Search committee head urged new UIHC vice president to apply

IOWA CITY — The day before the University of Iowa announced who would serve on a revamped search committee for its second attempt to find a new vice president for medical affairs, a committee co-chair asked the woman who later would be chosen for the job to apply.

“It’s been a great pleasure getting to know you through Zoom,” UI Department of Neurosurgery Chair Matthew Howard, appointed co-chair of the restarted search committee, said in a Jan. 11 email to Denise J. Jamieson, professor and chair of gynecology and obstetrics at the Emory University School of Medicine and chief of gynecology and obstetrics for Emory Healthcare.

Mentioning the prospect of inviting Jamieson to campus as a visiting professor or lecturer — given her expertise at Emory and as a retired U.S. Public Health Service Captain with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — Howard said, “Hopefully that can be set up as soon as possible.”

“I very much look forward to seeing you here in Iowa City,” he wrote in the Jan. 11 email, provided to The Gazette through an open records request. “I also hope that you decide to apply for our dean VPMA position, although that is a totally separate topic.”

Search committee members are encouraged to recruit and invite prospects to apply.

And Jamieson did end up applying for the job — and getting it — after visiting the UIHC campus in February for a grand rounds presentation she titled, “Emerging Health Threats at the Intersection of Medicine and Public Health.”

In that talk, Jamieson focused on her experience with both medical and public health research and how the intersection of those sectors can compel new guidelines aimed at meaningful change in clinical medicine — a presentation resonant with both chairs of the search committee, as UI College of Public Health Dean Edith Parker co-led the renewed effort alongside Howard.

Jamieson in her presentation referenced the extensive epidemiologic work she’s done researching infections in pregnancy — like HIV and a randomized clinical trial of more than 2,300 HIV-infected women in Malawi.

That part of her professional path echoed and at times aligned with the past research endeavors of outgoing UI Vice President for Medical Affairs Brooks Jackson — who, coming to UIHC in November 2017, was an internationally-recognized AIDS researcher, including “landmark clinical trials for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission and the treatment of pediatric HIV infection and complications.”

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Jackson and his successor Jamieson actually co-authored — along with 16 others — a research study published in 2012 in the journal “Clinical Infectious Diseases” that tested an infant intervention to prevent HIV transmission through breast milk.

Both Jackson and Jamieson were doing research related to mother and infant HIV infections and transmission in Lilongwe, Malawi around 2009 and 2010 and prior, according to their resumes and publications. Numerous studies and research articles Jamieson co-authored have cited Jackson’s work over the years.

Both Jackson and Jamieson also initiated their higher education endeavors at Kenyon College in Ohio — Jackson earning his bachelor’s in history in 1975, before Jamieson began there in 1983.

‘A very special place’

Following Jamieson’s grand rounds presentation Feb. 7, Bradley Van Voorhis — interim chair and departmental executive officer of the UI Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology — sent her a follow-up email Feb. 8 thanking her for the presentation.

“Everyone is commenting today on your excellent talk and considerable expertise!” Van Voorhis wrote. “Your leadership skills were evident to all. Hope your trip home was smooth and hope to see you again soon! Let me know if I can be of any help to you moving forward.”

Nearly three months later, the search committee revealed Jamieson as the first of two finalists for the vice president for medical affairs and dean positions — inviting her to visit and participate in a public forum May 1.

University of Illinois College of Medicine Executive Dean Mark I. Rosenblatt — who also serves as associate vice chancellor for physician affairs at University of Illinois Health — was the second finalist, visiting May 8.

When asked for any emails or communications between Rosenblatt and search committee leaders, members, or UI executives, the UI Office of Transparency said, “The communications you requested below are exempt from disclosure in accordance with Iowa Code.”

During Jamieson’s public forum presentation as a finalist, she referenced her grand rounds visit in February as her first trip to Iowa. Arriving at 10 p.m., Jamieson said her first impression was, “It is very cold, and it is very dark.”

The following morning, though, the sun came up and she said, “I began to appreciate, this really is a very special place.”

“Special people, beautiful setting,” she said in May of her February trip. “And I went to the hospital, and I talked to residents, and I talked to medical students, and I gave grand rounds.”

Especially meaningful, Jamieson said, was her trip down the halls of UIHC’s OB/GYN department. There, a picture hangs of Jennifer Niebyl, who in 2018 retired after a 50-year career in obstetrics capped by 21 years as chair of the UIHC Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and another nearly decade as vice chair of obstetrics.

“She was one of the first female chairs of an OB/GYN department nationally,” Jamieson said, noting her time on campus gave her an appreciation for UIHC’s “strong history of clinical excellence and scientific excellence.”

At the end of her forum in May, Jamieson revealed that upon her return to Iowa as a finalist, she shared with her wife, “I’m thinking that I might want to be a Hawkeye.”

‘Return to the faculty’

The university three weeks later announced Jamieson will be starting as vice president for medical affairs and dean Aug. 1 — when Jackson, 69, will step down to “return to the faculty and pursue his research.”

A pathologist with years of research and leadership experience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and University of Minnesota Medical School, Jackson while at UI has continued co-authoring research studies since taking over as vice president and dean in 2017.

Google Scholar credits more than 40 articles and studies to Jackson as a co-author since 2017, and ResearchGate cites him as a co-author in more than 30 studies and articles over the last five-plus years — including a study published in March 2023 on the “prevalence of maternal complications and neonatal outcomes at a Midwest academic health center.”

Jackson also was named as a co-author in several COVID-related studies, and — over his tenure atop UIHC — participated in several of the medical college’s “faculty, resident, and fellow physician creative writing contests,” with winning entries published in a periodic “Creative Writing Anthology.”

Jackson had a poem published in the first 2020 anthology; was chosen as a winner in poetry in the winter 2021 anthology, contributing a second piece that year; contributed two poems in fall 2021; and authored two pieces for the fall 2022 anthology.

Jackson in the 2022 budget year made $1.28 million, according to the state salary database. His current salary, according to the university, is $1.06 million.

Jamieson will earn a starting salary of $1.3 million, according to her offer letter.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com