MUSCMedical LinksCharleston LinksArchivesMedical EducatorSpeakers BureauSeminars and EventsResearch StudiesResearch GrantsGrantlandCommunity HappeningsCampus News

Return to Main Menu

Asset mapping aid to health alliances

by Dick Peterson
Public Relations
You don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone. Or, then again, you can always do an inventory. Marilyn Laken, Ph.D., is doing the inventory.

She's doing what every successful business does and few if any universities have ever tried. She's created an “asset map,” an ongoing, living, growing inventory of MUSC assets with an eye to using them efficiently and effectively throughout South Carolina.

Laken is director of special initiatives at MUSC and a professor of nursing and medicine. Her project began with support from Healthy South Carolina Initiative and has since continued with assistance from departments and offices across campus.

“MUSC's assets are its people,” Laken said. “That includes their expertise, contacts, credibility, students, alumni, programs, and special units such as institutes, centers and offices.”

But it's not as if MUSC has been negligent. as far as she knows there’s not another university in the country that has done what Laken is doing. She’s applying basic business principles to the allocation of university resources.

Take those health screening vans, for example. MUSC has three of them. There's the Hollings Mobile Health Van, the Dental Health Van from the College of Dental Medicine, and Project Sugar’s van. Add to that 11 other health-related vans rolling up and down South Carolina highways.

“These vans are not coordinated with each other, Laken said. And she has the map to prove it. 

The vans seem to cluster in the Lowcountry and in some South Carolina counties, such as Richland and Horry, and in the Greenville-Spartanburg areas, for example, while others receive less attention. Furthermore, in view of South Carolina being hit by another hurricane, Laken discovered that these 14 vans were not connected to emergency preparedness services.

“Thanks to a letter from (MUSC President) Dr. Greenberg that included a copy of the map, the emergency preparedness services are now aware of this emergency resource,” Laken said.

And then there's Healthy South Carolina Initiative, which has health projects statewide, other outreach projects sponsored by MUSC, and numerous other public and private institutions. “These add up to a tremendous resource for promoting health and wellness, Laken said. 

“The problem,” she said, “is that community-based organizations would like to collaborate their activities with MUSC, but they have no ‘road map’ of what MUSC is doing and where. And university faculty, students and administrators would like to collaborate with health-related organizations in the community, but there’s nothing to show what resources and services are available county-by-county throughout the state.

“We all know there are many health problems in the state's 46 counties. What we need is a ‘road map’ to link the people, programs and assets. The challenge, with limited resources, is to share assets in ways that address local problems.”

And there’s another challenge, Laken points out. It's the challenge to break down that wall of intimidation that seems to exist between a university and the community that surrounds it. Whether it’s deserved or not, communities view universities as ivory towers of learning that are somehow aloof from the workaday lives of people, Laken said.

“While MUSC should be held in high esteem, there's a downside. The people, and the state officials who represent them, are unaware of what MUSC has done for them lately,” Laken said, “and they are less likely to support us. We really haven't translated that on the local level largely because we ourselves don’t know all we’re doing in South Carolina's 46 counties.”

She said that MUSC fights a perception that it serves only the Lowcountry. “And while we talk about our education, patient care and research, we further isolate ourselves from the rest of South Carolina by not saying what we mean in particular to each of the 46 counties. 

“This is not good for the state or us.”

With the aid of the asset maps Laken is developing, MUSC can document needs and create community alliances that “help us become business partners with people around the state.”

Laken said that deans and department heads will each get 46 asset maps—one for each county—listing special initiatives, clinical outreach services, education opportunities, local students currently enrolled at MUSC, and MUSC alumni living in each county.

She expects that as the asset maps are circulated, more information about ways MUSC touches people will be forthcoming.