Author: Levi Moore
Previous FGA Confab presentations
Watch a presentation by the I Am Abel Foundation at the March 2022 FGA Confab
Learn more about the Chicago Resiliency Network
View the September panel on occupational stress and nursing
April 2021 panel on law enforcement professional occupational stress
Lead Abatement Resource Center presentation – Jan 2021
Sheri Cohen – Chicago Dept. of Public Health – Healthy Chicago 2025 presentation
Foxglove Alliance October 2020 confab recap
Foxglove Alliance August 2020 confab video
P33 August 2020 presentation to Foxglove Alliance
IAFCC 2019 Overview & Opioid Initiative_20200813_P33
MATTER May 2019 presentation to Foxglove Alliance
Institute of Medicine of Chicago March 2019 presentation to the Foxglove Alliance
Dr. Lamenta Conway – I Am Abel Foundation Executive Director
Trained in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Illinois, she has celebrated over 22 years as a physician with most of her career teaching in top academic hospitals in the Midwest. In her current professional role, she is Deputy Chief of Medicine for the Illinois Department of Health where she and her team are responsible for the medical care of +40K offenders in custody in the Illinois State Prisons.
She is known by most as simply “Sweetie,” A childhood name that followed her first into her semi-professional career as a singer of soulful gospel music and later into professional circles from the hospital floors to the boardroom. Most of her mentees affectionately know her as “Dr. Sweetie,” a name they created.
She is known best for her warm and exuberant personality and bedside manner as a physician and clinical educator devoted to the care of vulnerable populations. But an act of violence would inspire a powerful work of advocacy that would change her trajectory and become her life’s legacy. Dr. Conway decided to formalize her life long legacy of mentoring young people in the art of compassionate medicine and service when one of her favorite 14 year old cousins, full of promise and talent, was paralyzed following a gunshot wound to the spine intended for someone else. This pivotal moment followed the murder of her 15-year-old cousin on mother’s day just 6 months earlier. “Violence exists where there is hopelessness. It will knock on every door until it is answered. We can’t rest until we change this narrative,” Dr. Conway explains.
“But mentors changed my life and gave me a second chance when it was nearly too late. You must SEE IT TO BE IT,” Dr. Conway exclaims. “Our devoted physicians are creating legacy by proxy right within our communities” and she is expecting these future physicians to do the same. “If not us then who? If not now then when?”
She realized that many of the younger, misguided youth from these communities not only lacked mentors to guide and position them for success but they also didn’t understand how we are all as humans connected one to the other; that we are not just responsible for our brother – but we are a reflection of them and we are in fact “our brother’s keeper.” Thus she created I AM ABEL FOUNDATION, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that she describes as a “mentoring scholarly community” whose motto is “Excellence Period. Serve Always.” The foundation is focused on community and global service with pipelines to medicine and STEM with the objective of bridging socioeconomic gaps so that all of Chicago’s children would have a shot at the not so impossible dream. Those children would in turn ignite the dreams of those who would follow them breaking generational curses and changing our communities from the inside out. “We all are teachers and each one must reach one,” Dr. Conway explains.
I AM ABEL FOUNDATION started with the 100 Hearts Program that would empower bright, young community leaders to become activists in the realm of “self help care and violence prevention,” and many of the students became certified in CPR/FirstAid/Stop The Bleed and would teach their fellow students, certifying over 1000 Chicago area students.
The organization, however, would become a comprehensive organization whose reach was far beyond what Dr. Conway initially imagined and would become focused on developing socially conscious medical scholars that would use the platform of medicine to create equity, close gaps and create safer, healthier communities.
The flagship program of I AM ABEL FOUNDATION is it’s Urban Bridges Medical Mentoring Physician Pipeline Program designed to offer 1:1 physician mentoring, academic advising and scholarly support in the areas of STEM. Students benefit from intense clinical and pre-med opportunities for underrepresented Chicago area students. Students also have a number of service opportunities both locally and abroad along with unique global healthcare opportunities in countries like Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica and more.
