“Honestly, I was a little bit skeptical and confused,” said Isabela Agi Maluli, MS-1. “I was like, ‘what are we doing today?’ I was just really overwhelmed, and I just wanted to hear a lecture.”
The brown envelopes, packed with cue cards and scissors along with red, yellow and green markers, were part of a non-traditional class session for the medical students.
“We are doing a very interactive hands-on model building,” said David Goff, M.D., who is an Assistant Professor at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. “It’s not just a lecture where we throw information at them, interacting will help the information stick.”
Interactive learning requires students to touch, feel, hold and move things to get a better understanding of the material.Goff is hoping to publish this innovative, interactive student learning modality to share with other medical schools.
“I’m a hands-on learner,” said Sereen Osman, MS-1. “Looking at table charts and graphs helps me to visualize and store it in my brain. Doing the interactive learning makes it easier for me.”
Students built a hypothalamus and pituitary gland, which is the control center for the endocrine system and controls and maintains our metabolism and balance.
It’s part of the flipped-classroom model in which students prepare for the material prior to class and then expand on it during class.
Dr. Goff says data shows how impactful interactive learning can be and that students learn by coming up with ways to remember the content.
“I’m trying to create a picture in their brain so that down the road when they are treating somebody, they think about that picture in their brain more than reading something or trying to memorize it,” Goff said.
“I’m really thankful to Dr. Goff and the school for doing this,” Osman said. “I feel like I learned a lot and I was more involved and more engaged and I can’t wait to use this more going forward.”
FORT WORTH –Three students from the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University received 2025 C.V. Roman Memorial Scholarships.
“It’s not just about the scholarship, they get to see your journey as a medical student,” said Tyra Banks, MS3 at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU.
Banks received a $3,000 scholarship alongside her classmates Nana Okraku-Yirenkyi, MS3, and Oluwatoyin Duyile, MS4. Okraku-Yirenkyi received a $3,750 scholarship and Duyile received a $750 scholarship.
“So many people from the scholarship committee came up to us and gave us hugs and told us things about our story that resonated with them from reading our applications,” Banks said.
The investment in medical education for every student on the road to becoming a future physician requires planning and budgeting, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The scholarship program at C.V. Roman helps reduce the financial burden for students from underrepresented minority groups to make medical education more accessible.
“It’s more than just a scholarship,” Okraku-Yirenkyi said. “The relationships we build with these doctors who have walked in our shoes before can give us great insight on where we’re trying to go.”
The C.V. Roman Memorial Scholarship supports medical students who demonstrate academic excellence, leadership in community service, and a commitment to addressing healthcare disparities. Each year, the organization awards students enrolled in medical schools within the Dallas-Fort Worth area who are active members of the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) or similar organizations.
FORT WORTH– What happens when improvisation interacts with the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU? You get medical improv. But it’s not what you think.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions when you hear the word improv,” said Erin Nelson, Psy.D., Associate Dean of Physician Communication at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University. “A lot of people think about comedy. But there are two parts of improvisation, and we are looking at applied improv, which is the use of improv techniques in order to further teamwork, communication and connection.”
Burnett School of Medicine at TCU held a medical improv training led by Belinda Fu, M.D., along with local improvers at Arnold Hall. The goal was to show faculty different techniques and exercises that they can pass on to students to help them deal with unscripted medical situations.
“The old-school way of teaching communication skills in medical school was often to use scripts,” said Belinda Fu, M.D., who is an international leader in the field of medical improv. “So, improvisation really allows you to be comfortable with uncertainty and you can adapt to the unpredictable situation.”
During the workshop, students engaged in a number of exercises that will prepare them for whatever encounter they will have with patients and the family of the patients.
“I think this will better help me when I interact with patients,” said Ashley Kenney, MS-3. “I’m excited to use these strategies in the future and I just want to have better communication and be more aware of the word choices I make when caring for patients.”
