Name change brings prestige

The creation of a dermatology department at Penn State's College of Medicine and Milton S. Hershey Medical Center could lead to more money for research of skin diseases and improve patient care, officials said.

On July 1, the Division of Dermatology at the two Derry Township organizations officially

The Penn State University Board of Trustees voted in November to create the Department of Dermatology. There are several reasons why the change improves dermatology research and care at the medical school and at Hershey Medical Center, Marks said.

First, the department increases efficiency because it cuts out a layer of bureaucracy. in the past, both Division of Dermatology and Department of Medicine officials had to approve all decisions made for the division, Marks said.

The dermatology department will be able make its own decisions without waiting for approval from the medicine department.

"We're now running our own business," he said. "There's a sense of ownership."

Second, departments have more prestige in the academic and research worlds than do divisions. Marks said dermatology departments exist at many of the nation's most prestigious medical schools, including Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

That prestige will help Penn State attract researchers and other staff members, Marks said. Dermatology now has 11 faculty members and six medical residents, he said. Two or three new faculty members and three residents could be added to the department within three years, he said.

"When you become a department, there's a certain amount of prestige and standing," Marks said. "If you're a researcher and you're looking for a place to go, you'd rather go to a department than a division."

The department will also attract more research funding from government and private sources, Marks said. The department plans to use a brochure and its Web site, www.pennstatedermatology.com, to market its new status to the public and to potential funding sources.

Marks said he didn't pursue departmental status for dermatology earlier because he wanted to wait until there was an adequate amount of staff and research to support a department.

"Now we can move to the next level," he said. "There's a critical mass."

The department also fosters greater collaboration between researchers and clinicians, added Gavin Robertson, an assistant professor of pharmacology, pathology and dermatology at the College of Medicine.

This collaboration is needed to help dermatologists overcome potentially lethal skin diseases such as melanoma, he said.

Robertson's research work focuses on developing therapies for melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. Melanoma accounts for 80 percent of skin cancer deaths nationwide, according to the American Academy of Dermatology in Schaumburg, Ill. Almost 88,000 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the United States this year.

The medical center and College of Medicine provide a unique environment that is well-suited to the development of melanoma therapies, Robertson said. For example, surgeons at the medical center can provide researchers with tissue samples that can be used to develop melanoma therapies. Promising therapies can then be tested on patients at the medical center.

Having dermatology as a department strengthens this cycle of care and makes it more productive, Robertson said.

"The stronger dermatology is, the stronger the process is," he said. "It's this medical center functioning at its best. It completes the circle to increase the health of the general public."