Hektoen International reaches milestone
Chicago, IL
January 7, 2022
Hektoen International (Hekint.org), an on-line medical humanities journal, is starting 2022 by celebrating an important milestone – the publishing of its 3,000th article. Hektoen International is the product of what happens when a nephrologist who is a former British Journal of Medicine columnist (Dr. George Dunea, MD), collaborates with an esteemed art curator (Dr. Sally Metzler, PhD), and why Hektoen International’s tagline is “Uniting Medicine with Culture.” Drs. Dunea and Metzler co-founded Hektoen International in 2008 and it now has more than 60,000 subscribers and consistently has more than 1 million page views a year from followers throughout the world.
Dr. Dunea, who serves as the Editor – In – Chief of Hektoen International and is also the CEO of its parent, the Hektoen Institute of Medicine said, “It was almost shocking when the journal staff alerted us to this upcoming milestone this summer. For some reason, we never thought of our labor of love reaching this level of growth, popularity and longevity.” Dr. Metzler, who serves as Hektoen International’s Deputy Editor and is a member of the publications editorial board said, “We are extremely proud that our 3,000th published article has a foreign flavor to it. We know our roots are in Chicago, but we consider the medical humanities to be a global subject of study and appreciation.”
The 3,000th Hektoen International article is entitled Return to Lebanon. The author, Elie Najjar, studied orthopedic surgery in Lebanon and practices spinal surgery at the Queen’s Medical Center Spine Surgery Unit of the Nottingham University Hospitals in England. Najjar has published several poems and articles and won the Jane Austen Writing Competition. Upon learning that his article was selected, Najjar said, “Hektoen has given me a voice to call back my humanitarian side as a doctor into the surface. Like Scheherazade, I need to tell my stories to survive and remind myself of the true purpose behind my being.”
About the Hektoen Institute of Medicine
Located in Chicago’s Illinois Medical District, the Hektoen Institute of Medicine was founded in 1943 as a venue for funding and conducting medical research and education, resulting in the publication of more than 2,700 scientific papers. Today, it manages a significant portfolio of medical research and public health care delivery grants and is active in and supports a variety of medical, educational and community programs.
For more information, contact Levi Moore at Levi.Moore@Hektoen.org.
Illinois Governor Pritzker authorizes I-DROP Act
On Monday, August 16, 2021, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed HB-119, creating the Illinois Drug Reuse Opportunity Program Act, aka I-DROP. This represents a near final step towards the culmination of the Foxglove Alliance’s Hektoen Institute of Medicine’s work with the Palo Alto, CA based not-for-profit SIRUM to establish a prescription drug repository program in Illinois over the past few years. That groundwork eventually led to the 2020 founding of the Illinois Prescription Drug Repository Coalition (IPDRC), a group of public health care institutions, not – for- profit organizations, health care professionals and concerned individuals that helped push HB-119 through during the spring 2021 General Assembly Budget Session.
Another Foxglove Alliance and key IPDRC member was the Illinois Association of Free & Charitable Clinics (IAFCC), whose members’ advocacy efforts were critical in the legislation’s passage. I-DROP is expected to provide a much needed option for the IAFCC’s member clinics who all serve uninsured and under-insured Illinoisans.
The I-DROP Act becomes effective on January 1, 2022. In the interim, Hektoen’s Levi Moore, who serves as the Foxglove Alliance coordinator, will also help coordinate the activities of the I-DROP Coalition Implementation Team, a sub-group of IPDRC members that will work on aspects of I-DROP development such as stakeholder and general public outreach, regulatory monitoring and market analysis. A link to Governor Pritzker’s press release that includes the I-DROP Act is below:
October 15, 2020 Confab Recap
Dr. Dennis Levinson Biography & Presentation
Dr. Dennis Levinson is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Illinois, Chicago. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Illinois and attended the Rosalind Franklin University (formerly Chicago Medical School). After spending three years in medicine residency at Michael Reese Hospital, and military service, he did his fellowship training in rheumatology at the University of Chicago. He has been in the practice of Rheumatology for 40 years.