Burnett School of Medicine faculty from both Physician Communication and Clinical Skills teams are fully trained in medical improv exercises. Faculty members use these exercises during the Phase 3 Prep for Practice session, however, the techniques can be applied to any content application session.
“We’re not teaching students how to be improvers,” Nelson said. “We are using this modality to teach students exceptional communication skills.”
FORT WORTH – Tackling a major health care issue like morbidity and mortality among women and infants is a task that requires health care professionals from all levels working to find solutions.
“It’s important to get the whole community working on it together,” Eletel said.
Eletel and five other students at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU have dedicated their mandatory four-year Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT) research projects to finding answers to the high mortality and morbidity rates for women and infants in North Texas.
“TCU is a part of the Fort Worth family and we’re all in this together that’s how I see this,” Dean Flynn said. “The research our students are doing dovetails beautifully with what we’ve been doing.”
Eletel is hoping her research will add valuable insight into finding solutions for Fort Worth’s high mortality and morbidity rates among women and infants. She is using data from Cook Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and birthing centers in Tarrant County to see if out-of-hospital births are associated with more adverse outcomes for infants and if those infants need more health care utilization.
“From what we can see, it’s yes and yes to both of those questions,” Eletel said.
She is also looking to find out what is motivating pregnant women to deliver outside the traditional hospital setting. The insight could also shed light on what health care providers can do to reduce the need for out-of-hospital births.
Working on maternal care issues together is ultimately how we’re going to make the most change, Eletel said.
Eletel is being mentored through this process by David Riley, M.D., Assistant Professor at the Burnett School of Medicine and a neonatologist at Cook Children’s. He specializes in treating infants after birth who may be born with congenital issues, birth complications or trauma that would require them to be admitted into the intensive care unit.
With Dr. Riley’s help, Eletel has been able to analyze data from 132 neonatal intensive care unit admissions at Cook Children’s from 2019 through 2024 to see what percentage of infants admitted into the ICU were delivered at birthing centers or were at-home deliveries experiencing complications.
“The preliminary look that we’ve had on the data certainly shows that the infants that come to our care from those facilities have a very high burden of disease,” Dr. Riley said. “We don’t have a really good sense of how many babies are being delivered in this situation; we only see the ones that come to us.”
Eletel is also working with eight birthing centers across Tarrant County to collect data about their standard of care during deliveries.
“We don’t know what the standard of care is,” Eletel said. “It’s important to get all the facts in order to have a standardized approach to the research. If some birthing centers or some home birth midwives are approaching those things differently that can ultimately affect the data.”
Hospitals in Tarrant County follow guidelines from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics for delivery and care of newborns. Eletel is hoping her research can push for the creation of standard of care guidelines for birthing centers and at-home births to help reduce morbidity and mortality rates among women and infants.
“It’s not going to get done to lower that infant mortality rate if it’s just one birthing center or just one hospital is in on it,” Eletel said. “We ultimately have to come together on this.”
FORT WORTH – Something as simple as lifting your foot could dramatically impact your quality of life if there’s any pain involved.
A little known medical condition called foot drop, or drop foot, is having difficulty lifting the front part of the foot, according to the Mayo Clinic. If you have foot drop, the front of your foot may drag on the ground when you walk leading to risks of falling, chronic fatigue, and pain.
“If left untreated or misdiagnosed it can spiral into more injuries and long-term mobility issues,”said Mitchel Hawley, MS4 at Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University. “That’s why early and accurate diagnosis matters so much.”
Hawley and Thien An Nguyen, MS2, at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, have conducted research that has validated a novel, low-cost diagnostic tool called the “Phoenix Sign.” The tool could provide early insight for patients dealing with foot drop. The students’ poster presentation of the research won first place at the Association of Extremity Nerve Surgeons (AENS) Annual Meeting.
“This tool bridges a critical gap in diagnosing foot drop,” Nguyen said. “It gives us a clearer path toward deciding who will genuinely benefit from surgical decompression.”
