Message from the Chair

By Charles Parkos | August 2 2017

Welcome! The Department of Pathology at Michigan Medicine is one of the very top departments in the U.S. and abroad.  We continue to enjoy a rich legacy of outstanding leaders and alums who have given this institution the outstanding reputation that it has earned.

Pathology is the third largest clinical department at UM, having over 185 faculty members and 850 trainees and staff. The department is known for its extremely collegial and accomplished teams who work together to provide the best patient care possible while also performing cutting edge research investigating disease pathogenesis.

It is a priority of our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee to implement policies and programs to create an inclusive and equitable climate; recruit, retain, and develop a diverse community; and support innovative and inclusive scholarship training. Our Patients and Families Advisory Council is working to change the culture of diagnostic medicine and personalize pathology by building mutually beneficial partnerships with patients, families, and providers while embracing the tenets of patient and family-centered care.

Per year, the Department of Pathology receives over 208,000 surgical specimens and 17,000 consultation cases and is responsible for more than 3,200 autopsies including responsibilities for both the Washtenaw and of Wayne County Medical Examiner’s offices. The busy clinical laboratory medicine service is responsible for more than 6.1 million billed laboratory tests annually. The rich and diverse palette of clinical material provides an outstanding array of both clinical and research training opportunities for residents and fellows in many diverse subspecialties and disciplines. 

In the past few years, our residency training program has ranked at or near the top for public universities on a national level. With the recent addition of an experimental pathology tracked residency training program, the Physician Scientist Training Pathway, we now do more than ever to prepare our residents and fellows to seamlessly transition into careers in academic, private or industrial settings.

We offer numerous fellowship training opportunities, many of which are ACGME accredited. You’ll find a complete list of Fellowship Training Programs on our education pages. Trainees in some of our clinical fellowships function as junior attending physicians with sign-out privileges as part of the year-long experience. The department also offers a comprehensive two-year program in Pathology Informatics, one of only seven such programs in the nation, where fellows can actively participate in both operational and research projects.

The Department of Pathology offers an outstanding array of research in the basic and translational sciences. Our faculty and trainees have taken advantage of the rich research opportunities in Pathology and been incredibly productive, publishing over 500 manuscripts this past year.

Consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally for NIH funding over the last five years, our investigators are conducting research in areas such as Aging, Cancer Biology, Development & DNA repair, Inflammation and Immunology, Mucosal Inflammation and Epithelial Pathobiology, Neuropathology and Bioinformatics.

The department also strongly supports and is proud of the successes of its clinician investigators who not only contribute to clinical service but maintain successful NIH funded research programs. Within the department, there are programs at the forefront of genomic medicine in the area of cancer biology and therapeutics as well as drug discovery.

To complement the outstanding research base within Pathology, the department is home to a PhD training program in Molecular and Cellular Pathology that has recently been expanded to include graduate training opportunities in translational research through our T32 Training Program.

Our Division of Quality and Health Improvement helps identify and provide solutions to challenges related to quality and safety in medicine. These quality and safety initiatives will continue to help set new standards in value-added healthcare within our department and Michigan Medicine moving forward.

We are working to build the department of the future, with 140,000 square feet of renovated space being designed for Pathology at the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC). Using lean principles and a team of over 100 faculty, residents and staff, this $160M renovation project will include space to house non-stat clinical activities for both anatomic and clinical pathology as well as Informatics, MLabs, and administration. The move will co-locate a large portion of Michigan Medicine's clinical pathology teams and educational programs.

In addition, space will also be renovated at the University Hospital to house a new Core Laboratory as well as specific hospital-based functions. This venture will greatly facilitate the achievement of Pathology’s clinical goals, providing a high level of support to both our patients and providers.

To complement the outstanding tertiary medical center and extraordinary academic community at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor offers a high quality of life that includes a rich cultural experience without the associated traffic and congestion seen elsewhere.

I encourage you to navigate our website, and find us on Facebook and Twitter, to learn more about the Department of Pathology.

Charles A. Parkos, M.D., Ph.D.
Carl V. Weller Professor and Chair
Pathology

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