Hillary Edwards, MPH ’14, says bringing people together to advance patient-centered outcomes research is among the favorite parts of her job with the PATIENTS Program at the School of Pharmacy.

On Oct. 23 in a conference room at the Saratoga Building, Edwards brought together a large group of her colleagues from the program — except she actually had no part in planning this gathering.

Edwards, the associate director of program management and evaluation, was engaged in a weekly strategy meeting with senior members of the PATIENTS Program when University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay A. Perman, MD, interrupted with some good news: Edwards was UMB’s Employee of the Month of October, and the 10 people who accompanied him were there to celebrate her achievement.

“Plain and simple, we’re here to honor you because you do such a good job,” said Perman, who delivered a plaque, a letter of commendation, and news that an extra $250 would be in Edwards’ next paycheck. “You have done a great deal for the PATIENTS Program and you put together the PATIENTS Day event this summer that was very successful. But more globally, people say you always go out of your way to do a great job. And that’s appreciated by your colleagues and the University.”

Back-to-Back Events

The PATIENTS Day event was the second one hosted by the program, whose acronym is short for Patient-Centered Involvement in Evaluating the Effectiveness of Treatments. The PATIENTS Program was launched in 2013 with a $5 million grant from the Agency on Healthcare Research and Equality and is headed by C. Daniel Mullins, PhD, professor and chair of the school’s Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research. The July event was touted as an interactive, educational health and wellness fair where community members, health care providers, researchers, and community organizers could learn from one another about what is needed to create and sustain healthy individuals, families, and communities.

“Hillary worked tirelessly to ensure that PATIENTS Day had activities that would engage attendees in a meaningful way,” Michelle Medeiros, MS, MA, CCRP, the program’s director of research, said in her nomination. “In addition to the multi-vendor fair, the event featured three informative panels that focused on research from the community’s perspective, gun violence as a social determinant of health, and Baltimore authors on holistic health: physically, spiritually, financially, and beyond.

“With leadership and enthusiasm, Hillary has served as a role model for the PATIENTS Program’s peers and colleagues, inspiring them to initiate sincere and genuine interactions with the community. The feedback we received from the community about PATIENTS Day demonstrated the positive impact it had.”

Mullins was equally effusive in his praise of Edwards, who has worked with the program for three years and been at UMB since 2010.

“Her outstanding ability to balance accountability and civility resulted in an amazing PATIENTS Day event,” Mullins said. “I’m proud to have her as a leader within the PATIENTS Program. Hillary embodies the spirit of UMB’s core values. She is 100 percent accountable and reliable, and she knows how to get the job done. At the same time, she embraces civility and inclusiveness and allows every voice to be heard before she implements a plan.”

Making her plan implementation more difficult this year, Edwards also had to coordinate a site visit the day before PATIENTS Day that involved hosting the program’s steering committee and external advisory board members. The visit had been scheduled in January or March in previous years, she said, but had been affected by winter weather issues.

“By doing the events back-to-back, we not only had our advisors in town to really talk about our program infrastructure, but they also were able to celebrate the community partnerships that we’ve built with our West Baltimore neighbors,” Edwards said.

Making an Impact at UMB

She has worked at UMB for eight years, first with Campus Life Services, where she helped launch the Wellness Hub, then at the School of Medicine helping to coordinate a research certificate program, then at the School of Pharmacy with the PATIENTS Program, starting in 2015. In addition to her role there, she has been president of the UMB Staff Senate for two years.

“The Staff Senate provides a really amazing opportunity to be able to understand the priorities that our staff have across campus,” Edwards said. “I’ve also worked closely with Human Resource Services to think about ways we can provide professional development for our staff.  In my time at UMB, I’ve been able to grow professionally thanks to having incredible supervisors and being under senior leadership who really care about the growth of our employees and staff.”

With the PATIENTS Program, she says she loves the interdisciplinary nature of its team of 15-plus colleagues and the fact that she can reach into the realms of research and community partnership at the same time.

“I also get to have a hand in the community partnerships and building those continued networks,” Edwards said. “I love to think of the PATIENTS Program as a resource center, not a research center, so I enjoy being able to serve as a matchmaker for our faculty’s brilliant ideas, and then to hear our community’s priorities when it comes to health and health services research. Being able to bridge the two together is really innovative, and it gives me something new and exciting to work on every day.”

The Employee of the Month gathering was the second celebration this month for Edwards, who got married Oct. 13, and she thanked her colleagues and supervisors for their support during her busy year.

“It’s a great joy to work with this amazing team that spans not only scientific expertise but also community development and community partnership,” Edwards said. “And I’d like to thank my bosses — Dr. Mullins and Michelle Medeiros — for acknowledging my work and helping me through challenging times. It’s not easy to pull off those two back-to-back, high-profile PATIENTS events, so their guidance through that process was really meaningful to me.”

