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Dr. William Bastián

Of the two components of medical practice, the first involves developing the skills, technology, and artistry that constitute modern medical care. The second concerns striving to deliver these medical benefits to the people who need them.

Mississippi's hospitals are working to ensure that state-of-the-art pediatric medical care is available throughout the state, from those living near major hospital centers to rural folks living far from them.

Central Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson offers the services of Dr. William Bastián, one of the state's few pediatric endocrinologists.

Bastián, a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine, completed his pediatric residency at Mount Sinai Services in Elmhurst, New York. His awards include receiving the National Institutes of Health Physician Scientist Award twice, from the University of Rochester in 1991 and from Yale University in 1993.

As an endocrinologist, some of Bastián's specialties include diagnosing and treating health problems involving the pituitary gland, adrenal glands, thyroid and parathyroid glands, pancreas, hypoglycemia, and type I and type II diabetes. He has a special interest, though, in childhood obesity and metabolic diseases.

"Childhood obesity has acquired epidemic proportions and is likely to become one of the major public health challenges," said Bastián. "You'll start hearing about metabolic syndrome, characterized by insulin resistance or type II diabetes, obesity, hypertension, abnormalities in the serum lipids and increased cardiac risk."

Bastián's approach to these serious health issues: "My conviction is that a strong therapeutic alliance between the patient, the family and the doctor is necessary to find out what is needed to successfully lose weight and reverse all the associated medical problems."

Mississippians are also served by North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC) in Tupelo, which has on staff Dr. Dane Douglas, a pediatric cardiology specialist whose main office is in Germantown, Tenn. He sees children every Monday at NMMC's Heart Institute, located on the third floor of the hospital's East Tower.

Douglas, who has been offering his services through outreach clinics since 1995, said that there are "so many people here who live in rural areas, and they just don't have access to tertiary care subspecialists. Through such clinics, we're able to provide these important services for the entire northern two-thirds of the state."

Douglas offers a full array of noninvasive procedures on-site, services that are immensely helpful to local pediatricians and their patients. Most of the patients he sees have innocent murmurs and other benign conditions, but the clinics are able to advise and arrange for treatment of more serious problems, as well, he said.

"The families love what we offer, and so do the referring pediatricians," he said. "They're able to get immediate responses from us for their patients."

Douglas, who earned his medical degree from East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, completed his pediatric residency at the University of Tennessee at Memphis and a pediatric cardiology fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina.

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