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HIT LIST: DMS health-policy researcher Dr. Jack Wennberg is one of three candidates shortlisted for the prestigious British Medical Journal Lifetime Achievement Award. The voting is taking place between now and April 9 at http://groupawards.bmj.com.

PAPER TRAIL: A hospice chaplain who wrote to the newspaper advice column "Annie's Mailbox," formerly "Ask Ann Landers," praised the wisdom in The Four Things That Matter Most—a book written by Dartmouth palliative-care expert Dr. Ira Byock.

Body Language Ex Libris

Dancing amidst rare books

Watch the dancers perform
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A modern-dance troupe. Choreography inspired by a 16thcentury anatomy textbook. A library as a performance space. Those disparate elements came together when the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble put on a performance in a dramatic glassed-in space in Dartmouth's Rauner Special Collections Library, home to the most valuable books on campus.

Mayuka Kowaguchi, DC '11, the lead choreographer, says the impetus for the event came when she took a tour of Rauner. One of the books that made an impression on her was Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica—meaning "On the Structure of the Human Body." She was amazed by Vesalius's beautiful anatomical illustrations. So she and the 11 other dancers in the troupe used the images as inspiration for their movements, highlighting the human body's bone, skin, and muscles.

Kowaguchi says the performance was especially meaningful to her because it showed how science and dance—two "totally unrelated parts of [her] life"—could be brought together. And all the dancers enjoyed the chance to understand the body at an anatomical level, in a way they never had before.

K.P.

FAT CHANCE: The DHMC cafeterias deep-sixed their deep-fat fryers in July 2009 as part of the employee health program. Not only are an estimated 21 million fewer fat calories now consumed per year, but the number of items sold rose by 1.6%.

PARLEZ-VOUS?: Dr. Brian Remillard, a nephrologist at DHMC and one of the clinicians who traveled to Haiti last year to help with post-earthquake relief, launched the first web-based lectures in French on renal disease for Haitian medical students.

STATEMENT: New Hampshire became the first state in the nation where the governing boards of all hospitals signed a resolution to work together to improve patient safety. The Granite State already ranks first for providing appropriate evidence-based care.

Kidney Swap Trumps Pats

From the left: Axelrod, Niedzwiecki, and Richard.

The worst part about her decision to donate a kidney, joked Catherine Richard of Henniker, N.H., at a press conference at DHMC, was having to miss a Patriots game. To prove that was no small matter, she sported a Pats jersey at the press conference. The best part? Richard and her sister-in-law, Kathy Niedzwiecki of Pelham, N.H., were participants in the first fourway kidney swap arranged as part of a national pilot by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Before the pilot, paired matches had to be made on an ad hoc basis.

The other donor and recipient involved in the DHMC swap live in St. Louis, and Barnes-Jewish Medical Center was the other participating institution. "Expanding the database of willing and able live donors . . . through programs like this pilot," says Dr. David Axelrod, DHMC's chief of transplantation surgery, "enables us to maximize access to this precious resource."

A.S.

IN SERVICE: Three DMS fourth-years, 4 clinicians, 21 Dartmouth undergrads, and a faculty fellow spent 13 days in rural Siuna, Nicaragua, in December through the Cross-Cultural Education and Service Program. Dartmouth's trips to the region began in 2001.

BACKLIST: Dr. James Weinstein, the founder of DHMC's Spine Center and the leader of the nation's largest randomized trial of surgical versus nonsurgical ways of treating back pain, was chosen by the bimonthly Becker's ASC Review as one of the 100 best spine surgeons in the U.S.


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