Jewell H. Halanych, M.D., M.Sc., has been named director of UAB’s Internal Medicine Residency Program in Montgomery. Halanych has been a member of the faculty of the UAB Health Center Montgomery and of the Division of Preventive Medicine at the UAB School of Medicine since 2003. She succeeds W.J. Many, M.D., who recently was named dean of the new Montgomery branch campus of the UAB School of Medicine.
Halanych has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and a medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. She completed an internal medicine residency at Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, R.I. She completed both a general internal medicine fellowship and a clinical research training fellowship at Boston University Medical Center and obtained a master’s degree from the Boston University School of Public Health.
While at UAB, Halanych has served as an associate scientist of the UAB Minority Health and Research Center, a scientist with the UAB Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education and an investigator at the Deep South Center on Effectiveness at the Birmingham VA Medical Center. She conducts research on racial and ethnic disparities in chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, with a focus on improving patient-provider communication.
“It is an honor and a pleasure to assume the leadership of the UAB Montgomery Internal Medicine Program,” Halanych says. “Under the guidance first of J.J. Kirschenfeld, then Wick Many Jr., the program has grown over its 38-year tenure and has graduated 172 general internists. I hope to continue my predecessors’ excellent work and expand what they have built.
“Our goal in Montgomery is to train competent, compassionate physicians to provide quality health care,” Halanych says. “We want our residents to graduate with comprehensive skills to care for patients in primary care and hospital-based medicine, and to be competitive for sub-specialty fellowships. More than 40 percent of our graduates have remained to practice medicine in Alabama. With the formation of the Montgomery Regional Campus and continued excellence in our program, we are meeting our goal to grow our medical community so that we can provide quality care to the people of central Alabama.”
October 23, 2012