More than 100 people are registered to attend the annual meeting of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons (SBAS), hosted this week, and for the first time, by the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
The three-day event, set for Thursday through Saturday, will feature panel discussions and 30 original scientific presentations in classroom R-354 (upper amphitheatre) under the program heading “Advocacy, Access and Comparative Outcomes: Surgical Disparities in Health Care”.
Among the topics on tap are access to surgical care within the minority community, reducing health disparities and trends in obesity and diabetes.
The keynote speakers for the 23rd annual conference are Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, physician-in-chief, R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, University of Maryland Medical System; and Dr. Raphael Pollock, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of Surgical Oncology, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
UMMC physicians and professors scheduled to speak are Dr. Marc Mitchell, president of University Physicians; Dr. John Hall, professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics; Dr. Jorge Salazar, director of the Children’s Heart Center, Batson Children’s Hospital; and Dr. Christopher Anderson, associate professor of surgery and medicine.
“The SBAS always holds its annual meeting at an academic medical center – it’s been at Duke University, Massachusetts General and Johns Hopkins over the last three years. We’re in good company,” said Dr. John Porter, SBAS member/local host and UMMC’s chief of the Division of Trauma Surgery.
The event will conclude Saturday with an awards dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn (King Edward Hotel) in downtown Jackson. For a complete schedule, go to
http://www.sbas.net/events.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., and claiming more than 200 members nationwide, the SBAS was founded in 1989 to address the scarcity of African-American surgeons in academic medicine and the lack of an organized effort to inspire young surgeons and medical students to enter the field.
All surgical faculty members are eligible for full membership in the SBAS, whose official publication is the American Journal of Surgery.