New England Psychologist interviews Marc Hahn for story on COM's commitment to Joining Forces initiative

The New England Psychologist on April 1, 2012 featured a story on the announcement of Joining Forces, an initiative to support the health care needs of service members. The program includes a commitment by 130 U.S. medical schools to increase research and training for brain injuries, PTSD and other mental health issues.

The announcement was made in January at a meeting with First Lady Michelle Obama that Marc B. Hahn, D.O., senior vice president for health affairs and dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, attended along with a select group of other medical school deans.

The New England Psychologist story focuses on Hahn and the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine.

"Marc B. Hahn, D.O., knows how fast the U.S. military can get a soldier injured overseas back on American soil," the story explains. "He was chief of pain management and an attending anesthesiologist on active duty at Walter Reed Army Medical Center during the first Persian Gulf War."

“We were evacuating some injured servicemen so quickly back to stateside that we were dumping out sand from their boots in the operating room,” Hahn recalled in the story.

Joining Forces, Hahn explained, shows a commitment to training the next generation of physicians to be sensitive to post-war injuries and behavioral health issues. The next steps are to focus on training in these areas as part of internships and residencies and ongoing training for physicians who may not have had that exposure during their medical school or graduate medical training.

UNE already has research and curriculum in place to expose students to issues related to PTSD and brain injuries.

The story cites the research that has been conducted at UNE. Edward Bilsky, Ph.D., UNE associate provost for research and scholarship and director of the Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences, explains that this research was performed by medical student Jacque Reynolds in both his laboratory and the laboratory of UNE Professor Ian Meng. The research proposed a novel animal model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that won an award at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. The full article has now been published in the journal Life Sciences. Read the entire New England Psychologist story.

Associated Press, the Portland Press Herald, the Boston Globe and other media outlets also covered UNE's involvement in the veterans' initiative in January.

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The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.