Annual Publication 2025 FINAL 05292025 accessible - Flipbook - Page 34
PHYSICIAN LEADING
CRITICAL LUPUS RESEARCH
BY PAUL JONCICH
T
he idea of building something from the ground
up at a young medical school was attractive to
Winn Chatham, MD, and building is what he’s
been doing ever since he landed in Las Vegas.
With rock solid credentials … undergrad at Duke,
medical school at Vanderbilt, residency at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before spending the
bulk of his career at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB)
Heersink School of Medicine. He arrived at the Kirk Kerkorian
School of Medicine at UNLV in June of 2023 tasked with building
a rheumatology clinical and training program.
At UAB, Dr. Chatham directed the lupus clinic, conducting multiple
clinical trials on evolving lupus treatments. “I thought when
relocating to Las Vegas and UNLV that I would just be wearing
a general rheumatologist hat,” Dr. Chatham says. But he would
soon learn just how much he was needed here.
34 KIRK KERKORIAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT UNLV
Nevada has a severe shortage of rheumatologists. So, he and
Mitchell Foreman, DO, the former dean of Touro University Nevada
and UNLV Health’s only other rheumatologist, went to work on a
backlog of patients. Then, with 昀椀nancial help from a donor, the
veteran rheumatologists began laying the foundation for Nevada’s
昀椀rst-ever rheumatology fellowship, an advanced training program
that would recruit and train two new rheumatologists per year.
Both doctors were extremely pleased when the fellowship was
approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical
Education (ACGME) on the initial review. The 昀椀rst two fellows
were recruited and began work in the summer of 2024. This was
a signi昀椀cant achievement, since developing new fellowships and
residencies is a top priority for the school and one of the best
ways to attract physicians to Southern Nevada.
According to the latest Association of American Medical
Colleges (AAMC) Physician Workforce report, there are just
