Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Glenn Simmons, Jr.

 

Glenn Simmons

Glenn E. Simmons Jr., PhD, Assistant Professor, of Biomedical Sciences, was a featured speaker at this year's Annual National Marrow Donor Program®/Be The Match® Council Meeting in Minneapolis. The NMDP/Be The Match is the hub of a worldwide network of more than 500 leading medical facilities in marrow and cord blood transplantation. Patients needing a transplant depend on the NMDP/ Be The Match and its network partners to find a matching marrow superhero (donor) or cord blood unit. The annual council meeting aims to recognize, inspire, educate and collaborate with their partners to share innovative best practices that will enable the opportunity to collectively save more patients' lives by meeting with fellow transplantation colleagues - superheroes from around the world. 

Dr. Simmons hosted an educational breakout session on how to build interpersonal and institutional trust with communities from a research perspective – "Building Interpersonal and Institutional Trust." Building and sustaining trust is the hallmark of successful and thriving relationships and organizations. Yet, trust is a fragile commodity that may break down from various causes including random actions, ignorance of interaction, and systemic and structural biases. This session provided key concepts for building and maintaining interpersonal and institutional trust.