![\"Ortiz\"](\"http:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Ortiz.jpg\")
<\/a>Ortiz<\/p><\/div>Ortiz, an associate professor and chief of surgical transplant who joined the faculty last year, has been doing kidney transplants and teaching residents the tools of the trade. As an expert of solid organ transplantation, Ortiz hopes to do more than just kidney transplants; he wants to start a liver and pancreas transplantation program at UT in the next two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransplant surgery is like general surgery, but the risks and benefits are much higher,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to know your general surgery, you have to know transplant surgery, medicine, the whole deal. You have to take care of the whole patient, not just one organ.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of teaching and creating new programs, Ortiz is passionate about the effect of race on transplants. He plans to join the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program and is part of the diversity committee for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a particular interest in helping even out disparities in health care, and also studying those disparities between ethnic and socioeconomic groups,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cI want to learn and teach what are the outcome differences, if any, between groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ortiz is working with Dr. Donald White, professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, to decipher data from UNOS regarding race and transplant outcomes. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t have a system or a society or a culture where there are different opportunities amongst people, different outcomes amongst people,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cIt should all be fair. We should embrace our differences, but correct our inequalities.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initiative for new organ transplantation programs and the collaboration to improve transplants for everyone are just two of Ortiz\u2019s goals. He also said he is looking forward to improving UT\u2019s global outreach and teaching his residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do an activity repeatedly, it\u2019s a task, but when you do that with someone to teach them that activity, it\u2019s more enjoyable,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cI enjoy the energy that the students have \u2014 trying to get ahead, trying to improve, not just trying to get by.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Jorge Ortiz, UT chief of surgical transplant, is interested in starting new transplant programs at the University and studying how race affects transplants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,38,3,63],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61885,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32386\/revisions\/61885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}