It offers a promising path for determining which patients will benefit from corrective surgery, said Richard Adams, D.P.M., Assistant Professor of Podiatric Medicine at the Burnett School of Medicine, who mentored the students on the research project.
“As a preliminary validation study their work highlights its value and potential to reveal reversible neural ischemia and accurately predict which patients will benefit from surgical decompression even when classical electrodiagnostic studies are unclear,” said Michael Bernas, Director of Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT) at Burnett School of Medicine.
FORT WORTH – There are many medical conundrums that physicians keep searching for answers for patients. One is fighting off the development of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in the human brain.
This is what Jack Bonnell, MS2 at Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, wants to solve.
“I’ve seen my friends and their families struggle with Alzheimer’s and it hits hard,” Bonnell said.
Data from 2022 showed that Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are the fifth leading cause of death globally and the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Bonnell has found an opportunity in the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU’s novel Empathetic Scholar® curriculum to do research around Alzheimer’s and dementia.
“In medicine, every patient comes in with a different presentation and a different set of problems,” Bonnell said. “Learning to do research now is a small-scale version of how we’ll be working with patients in the future.”
Burnett School of Medicine students are required to a complete a four-year research project before graduation through the unique Scholarly Pursuit & Thesis (SPT) curriculum. The SPT course develops aspiring physicians to be life-long learners capable of critical inquiry and medical information literacy.
“Students are being less and less challenged to think independently and be creative,” Green said. “Research is one of those pure fields where we still have to engage the critical thinking components of our minds.”
Bonnell is working with Dr. Green, and her research group called the Green Research Group. One of their biggest projects is searching for ways to deliver medications to the brain to fight Alzheimer’s and dementia in patients.
“Once I joined Dr. Green’s research team and saw more of the research behind it, it grew as a passion of mine,” Bonnell said.
Dr. Green’s lab at TCU is where chemistry, biology and physics intersect. They provide extensive training and collaborative opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.
His research project in medical school is an extension of his research as a TCU undergraduate student. Through a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R15 grant, Dr. Green’s lab has been able to pay 50 undergraduate students from TCU stipends during the summer to work in the lab.
Bonnell was one of the undergraduate students who benefitted from the grant that has been granted a continuation.
“That grant 100% majorly impacted my project,” Bonnell said. “I probably achieved over 90% of my work over the summer.”
The problem with most medications to fight Alzheimer’s is there isn’t a direct path to get the medication into the brain. There is a well-developed barrier between your blood stream and your brain, which is called the blood brain barrier.
“A huge target for developing drugs for things like Alzheimer’s is how to get past the blood brain barrier,” Bonnell said.
One of the main causes of damage to the brain with Alzheimer’s is oxidative stress. There are drugs to fight it but getting them to the brain is a medical challenge.
“It doesn’t matter how well your drug can fight oxidative stress on a bench testing in a lab,” Bonnell said. “You need to get it to the brain where the disease is occurring.”
There are many ways to approach creating a drug delivery mechanism that could include creative drug design. In Bonnell’s research project, he’s using an approach that mimics the relationship between oil and water and how they interact.
The drugs need to be able to cross the blood brain barrier, which acts like oil. If the drug can cross the barrier into your blood stream, which would be much like water, it needs to stay intact so it can dissolve fully and reach the brain with the Alzheimer’s fighting ingredients.
To do that, you have to find the perfect balance in a molecule to let it go back and forth between the two, Green added.
“They should be able to act like oil and act like water and by having both properties those molecules should be able to wiggle into a lot of places,” Green said.
So far, Bonnell and Dr. Green have seen promising results of the iron-based molecule they’ve been using in bench-top tests in the lab. However, it’s a long road to having the drug delivery system used in a patient study.
“There’s this saying among scientists that we can only see farther because we stand on the shoulders of giants,” Green said. “Everyone wants to come out of the womb and cure cancer but there are millions of tiny contributions that may one day lead to a cure.”
Bonnell is hopeful that by graduation he will have successfully created the molecule compounds and be able to publish a paper on his research alongside the Green Research Group.
