2016 Award for Exemplary Service to the University: Brett Kissela, MD

Praised as a partner working across the clinical enterprise, Brett Kissela, MD, MS, as his nominees noted, may not know the word "No.” Named the Albert Barnes Voorheis Chair of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the UC College of Medicine in 2013, his sights were set on the growth of the department, but along the way he quickly understood that interdepartmental and intercollege cooperation is a sure path to broad success for the university. Now he’s improving and sustaining key relationships between UC and the community that will take the university to new heights.

In addition to his responsibilities as department chair, Kissela, is a co-principal investigator of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Stroke Study and has been the co-director of the Community Engagement Core for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training.  A large university-wide effort to promote improved health outcomes, it has connected colleges and programs across the university, including Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to groups in the community. Kissela was on the writing team that successfully refunded this effort.

"As researchers, we are experts; we study a treatment for something—we design it. Community-engaged research is more about meeting with the community groups first, to listen to them, their issues, what problems do they have, or want us to solve,” Kissela says.

"The hope is, that you immediately can implement this new answer in the community to solve problems or improve care.”