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For Release: August 28, 2012
Contact: David Corriveau (603) 653-1978 david.a.corriveau@hitchcock.org

15th Dartmouth Community Medical School Series Gets Personal

Hanover, N.H.—The Dartmouth Community Medical School (DCMS) this fall will explore the shift of health care treatment toward personalized care.

Leading the 15th annual series of discussions of the current and future state of medicine - "It's Personal: Medicine's Evolution Away from One Size Fits All" - will be clinician-researchers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth with expertise in organ transplantation and immunology, palliative care, genetics, cancer, cardiovascular disease, pharmacology and toxicology, and electronic medical records.

The weekly sessions, open to the public, will take place on Tuesday nights from 7:00 to 9:00, between October 2 and November 13 - the first three in Manchester and the last three in Nashua. The registration fee of $30 covers all six sessions. Registrants also can choose to watch three sessions live in one of the locations and receive the other three sessions on DVD.

"This exciting and very timely series of topics should stimulate a lively dialogue between the community and our expert faculty and clinicians at the Geisel School of Medicine and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC)," says DCMS faculty director William R. Green, PhD, chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the medical school and DHMC. "The unprecedented acquisition of new knowledge from the research labs and the clinical arena over the last several years has profoundly changed how we think about treating patients. And the explosion of information at the level of the individual has generated major, controversial challenges in the way we handle these vast amounts of data and choose treatments based on personal versus population patient effectiveness - all in the context of maintaining affordability, patient confidentiality, and the doctor-patient relationship."

The first three sessions will take place at the Derryfield School, 2108 River Road in Manchester, covering the following topics:

October 2 - Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease: New tools for creating personalized therapies
October 9 - It's Always Been Up Close and Personal: The world of organ transplants and immune rejection
October 16 - Personal Electronic Medical Records: Creating access, ensuring security

The Nashua sessions will unfold at Nashua South High School, 36 Riverside Street, on these subjects:

October 30 - Personalized Prescriptions: Using pharmacogenomics to better treat disease
November 6 - Personalized Medicine: Understanding the biological basis for individualized treatments
November 13 - The Doctor-Patient Relationship: Keeping it personal

Since its launch in 1998, DCMS has been educating communities through contemporary health and medical issues. The courses are open to all, regardless of background or experience. All participants receive a syllabus with lecture notes, supplemental materials, and suggested reading, as well as a certificate of completion.

For more information about the 2012 Dartmouth Community Medical School, visit the DCMS Web site, call Deborah Winslow at (603) 653-0771, or send email to dartmouth.community.medical.school@dartmouth.edu.

For more information contact David Corriveau at (603) 653-1978.

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The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, founded in 1797, strives to improve the lives of the communities it serves through excellence in learning, discovery, and healing. The nation's fourth-oldest medical school, the Geisel School of Medicine has been home to many firsts in medical education, research and practice, including the discovery of the mechanism for how light resets biological clocks, creating the first multispecialty intensive care unit, the first comprehensive examination of U.S. health care cost variations (The Dartmouth Atlas), and helping establish the first Center for Health Care Delivery Science, which launched in 2010. As one of America's top medical schools, Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine is committed to training new generations of diverse physician leaders who will help solve our most vexing challenges in health care.

ABOUT DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK: Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a national leader in patient-centered health care and building a sustainable health system. Founded in 1893, the system includes New Hampshire's only Level 1 trauma center and its only air ambulance service, as well as the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, one of only 40 National Center Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the nation, and the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, the state's only Children's Hospital Association-approved, comprehensive, full-service children's hospital. As an academic medical center, Dartmouth-Hitchcock provides access to nearly 1,000 primary care doctors and specialists in almost every area of medicine, as well as world-class research at the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

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