“That way other people can see what we’re doing and replicate it,” Bonnell said.
Statistics like those sparked fear in Chantil Atkins, of Fort Worth, when she became pregnant with her first child in February 2024.
“There were just a lot of things happening on the news and a lot of articles I had read,” Atkins said.
The report showed there were 134.4 cases of SMM among Black women in Texas for every 10,000 hospitalizations compared with 82.2 for Hispanic women, and 72.6 for non-Hispanic White women. In Tarrant County, the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in Texas.
“I was more afraid that myself or her wouldn’t survive this pregnancy,” Atkins said.
After eight years of marriage, Chantil and her husband William Atkins struggled to conceive. Her pregnancy came as a shock after years of trying, Chantil said.
“All of a sudden I was pregnant and at first it was scary,” Chantil said. “But then [my husband] just kept talking me through it and saying it’ll be OK.”
What Chantil didn’t know at the time was there was someone in her own neighborhood waiting to guide her through pregnancy.
The MHIC would later collaborate with universities and health systems in Dallas County to form the Maternal Health Accelerator (MHA) with a goal of improving the health outcomes of women and infants free of cost in North Texas.
A central part of that effort is supporting moms before, during, and after pregnancy, according to Adam Powell, president and CEO of United Way of Tarrant County.
“We talked to a ton of pregnant women throughout this process of creating a resource and the one thing they told us is that they felt unsupported,” Powell said.
The United Way of Tarrant County (UWTC), in partnership with the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL), created a community doula training program to provide moms with essential support throughout pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Both organizations are a part of the MHA and are creating resources to close gaps in healthcare for moms and infants.
“I think the one thing that jumped out for us were the use of doulas [who were] people from those communities and often times know these people,” Powell said.
The doula program has graduated 120 doulas and armed them with stipends to get the equipment needed to support expectant moms. Lytissa “Lady” Greene, of Fort Worth, completed the doula program in 2024 and works with moms in 76104 as their advocate throughout their pregnancy.
“It’s important for African American and Hispanic moms to have care in that area because they don’t know that they have the resources,” Greene said. “When they’re getting ready to have a baby, they’re in exhausting situations so you’re not thinking about mental health or maternal health.”
Early on in Chantil’s pregnancy, she had a lot of questions about the birthing process. “This was my first pregnancy so there were a lot of things I didn’t know,” Chantil said.
She saw a flier for the doula program in her OB-GYN’s office that would change her pregnancy experience.
“I feel very blessed to even know that there are people out there willing to fulfill that need,” Chantil said.
Chantil was Greene’s second client. Greene could feel Chantil’s anxiety during their first meeting.
“I knew I had to show up for her,” Greene said. “I just put myself in her shoes and just walked her through it.”
Greene helped Chantil create a birthing plan, attended her doctor’s visits, and gave her resources. She helped Chantil fulfill her goal of having a natural birth experience alongside physicians at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth.
Her daughter Chailo Atkins was born safely November 11, 2024, but Greene’s support for Chantil and Chailo didn’t stop after delivery.
“I don’t have to suffer through postpartum depression; she walks me through all of my postpartum needs,” Chantil said. “Anything that I need for my daughter. They’ve given me diapers, wipes and anything I need even if I just need to talk.”
Now, Greene has 45 clients in North Texas. She’s even inspired Chantil to enroll into the doula program after her positive experience.
“I was afforded such a great opportunity to learn about the birthing process and necessary it for someone to advocate for us,” Chantil said. “I would really like to give back what was given to me.”
FORT WORTH – Fort Worth has the pieces in place to become a city where medical innovation can thrive. A medical innovation hub will happen through collaboration that pushes for new discoveries in medicine through research, according to Stuart D. Flynn, M.D., Founding Dean of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University.
“It’s a very complex process to have a medical innovation hub,” Dean Flynn said. “I think the three pillars are health care, education, and discovery. We’re doing two of those very well. The third one [discovery] we need to prop up.”
