News and Events

Since its inception in 2014, the University at Buffalo Human Rights Initiative, a medical student group, has played an important role in helping to document and assess evidence of torture in people seeking refuge and asylum in Western New York. Recently, the group was asked to assist their counterparts in Syracuse and at SUNY Upstate Medical University. Kim Strong Griswold, MD, professor of family medicine and psychiatry, the UB group’s faculty mentor, gave a virtual talk, “Insights and Best Practices for Medical Evaluations in the Context of Immigration Applications,” as part of a panel presentation for potential medical volunteers in Syracuse. “The Jacobs School group is an established Physicians for Human Rights clinic,” Griswold says. “Because we’ve been doing medical evaluations for years and have been training our students in this important work, we were asked to provide some assistance as the Syracuse effort gets off the ground.”

The Buffalo News published a column by Mary Brennan-Taylor, research instructor of family medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, about her deceased mother, who would have turned 100 on Dec. 26. Brennan-Taylor remembers her mother’s extraordinary life and her tragic and preventable death due to medical errors. The column states: “Mom was a ‘light a candle rather than curse the darkness’ kind of gal so, inspired by her philosophy, Team Alice was born. A multipronged initiative of UB’s Center for Successful Aging, Team Alice works with patients and caregivers, the health system and researchers to keep the fragile elderly safe.”