— Lou Cortina

The day was brisk, the winds were moderate, and the invited crowd and numerous passers-by were appreciative as the first piece of public art on the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) was dedicated on Oct. 16.

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The 30-foot-tall piece by artist Eric Peltzer is a kinetic sculpture that had been temporarily immobilized by a red sash. He and the participating dignitaries, including Maryland First Lady Yumi Hogan, had no scissors to cut that ribbon as is typical during a dedication. Instead they loosened the sash and let the wind take hold.

In introducing the artist, UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, had set the stage for the resulting movement. He observed that Peltzer had chosen a fitting title, “Stochastic Interactions,” and that stochastic describes the random processes of genetics and molecular biology.

“The random nature of the wind interacting with the sculpture is meant to suggest the randomness at work on our genetics. It’s a gorgeous piece,” Perman said.

Perman also called attention to the way the piece “suggests the human form through the shape of the DNA double helix.” He called the design “a wonderful nod” to the cutting-edge genomic research that takes place in Health Sciences Research Facility III. The new building is a soaring backdrop for the sculpture and home to the Institute for Genome Sciences of the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), among other offices and labs.

As required by legislation passed in 2013, Maryland must include public art in new or renovated state buildings. The Maryland Public Art Initiative (MPAI) sets aside a percentage of capital construction costs for the integration of public art and enables its creators to become involved early in the planning and construction phases.

Peltzer is a Southern California artist who has been making sculptures for more than three decades. He visited the site over a two-year period after being selected in an open-call jury process overseen by the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency of the state Department of Commerce.

It is the Maryland Commission on Public Art that directs the strategic vision of Maryland’s statewide public art program. Leaders of both participated in the ceremony.

“Public art is free. No admission price. A museum without walls,” said the council’s executive director, Ken Skrzesz, who also noted that an outdoor sculpture such as Peltzer’s work “allows us moments of reflection.” As for the dynamics of the still-fettered “Stochastic Interactions,” Skrzesz observed, “It’s dying to take off!”

Commission Chair Catherine Leggett called the sculpture magnificent, adding that the piece  “lifts us up” and connects the health-care aspects of its surroundings on the UMB campus and the nearby University of Maryland Medical Center. “Well done,” she said.

The sculpture stands at the corner of Pine and Baltimore streets. The latter is a busy bus-route corridor. Meanwhile, city and campus pedestrians include patients arriving and departing the clinics of the University of Maryland School of Dentistry at 650 W. Baltimore St. Only moments after the unveiling, a dental patient emerged and admired the work.

It is that sort of public access that Maryland First Lady Hogan finds laudatory. Speaking from her perspective as an artist and in her role as honorary chair of the UMB Council for the Arts & Culture, she described the sculpture as beautiful, like a bird, and observed that it’s in the perfect spot to inspire “people of all ages, including students.”

Hogan, a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art, called “Stochastic Interactions” an example of “artists connecting our lives.”

Peltzer said he drew his inspiration for “Stochastic Interactions” on the history of the university and especially on that of its medical school, relying greatly on author Larry Pitrof, executive director of the UMSOM Alumni Association. The legs have twists, symbolic of the challenges of the first 100 years. Also, the legs have little incisions that reflect “an inquisitive nature,” Peltzer said.

As for the genomics aspect, he said, “People walk by and know what’s going on in the building.”

Peltzer also shared one of his biggest difficulties, literally: “To get something this big and heavy to move in the wind.”

Dignitaries in attendance included Maryland Higher Education Secretary James Fielder Jr., PhD, and Liz Fitzsimmons, managing director of the Division of Tourism, Film and the Arts at the Maryland Commerce Department, which oversees the arts council.

Peltzer’s parents, sisters, and other family members were present. So were several members of the selection committee, whose members spent months poring over nearly 200 artist applications. The committee was led by UMB Assistant Vice President Angela Fowler-Young, director of the Office of Real Estate, Planning, and Space Management. It included Anthony Consoli, AIA, LEED AP,  campus architect at UMB; Robert Cook, executive director of facilities and operations at UMSOM, and Pitrof, among others.

Perman thanked the committee and everyone at UMB and in Maryland government who saw the project through, such as Mark Behrens, a senior design and construction project manager at UMB, and the Maryland State Arts Council’s Liesel Fenner, ASLA, program director of public art.

“There are a million moving parts to something like this,” the president said.

But the only moving parts that mattered were the arms of the sculpture. And Peltzer’s “Stochastic Interactions” responded to the wind, on cue, at its dedication.

— Patricia Fanning