The Fort Worth Report hosted its speaker panel series called “Candid Conversations” where city and community leaders come together to discuss public policy and ideas to move Fort Worth forward. Dean Flynn was a featured panelist along with Tricia Elliott, M.D., Professor at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU; Kirk Calhoun, M.D., President of UNT Health Fort Worth; and Elyse Stolz Dickerson, CEO and Co-Founder of Eosera based in Fort Worth.
The hour-long discussion, sponsored by TCU and the Burnett School of Medicine, touched on a range of topics that would contribute to Fort Worth’s growth as a medical innovation hub. The panelists talked about the need for more medical research, the impact small businesses have on medical innovation, and how community-based care that puts patients first could fuel collaboration.
FORT WORTH – In today’s world, everyone wants to know how to go viral. For J Mack Slaughter, M.D., it all starts with the kind of content you are posting.
“To have physicians online sharing their expertise and education is extremely important in the fight of misinformation,” Slaughter, who is known as Dr J Mack online, told a room filled with aspiring physicians and Texas Christian University students.
Slaughter said it’s imperative for physicians to create content online and emphasized how important it is for physicians to show patients that they are still learning and growing.
“Dr. J Mack was the perfect person for this workshop,” said Jacqueline Navarrete, M.Ed., who is Innovation Network Director at TCU. “His career demonstrates what is possible when you merge expertise and creativity and it made him an inspiring and relevant voice.”
TCU alumnus Dr. J Mack ’09 is an emergency medicine physician who has more than a million followers on his social media platforms.
“I thought the workshop was really informative, especially for medical students who are looking to go into the social media space and expand their practice beyond medicine,” said Marisa Fat, MS-2 at the Burnett School of Medicine.
Fat was one of many Burnett Brand Ambassadors who attended the workshop to get tips on how to grow their social media platforms.
During the session, Dr. J Mack talked about the “Four Es” of social media that are essential to help build an audience and go viral: Entertainment, Education, Emotion and Engagement.
“Anytime you are making content, think about the Four Es in your head,” Slaughter said. “The more you can cram in one video, the better. Everybody wants to know how you can go viral; this is it.”
“As physicians and future physicians, we have an obligation to deliver information to patients,” Fat said. “Creating engaging content on social media allows us to reach them.”
Navarrete said the workshop was a success: “I’m thankful that the Innovation Network and Burnett School of Medicine were able to collaborate on this event.”
“Becoming the Tarrant County Medical Society’s President is one of the greatest honors of my professional career to date,” Dr. Hurd said. “To be able to serve our physician community and advocate for excellence in patient care while supporting our already strong work through Project Access, Women in Medicine, vaccines drives and more, is truly humbling but also invigorating.”
The event gathers health care professionals and future health care professionals together to celebrate leadership and the successes of the medical community.
“Seeing another faculty member achieve leadership in their county medical society will spur more students to become more active themselves,” Dr. Hurd said. “I hope this leads many of them to pursue future positions where they can influence the direction of health care and make lasting contributions to their communities.”
“This is such an honor to be recognized by my peers and colleagues for serving the Fort Worth community,” Dr. Capper said. “It has been my honor to work alongside all the wonderful physicians in this community to try and improve the health and well-being of our neighbors and patients.”
The award dates to the late 1600s when the most outstanding physicians in London were given the famous Gold-Headed Cane in gold, silver or ivory. The widow of the last recipient in 1823 gave it to the Royal College of Physicians in London where it remains. The TCMS later established the award in Tarrant County in 1951 to recognize a physician who symbolizes the pursuit of the highest standards of scientific excellence and integrity.
There is no nomination or campaigning a recipient can do for this honor. The Gold-Headed Cane recipient is described as the Doctor’s Doctor.
“This is a humbling honor with so much history attached to it,” Dr. Capper said. “My hope is that this serves as inspiration for our Empathetic Scholars® the next generation of physicians that we are training to value people with humility serving serve all with respect, dignity and kindness.”
