New Senior VP

Peter Hill, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine, has been appointed senior vice president for medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System and vice president of medical affairs for The Johns Hopkins Hospital. An Emergency Department faculty member since 1998, Hill has served in multiple leadership positions, including as medical director of the emergency acute care unit, which he co-founded, and as clinical director and then vice chair of clinical affairs for the department. In his role with the health system, he will work closely with each hospital’s leadership and medical staff to strengthen efforts to provide safe, efficient, cost-effective health care. Hill will also serve as The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s chief medical officer.

National Capital Region Surgical Oncology Appointment

Nita Ahuja, M.D., professor of urology, surgery and oncology, has been appointed director of surgical oncology for the national capital region, encompassing Sibley Memorial Hospital, Suburban Hospital and Howard County General Hospital. Ahuja remains chief of surgical oncology for The Johns Hopkins Hospital, director of the Sarcoma and Peritoneal Surface Malignancy Program, and co-director of the Gastric Cancer Program. Ahuja also heads a cancer research laboratory and has made breakthrough discoveries in early detection of pancreatic cancer and in treating both it and colorectal cancer. A graduate of Duke University School of Medicine, she completed her surgical training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and joined the faculty in 2003.

Damon Runyon Award

Xintong Dong, Ph.D., a neuroscience fellow, has been awarded a 2017 Damon Runyon Fellowship from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. She is among 16 recipients of the four-year, $231,000 fellowship that will underwrite her studies of how injury and pathogen invasion trigger a chain of inflammatory and repair responses that result in defects in wound healing.

Healthy Community Partnership Recognized

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center’s Healthy Community Partnership has received the Baltimore City Health Department’s Health Equity Leadership Award. The award is presented to individuals and organizations working to combat health disparities in Baltimore City. The Healthy Community Partnership aims to improve the health of the community by working with faith-based organizations to offer educational programs on health topics, equip individuals with the needed resources and tools to become stronger advocates for good health and medical care, and address health care disparities.

Howard County General Hospital Honor

Howard County General Hospital has received a 2017 Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence from Healthgrades, a Denver-based hospital and physician rating and comparison company. The award recognizes Howard County General’s high-quality care across a wide range of procedures and for multiple conditions. The hospital is one of 258 the company ranked as being in the nation’s top 5 percent of health care institutions.

Sibley Memorial Hospital Voted Best Local Hospital to Give Birth

Bethesda Magazine readers have voted Sibley as the best local hospital at which to have a baby. A total of 3,412 women gave birth at Sibley last year—45 of them delivering twins. With the September 2016 relocation of the Center for Babies and Families to two floors in the new patient tower, childbirth capacity has grown substantially. It includes 18 labor, delivery and recovery rooms; three C-section rooms; 50 postpartum rooms; 18 private, special care nursery rooms, including six rooms for twins; a dedicated lactation area; eight private triage rooms; and services for high-risk pregnancies.

EAST BALTIMORE

Felicia Hill-Briggs, Ph.D., professor of medicine and senior director of population health research and development for Johns Hopkins HealthCare, has been named president-elect of the American Diabetes Association. She will assume the presidency in 2018. Hill-Briggs is also a member of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, where she studies diabetes self-management, behavioral intervention trials, health disparities, neuropsychology and functional impairment disability.

Namandje Bumpus, Ph.D., pharmacologist and associate professor of medicine, was recently named science commissioner and the newest member of the Science Advisory Board in Washington, D.C. The board provides scientific oversight for the district’s Department of Forensic Science and advises the department’s director, the mayor and city council on matters relating to the department.

Daniel O’Connor, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience, is among 102 winners of Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the federal government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. O’Connor’s research focuses on neural circuits for touch perception, and his lab is working to reveal the neural circuit foundations of sensory perception and provide a framework to understand how circuit dysfunction causes mental and behavioral aspects of neuropsychiatric illness.

Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, senior vice president of patient safety and quality for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Medicine from Newcastle University in the U.K. for his outstanding work in critical care medicine.

Dorry Segev, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery, was named to Foreign Policy Journal’s list of 100 Leading Global Thinkers for his work on HIV-positive to HIV-positive organ transplants. Also recognized for such efforts was Peter Stock, of the University of California, San Francisco. Those who make the list are considered to have made great impacts within their fields and around the world. In 2011, Segev’s research showed that HIV-positive individuals, previously banned from donating organs to HIV-positive transplant patients, could do so. In 2013, he successfully lobbied Congress to change the law.

JOHNS HOPKINS BAYVIEW MEDICAL CENTER

Wendy Houseknecht, B.S.N., M.S.N., has been named the new director of nursing for ambulatory services. Houseknecht had been acting as an interim director for several months. Nationally certified in electronic fetal monitoring and as an obstetrics nurse, she has many years of ambulatory care experience and will be responsible for overseeing the clinical nursing functions in ambulatory care and ensuring safe and efficient patient care practices.

Kerri Huber, M.S.N., R.N., C.I.C., has been named director of nursing for the Department of Interprofessional Practice and Patient Safety. Huber will provide oversight of clinical practice, education and patient safety activities. She came to Johns Hopkins Bayview in 2007 as a registered nurse in the Burn Center. In 2011, she joined infection control as an infection prevention expert, becoming the manager of infection control in 2013.