Dr. Levinson is board certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, and a Founding Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology. He is a past president of the Chicago Rheumatism Society and was Chief of Service and Program Director of Internal Medicine, Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago (1999-2008). Currently, he sits on the board of the Michael Reese Research and Education Foundation devoted to the legacy of Michael Reese Hospital through the funding of scholarships for minorities. Dr. Levinson has published over 76 articles, abstracts and book chapters and continues to participate in clinical research. He participated in the first Stem Cell Transplant for Sickle Cell Disease in the Chicagoland area. In 2016 he received the Hispanocare Outstanding Community Award for scholarship support in the Latino community.
Dennis Levinson Covid Presentation
AmySue Mertens Biography & Presentation
AmySue Mertens is a Vice President at Ogilvy, a renowned international company that has been producing iconic, culture-changing marketing campaigns since the day its founder David Ogilvy opened up shop in 1948 that now represents a client roster of numerous Fortune Global 500 companies and local businesses across 131 offices in 83 countries. Mertens joined Ogilvy’s Chicago office in 2017 and has directed PR, community & government relations, and corporate responsibility for several clients including FEMA, the Chicago Fire Department Foundation, and the City of Chicago. Her background includes work on Education, the Environment, Housing, Community Development, Banking (CDFI), Drug Use Interventions, and Criminal Justice Reform.
Previous to Ogilvy, she held communications and community relations positions with Chicago Public Schools, Ingenuity, IFF, and University of Illinois. She’s run for the Illinois state senate and has served on a number boards of directors including Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV), the Chicago Area Public Affairs Group (CAPAG) and a statewide gun violence prevention organization.
She earned her BS and MS in Advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Recording of the event – (Provided by the Northbridge Technology Alliance)
Hektoen International wins 2020 APEX Award
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 1, 2020
Chicago, Illinois – Hektoen International, an online only journal dedicated to the medical humanities, was recently named one of the recipients of the 2020 APEX Award of Excellence in the Magazines, Journals & Tabloids – electronic publications category. The APEX Awards are sponsored by Communications Concepts and have held the annual competition for 32 years for publishers, editors, writers, and designers.
First published in 2008, Hektoen International (hekint.org) currently features more than 2,000 articles written by U.S. and international authors on various medical humanities topics, such as end-of-life, ethics, history and antiquity, art, literature, science, nursing and war & veterans, and has offerings in a variety of formats including narratives, poetry, visual art, essays and vignettes. Published quarterly, Hektoen International has a vast reach and more than 54,000 subscribers. More than 1 million on-line visitors read the journal every year. It also hosts two writing contests a year, including an annual Grand Prix essay contest.
According to the journal’s founder and editor-in-chief Dr. George Dunea, “Hektoen International serves as an educational offering of the Hektoen Institute of Medical Research. We view it as a unique repository of priceless information at the interface of medicine, culture, and education and provide it at no charge to our readers and subscribers. We graciously accept this acknowledgement of our work and dedication to promoting the importance of the medical humanities.” Dr. Dunea is also the President and CEO of the Hektoen Institute of Medical Research.
Other 2020 APEX award winners included:
- American Association of Retired Persons – Livable Communities
- American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress Daily Highlights Newsletter
- AARP – Disrupt Aging Newsletter
- NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center X-Press
- Inside Surgery Magazine
- American Academy of Dermatology – Dermatology World
- Multiple Sclerosis Association of America – The Motivator magazine
- Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery journal
- American Journal of Nursing
About the Hektoen Institute of Medical Research
Named after noted researcher, Dr. Ludvig Hektoen, the Hektoen Institute of Medicine was founded in 1943 by a group of prominent Cook County physicians as a venue for funding and conducting medical research and education. Over several decades, Hektoen has conducted medical research resulting in the publication of more than 2,700 scientific papers. It also has advanced medical education through lectures, symposia, and fellowships.
Hektoen has historically risen to the occasion for the good of the public health of Chicago. For example, triggered by the HIV-AIDS crisis in the 1990’s, Hektoen re-invented itself into a comprehensive, prolific, grants management operation. It is also an international leader in the promotion of the medical humanities and is the supporter of and/or partner in numerous community organizations, such as Luminarts, Youth Guidance, the Illinois Association of Free & Charitable Clinics and the Foxglove Alliance Chicago health care coalition.
CONTACT
Mariel Tishma – Editorial Assistant
339 S. Wood St. Suite G
Chicago, IL 60608
journal@hektoeninternational.org