Corridor Business Journal Article

johnk@corridorbiznews.com

Ignacio Ponseti was about a decade into his retirement from the University of Iowa before the world of medicine finally started to embrace his non-surgical method for treating babies born with clubfoot.

Today, Mr. Ponseti, now 92 years old and a professor emeritus in the UI Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) department of orthopedics, still treats patients with his method, and spends considerable time training physicians from all over the world about the procedure.

“Surgery is not needed,” he said. “It’s actually damaging to the foot.”

His tireless work to treat hundreds of babies with this method, and his efforts to educate others about that work, earned him one of the first HealthCare Heroes awards from the Corridor Business Journal. Mr. Ponseti, who will be recognized with the Physician Hero award, will be joined by three other award winners at the award ceremony during the HealthCare Summit, Feb. 20 at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel in Cedar Rapids.

In addition to Mr. Ponseti, awards will be given to:
– Laurie Fajardo, professor and chair, department of radiology at UIHC: Advancements in Health Care category.
– Julie McIntosh, nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital: Non-Physician category.
– Helen Rossi, volunteer at UIHC: Volunteer category.

The award winners were chosen by a panel of business and community leaders, selected from among nominees submitted by CBJ readers. All of the award winners have worked for several years in various aspects of health care, but none longer than Mr. Ponseti.

He graduated from medical school in Barcelona, Spain, in 1936, the day before the breakout of the Spanish Civil War. After serving as a doctor during the war — for the losing side — he evacuated some of his patients to France before heading to Mexico, which was at the time welcoming refugees from Spain.

He came to Iowa City in 1941 to work and do research at UIHC, serving under Arthur Steindler, head of the orthopedics department.

As part of his work, he found that club feet are normal feet that undergo a change in the latter half of pregnancy. Rather than perform surgery, his method involves coaxing the foot back to its normal position through a series of five casts applied for a few days at a time over the course of a few weeks.

“We started applying it at the end of the ‘40s,” he said. “We had very satisfying, good results.”

Surgeons were unwilling to accept those results for decades, however, most only coming around as Mr. Ponseti’s follow-up studies of his patients, published every 10 years continued to show those treated with his method continued to suffer no ill effects well into adulthood and old age.

That, coupled with the rise of the Internet, has made his method more well-known. Mothers seeking treatment for children with club feet communicated with one another about his successes, he said, leading people from all over the world to his clinic. That led physicians to come as well. In recent months, he has hosted doctors from South Africa, India, Egypt and Russia seeking to learn his procedure.

He said the HealthCare Hero award is “very satisfying.”

“I’m very happy to be recognized,” he said.

Laurie Fajardo
Ms. Fajardo has been in Iowa City for only a short time, but she has made a significant impact since her arrival. The doctor introduced digital mammography to the state in 2002 as part of a clinical trial that ultimately found that such imaging techniques are most effective for three groups: Women under the age of 50, premenopausal women and women with dense breast tissue.

That technology, which makes breast imaging more accurate and easier to manipulate, is just the start for Ms. Fajardo, who continues to look for ways to improve the process.

“My research has been a lifelong endeavor,” she said.

One of the most innovative aspects of her research has been to use systems to do biopsies of lesions in the breast that couldn’t be felt by a technician. These less-invasive biopsies don’t require general anesthesia or stitches, and are about one-quarter of the cost of a traditional biopsy.

“The next step is really pushing this technology further,” she said.

She is working on a modified system that has moving parts that can take a series of pictures for a three-dimensional look at the breast.

“You can look at individual slices of breast,” she said. “It finds more than a mammogram.”

Such advances are taking medicine to places previously unimagined, she said. Still, she adds that she is confident there will be continuing advancements in the field.

She also has been a pioneer by being one of only four or five women to head radiology departments around the country, she said. That association with the UI has been very rewarding for her, she added. She came here from Johns Hopkins University, drawn by the reputation of the radiology department.

“I was very excited to be coming here,” she said, adding that the expertise of scientists at the university has provided necessary support for her research.

Though Ms. Fajardo has earned significant recognition for her work, she said the HealthCare Hero award was a surprise.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” she said. “I only hope that I can carry out my work and make sure the right things are available for women.”

Julie McIntosh
As a nurse in pediatrics and the neonatal intensive care unit of the Women’s and Children’s Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, Ms. McIntosh has many opportunities to educate patients and their families.

“I like to see the light bulb turn on,” she said. “See them understand the concepts.”

That desire to educate is fulfilled in her role as a nurse, and also in her work as a clinical teaching instructor for nursing students at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids.

“Education has always been my passion,” she said. “From the first day I graduated from nursing school, I was always on some kind of an education committee in the hospital setting.”

She is pursuing a master’s degree in nursing education, she said, so she can better herself and help the community.

At St. Luke’s, she leads the Children’s Center education committee, a role in which she worked to get the Pediatric Advisor program installed on computers in the hospital. The program offers thousands of educational documents that can be tailored to the services and treatments offered at St. Luke’s, giving patients and families access to information about their care.

Because many illnesses are situational, patients and their families likely need to learn a lot about that situation to have the best possible outcome, she said.

“We need to do more than care for that illness,” she said. “We need to be listening to what the families are saying.”

Her efforts align well with the hospital’s stated core values, which include doing the right thing, putting patients first and having respect for all.

“I’ve been here for 12 years; St. Luke’s is home,” she said. “It is a place to grow, and they have given me what I need.”

As technology improves, the ways in which Ms. McIntosh will be able to educate will continue to expand. She said she looks forward to continuing to help promote health and wellness and to assist patients with their own care.

“I’m very honored to be recognized for something I’m very passionate about,” she said. “Hopefully I can make a difference.”

Helen Rossi
Ms. Rossi was instrumental in three projects at UIHC. In 1972, she was on the advisory committee that founded what is now known as the department of volunteer services. Since that time, volunteers in the program have given more than 1.6 million hours of service. She also was among the founders of the Ronald McDonald House in Iowa City, and founded the Volunteer Guest House at UIHC, a facility named in her honor.

She said she hadn’t volunteered until asked by then-UIHC CEO John Colloton to join a group that was looking into establishing a volunteering program at the hospital.

“I thought it over, and thought maybe it was time to do something outside school activities,” she said of her duties as a mother of four.

“Honest to goodness, when I got involved in that program, I just thrived on it,” she said. “I met the most wonderful people, people from all over the country who either had sick family members or were sick themselves.”

Her work on the Ronald McDonald house came about because of an illness in her own family. Her son, Tim, was being treated for leukemia, and he remarked to his mother one day that other kids at the hospital didn’t have the same benefit he did of living five minutes away.

“That left me feeling badly,” she said. “So I went to the powers that be.”

Mr. Colloton put her in touch with the O'Brien family who owned and operated the McDonald’s franchise in Iowa City. She said they “just clicked,” and decided that a Ronald McDonald House in Iowa City was “a must.”

“We worked hard,” she said of those involved. “We opened that house in 1985, debt free.”

That led to the third project, one that would address the needs of adults in the same way the Ronald McDonald House met those of children. The guest house opened in 1997 as the Helen K. Rossi Volunteer Guest House.

While she said she is happy to be recognized for her work, Ms. Rossi made it clear that none of the projects were the effort of just one person.

“A community of people do it,” she said, mentioning several people who have worked with her over the years. “I’m delighted to be a part of these groups of people. And I will work just as hard as I can in the future as I have in the past.” CBJ

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