This Monday, March 1, the doors will open on a remarkable new addition to our medical campus: The Brehm Tower at the W.K Kellogg Eye Center Complex, housing the new clinical home of the Kellogg Eye Center, the Brehm Center for Diabetes Research, and laboratories that will foster discoveries in both ophthalmology and diabetes.

This striking addition to our skyline, adjacent to the existing Kellogg research tower on Wall Street, will give our Kellogg patients and clinicians an unparalleled space for advanced vision care.

Clinics will begin in the new building on Monday. At the same time, dozens of researchers are moving or preparing to move to the state-of-the-art laboratories upstairs. Eye disease and diabetes both pose growing challenges to our nation’s health, and Kellogg and Brehm scientists will help us continue to lead the way in both fields.

So many people have been instrumental in getting us to this day, and on behalf of the Health System I’d like to thank all of you.

In addition, I’d like to recognize the extraordinary leadership of Paul R. Lichter, M.D., chair of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and director of the Kellogg Eye Center, and the dedication and commitment of Peter Arvan, M.D., Ph.D., chief of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes and director of the Michigan Comprehensive Diabetes Center, which includes the Brehm Center.

Of course, our most heartfelt thanks go to Bill and Dee Brehm, whose extraordinary gift helped make this much-needed building a reality. The Brehm Tower stands as a tribute to their faith in our Health System’s ability to create the future of health care through discovery. We must also thank the many donors whose gifts to Kellogg have helped shape the new facility.

On April 23 at 3 p.m., you are invited to help dedicate the new building, at a ceremony featuring remarks by Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the National Institutes of Health. After the dedication, you’ll be able to take a tour.

I hope to see you there! Until then, here are some links to further information.

Press release announcing the building’s opening: www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=1493

Kellogg Eye Center: www.kellogg.umich.edu

Brehm Center for Diabetes Research: www.med.umich.edu/brehm

Thank you,
Ora

As I mentioned in my “First Few Weeks” e-mail back in June, my parents raised my brothers and me to want to leave the world a better place. They also taught us to embrace diversity and seek new experiences as an important complement to other forms of education.

Because my father was active in the Civil Rights Movement, I had the opportunity to sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 as Martin Luther King shared his dream of a new age of equality and an end to racism and discrimination. Read the rest of this entry »