WashU Medicine faculty honored for community engagement
55 receive Dean’s Impact Awards for community partnerships
Matt MillerAngela L. Brown, MD, a professor of medicine in the Cardiovascular Division at WashU Medicine, was one of 55 faculty honored last month with Dean's Impact Awards for community partnerships. Since 2013, Brown has encouraged better communication between WashU Medicine researchers and people in the community as the co-director of the Center for Community Health Partnership & Research, a part of the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) and the Institute for Public Health.
Community engagement is woven into the fabric of WashU Medicine. Guided by a deep commitment to helping others, many faculty have built lasting community partnerships that drive innovative care, education and community-engaged research.
In April, 55 faculty members at WashU Medicine were honored with 2025 Dean’s Impact Awards, which recognize individuals whose dedicated service and leadership have left a lasting mark across WashU Medicine’s mission areas. These honorees represent the compassion, innovation and dedication required to build meaningful community-focused change. Each of them looked outward – beyond the WashU Medicine Campus – and identified problems that needed to be solved, and then worked diligently to solve them in partnership with the communities most impacted.
“Through meaningful, sustained community engagement, the impact of WashU Medicine extends beyond our campuses to reach our local and regional communities, our country, and the world,” said Renée A. Shellhaas, MD, who spearheads the awards program as the senior associate dean for faculty promotions and career development. “Through their work, this year’s Dean’s Impact awardees improve clinical care and patient support, create and sustain pipeline education programs, influence health policy, and lead practice-changing community-engaged research.
“The faculty members who received Dean’s Impact Awards have gone above and beyond in their efforts to connect with people in the community to ask and answer the most important questions, earn and build trust, and improve health,” said Shellhaas, also the David T. Blasingame Professor of Neurology.
By fostering community relationships, WashU Medicine faculty can enhance patient support, research practices and educational programs that benefit everyone.
“Most people don’t recognize that community impact is not just something that we do but, in fact, is everything that we are,” said David H. Perlmutter, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor and the George and Carol Bauer Dean of WashU Medicine. “Each of our missions has a direct and enormous impact on our surrounding communities, and especially within this city and county. Our awardees understand that state-of-the art imaging and groundbreaking therapies are wonderful, but they’re meaningless if we don’t reach out and form partnerships to make them accessible and understandable to the people who need them.”
The stories of three faculty members who were honored at this year’s Dean’s Impact Awards are examples of the ways WashU Medicine clinicians, educators and researchers directly connect to the people they serve.
Angela L. Brown, MD
For more than 25 years, attending community events and talking with the participants have been an integral part of the role of Angela L. Brown, MD, as a clinician and helped to build trust with community members.
“You go where the patients are, where they can see and hear you,” said Brown, a professor of medicine in the Cardiovascular Division at WashU Medicine.
“My goal is to provide people with information to help them take control of their health. I’ve been involved with the community long before community engagement became a term.”
During the 1990s, Brown spoke about heart health at faith-based organizations and outdoor fairs in St. Louis. She handed out educational materials and talked about the importance of healthy eating, exercise and blood pressure screening for tracking and maintaining heart health. Brown also appeared on two-and-a-half-minute segments on local TV news stations, talking about hypertension, helmet safety, skin cancer prevention and other news-you-can-use.
Due to her reputation for community outreach, in 2013 she was tapped as co-director of the Center for Community Health Partnership & Research, a part of the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) and the Institute for Public Health. The group is focused on improving health and wellness and Brown and her team have worked to encourage better communication between WashU Medicine researchers and people of different social, racial and economic backgrounds.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown and her team worked with community leaders to help ease vaccine hesitancy among people in low-resourced, nonwhite communities. She answered questions about the virus while also advocating for adherence to safety protocols and testing.
“We want to know what matters to the community,” Brown said. “We don’t want to swoop in like we have all the answers, because we don’t. What matters to us may not matter to them. That’s why we want their input from day one to help develop questions for a study. We work to gain their trust. The biggest impact on community health is being a trusted partner.”
David Kast, PhD
Matt MillerWhen reviewing admission applications to the PhD programs within the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences (DBBS), David Kast, PhD, will often find what seems like a disadvantage on the surface is actually a strength.
“We get so many applications from students who attended universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford, where students have had phenomenal opportunities to succeed and impress,” said Kast, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology & Physiology who leads WashU Medicine’s Molecular Cell Biology Graduate Admissions Program. “If you review the applications on face value, it may seem as if students from under-resourced communities can’t compare because they have limited research experience or attended a lesser-known institution. But it’s important to me, and to WashU Medicine as a whole, to give everyone a fair shake.”
While Kast notes that research experiences are a plus, it’s also important to consider the motivations of the applicant to pursue a PhD and if they have demonstrated an ability to be successful in the face of adversity. “Being able to perform well academically while fulfilling responsibilities important to daily survival shows resilience, grit and determination” he said. “These qualities are essential to the success of our trainees and as a scientist in general.”
Over the years, Kast has also helped to secure funding and other resources to help scholars — including nontraditional and first-generation college students — through one- and two-year postbaccalaureate programs that aim to make these applicants more competitive by providing cutting-edge research experience in labs. Once completed, many of the program’s graduates apply and get accepted into advanced degree programs at WashU and other top institutions.
By engaging with a larger community of scholars, Kast has helped to grow the university’s scientific talent pool. “Differences in upbringing, experiences and perspectives foster creativity and innovation in scientific research,” he said.
Cynthia Montana, MD, PhD
Matt MillerIn recent years, Cynthia Montana, MD, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, has overseen an expansion in staff and an upgrade of equipment to better serve patients from under-resourced backgrounds, particularly those in need of complex surgeries. In doing so, she and her team are addressing key issues for patients whose visual needs have not been adequately or consistently supported. Many of the patients at an eye clinic where Montana works with WashU Medicine physicians and staff, as well as ophthalmology residents, lack health insurance and other resources, however, Montana and her colleagues at the clinic treat all patients, including those in need of complex surgeries. Thanks to the doggedness of her department leadership, colleagues, and staff – as well as the generosity of donors, pharmaceutical companies, WashU Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital – the clinic now boasts top-of-the-line eye diagnostic and other treatment tools.
But such devices matter little if patients can’t afford medications to treat their ailments. And that’s what happened, Montana said. Many became repeat patients in emergency rooms and at the clinic because their eye problems were never adequately or consistently treated.
“We recognized there were major barriers to patients taking their prescribed medicine,” Montana said. “Right away, when a patient enters our clinic for the first time, our goal isn’t to get them in and out of the clinic, but to form lasting relationships.”
Montana and her medical team began asking patients questions about why some weren’t taking their medicine and realized affordability was a major barrier. In addition to treating patients, Montana mentors residents who benefit from hands-on experience in caring for this patient population. Together, Montana, the residents and the clinic’s staff deduced that helping patients enroll in medication assistance programs, or even just printing coupons that they could take to the pharmacy, could reduce the cost of a critical eye medication from several hundred dollars to less than $30. It also minimized health-care costs associated with multiple emergency room visits and worsening eye disease.
“Something as simple as a paper coupon can make a significant impact,” Montana said. “Engaging with our patients has helped to make us better doctors.”
