I'd like to invite Steve Kalkanis to the stage to introduce the Humanitarian Award. Good morning. It's my great honor to introduce the 2018 AANS Humanitarian Award winner, my colleague, my friend, and my mentor, Dr. Jack Rock. Jack earned his MD from the University of Miami in 1979. He went on to New York Hospital in Cornell for residency and then did a fellowship at Maryland Shock Trauma before joining the faculty at Henry Ford Hospital in 1986. Today he is our program director, he's my vice chair, and figuratively and literally the rock of our program. Jack's passion for international neurosurgery began in medical school, but in 2004 he partnered with FEMS and began every year taking two-week trips to Africa and Southeast Asia. In 2012, he went to Myanmar for the very first time and began operating there on brain tumor patients, but he soon realized that in order to make truly a difference, a repeated presence would be necessary. So beginning in 2013, he organized and he self-financed yearly visits of entire teams of nurses, biomedical technicians, equipment reps, and specialty surgeons to help teach residents and nurses and senior staff at Yangon General Hospital. In 2017, he organized a first-ever neurosurgical boot camp in Southeast Asia. This drew over 75 residents and faculty from seven different countries. 50 residents and young faculty throughout that region have been trained now in pediatrics, vascular tumors, skull base, and recently the management of brain trauma neurosurgery in Yangon and across Myanmar. We have reciprocal host rotations in Detroit now, thanks to Jack, and we do monthly Skype training sessions and consulting sessions as well. And in 2017, the Minister of Health in Myanmar actually presented Dr. Rock and the Henry Ford Health System with a memorandum of understanding and recognition of Jack's achievements. These trips have had a tremendous impact on the region, as you can see in these wonderful pictures. And in fact, the training boot camp there, when it occurred, was one of the most widely talked about events in all of medicine in Myanmar ever. And imagine the impact. The ratio of neurosurgeons to the general population in the developing world is about 1 in 15,000, but in Myanmar, there's only one neurosurgeon for every 5 million people. This has made a true difference. Jack has made a true difference, and he, along with his wife, Mary, continue to support this program and so many others. Jack is a musician. In addition to being a husband and father, he's a wonderful mentor, a teacher. He's truly a gifted surgeon. He is a spectacular human being, and he's a humanitarian in every sense of the word. Congratulations, Jack. Well, thank you, Steve. As you've heard from Merwin and from Mike Hagelin, I've actually been affiliated with the Fiends Association, that's Foundation of International Education in Neurosurgery, for about 15 years now. And they have a leadership that's completely dedicated to finding new programs of high integrity and then connecting the volunteers with those programs. What became clear to me over the years is that what we all, many of us in this room, take for granted is the education we received in our training programs, where our mentors and teachers taught us how to apply basic neuroscience to a patient and actually use it in the operating room. And it's very easy to take this for granted. So over the last 15 years, and most recently in Myanmar, what has been truly inspiring, exciting, and satisfying has been my ability to take this privilege to these countries, to the colleagues there, to the residents, and help them to build their own higher quality programs and sustainable programs. And most recently, it's really thanks to Fiends and to my colleagues in Myanmar that I have a tremendous debt of gratitude. Hopefully, and it's intended that the Fiends organization will try to put on at some future AANS a program where specialists can understand more the nuances of treating the general problems and generalists treating the specialist problems. Because when you go to countries, you can't always be sure what you're going to encounter, and yet you can't always back out of everything either. So I really stand before you today really humbled by this. I know there's people in the audience who are actually more well-deserving than me, but I want to thank the leadership and Dr. Baladka of the AANS for awarding this to me. I'd like to thank Merwin Bagan and Bob Dempsey for being the great mentors they have been and continue to be to many of us and volunteers. I'd like to thank Mark Rosenblum and Steve Kalkanis for allowing me the flexibility to actually pursue this work at Henry Ford Hospital. And I'd like to thank Dr. Win Myang and Dr. Chi Lang, who are my compatriots in Myanmar, for their dedication to their patients and to their residents. And lastly, I'd like to thank my wife, who has tolerated my absences for so long and watched as her technologically-challenged husband headed off to parts unknown, promising to figure out how to make the BlackBerry work by the time I arrived. And finally, to my Administrative Secretary, Amy, who has done such a job at trying to help coordinate all the work we've been doing in Myanmar for the last five years. So I'm humbled. Thank you.

Dr. Jack Rock

2018 AANS Humanitarian Award

international neurosurgery

brain tumor patients

neurosurgical boot camp