Thank you to everyone who attended last week’s latest Quarterly Department Update, and a special thanks to Division Director David Stoltz for his overview of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine. Pulmonary is an impressive division not only for how they meet our missions, but because of the strength of their community and observable support for one another. You can watch Dr. Stoltz’s presentation and my update here. I appreciated the questions during last week’s meeting in that formal setting. Informally, my door is always open for feedback, questions, and suggestions. And, in the coming weeks, we have two more chances to make our voices heard.
Although early voting has already started, on Tuesday, November 3, those of us who have not yet voted will line up in our neighborhood public spaces to cast ballots in this year’s elections. I hope you have all made your plan to vote. It is always so important. It can sometimes feel as though one vote among millions cannot possibly make a difference. But democracy depends on each of us taking responsibility for the communities we inhabit. Regardless of where you stand on individual candidates or issues, I trust this audience to get informed and engaged and to vote.
The other, similar opportunity is UI Health Care’s invitation to all its employees to participate in the Working at Iowa survey before it closes on Monday, October 26. The survey offers an opportunity to share what is working well, where we face challenges, and how we can make this institution an even better place to work. Your perspective matters, whether you have been here for decades or joined us only recently. I hope you will approach the survey thoughtfully and candidly. Meaningful improvement requires honest feedback, including recognition of our successes and acknowledgment of areas where we can do better. Leadership cannot address challenges it does not fully understand, and some of our best ideas come from those whose daily experiences reveal areas for growth that might otherwise go unnoticed.
These opportunities, the election and the survey, share an important foundation: our participation matters because our voices help shape the future, both in our government and in our profession. The decisions made by our elected representatives can have just as much as an impact as the ones made by our institutional leaders. Participating in the survery demonstrates our commitment to our working lives as much as voting shows that we value our community, our state, and our nation.
In academic medicine, we regularly emphasize the importance of evidence in guiding our decisions. Gathering perspectives from across our department is another form of gathering evidence. The more voices represented, the clearer our understanding becomes and the better equipped we are to make informed choices. Participation is an investment in our shared future. I hope you will take the time to make your voice heard. Our communities, our colleagues, and ultimately our patients benefit when each of us contributes to making things better.
Photo for reflection 
I photographed this double rainbow now more than a decade ago in Scotland. It still offers a beautiful reminder that perspective matters. Rainbows are created by the refraction and reflection of sunlight through water droplets. Because the light reaching our eyes depends on our individual viewing angle, no two observers actually see precisely the same rainbow. Even when standing side by side, each of us experiences something slightly different. The same is true of the challenges we encounter in our work. Our experiences and expectations shape what we see. A problem that appears clear-cut from one perspective may reveal entirely different complexities from another. This is why listening to one another and engaging with multiple colleagues are essential to effective problem-solving. We cannot assume that our own view represents the complete picture. When we invite different perspectives, we expand our understanding of what is possible. Sometimes the insight that helps us find a solution comes from someone standing just a few steps away, seeing the same situation in an entirely different light.
Upi’s “Oh, WOW” moment
In my last post, I wrote about the annual tradition of our CME events and Internal Medicine Research Day. I was so happy to see a tradition resumed in last week’s mini-symposium organized by members of our Hematology T32 training program, the first in a few years. I mentioned this during my quarterly update, but the NIH grant that funds this program has been at the University of Iowa and in our department continuously for 48 years. That is 10 successful grant applications, its initial funding and nine renewals. Only a few T32s in the rest of the country have made it into their fifties and ours will cross that half-century mark in 2028. The day of presentations and posters and conversation should be seen as much a celebration of that record of success as our perpetual effort in hematology research and mentorship. Congratulations to co-PIs, Drs. Steven Lentz and Anil Chauhan, whose commitment to science is as tangible and enduring in the names and careers of their trainees as any list of publications.