CDLD), which mentors early-career investigators to become independent scholars.
• At MUSC, we are adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the health and wellness of our patients, care team members, and our community. As the department pivoted to prepare for our “new normal,” we continued to provide health care services using best-practices to protect the health of our patients and care teams and rapidly transitioned from in-clinic visits to telehealth visits when possible. Our faculty members with extensive expertise in public and global health assisted leadership with disaster management, infectious disease policies, and operationalizing the many aspects of the new COVID-19 world in the operating rooms, ICU, and clinics.
• Researchers in the Department of Medicine have been leading efforts, including a variety of clinical trials, to identify effective therapeutics and vaccines to treat and mitigate COVID-19.

As you read through this newsletter, we hope you will join in our excitement with the many successes we have accomplished thanks to philanthropy. As always, we extend our sincere gratitude for your continued interest and support of the Department of Medicine.

Warmly, 

Benjamin Clyburn, M.D.
Interim chair, MUSC Department of Medicine