New medicine, psychiatry, pharmacy faculty swell ranks

The Medical Center is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Prakrati Acharya, M.D.

Acharya

Dr. Prakrati Acharya, a recent clinical fellow in medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of medicine.

After receiving her M.B.B.S. from J. N. Medical College, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, in 2012, Acharya began her internal medicine residency at Mount Auburn Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. While there, her research interest included understanding patients' perspective on hospital readmission. She also actively participated in novel drug discovery projects in multiple myeloma and Waldenstrom's macroglobinemia at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.

The coauthor of four articles in peer-reviewed professional publications and 10 posters presented at scientific meetings, Acharya has a patent on the composition and manufacturing processes of a toxicity-free botanical drug for treatment of chronic diseases. She is an active member of several professional organizations, including the American College of Physicians, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Society of Hospital Medicine.
 

Jordan Marie Ballou, Pharm.D.

Ballou

Dr. Jordan Marie Ballou has joined the School of Pharmacy faculty as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice. Ballou is based on the Oxford campus and her practice site at Tyson Drug Company in Holly Springs is part of the School of Pharmacy's Community-Based Research Program. In Oxford, Ballou will be involved in the administration of the school's Community Pharmacy Residency Program.

After receiving her BS in molecular and structural biochemistry from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 2009, Ballou earned her Pharm.D. at the Campbell University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Buies Creek, North Carolina, in 2015. She then was chief resident in the Community Pharmacy Residency Training Program at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Chapel Hill, from 2015-16.

Ballou has given one invited platform presentation and one poster presentation on her work, the implementation of depression screening in an independent community pharmacy. She is an active member of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the American Pharmacists Association and Kappa Psi Pharmaceutical Fraternity, Inc.

Danny R. Burgess, Ph.D.

Burgess

Dr. Danny R. Burgess, a staff psychologist at Methodist Rehabilitation Center Outpatient Clinics and a private practitioner of clinical psychology, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of psychiatry. He serves as director of the Center for Integrative Health and co-director of the Student Counseling and Wellness Center.

After receiving his BS in psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2001, Burgess earned his MS in clinical psychology (adult track) in 2004 and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology (adult track) in 2008 at Auburn University, Alabama. He had a pre-doctoral clinical health psychology internship from 2007-08 and a postdoctoral clinical health psychology fellowship from 2008-09 at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics - Madison, before joining Methodist Rehabilitation Center in 2009. He has been in private practice with Clinical Psychology and Psychiatric Associates in Jackson since 2012.

An active member of several professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, Burgess is the author or coauthor of nine articles in peer-reviewed professional publications and 17 conference presentations. His research interests include in the classification of personality disorders and the clinical usefulness of the current diagnostic classification system.

Richard Wells, M.B.ChB.

Wells

Dr. Richard Wells, a recent pulmonary vascular disease fellow at Stanford Hospital, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of medicine.

After graduating from the University of Toronto in 2003 with a BSc. (Hons) with high distinction in biochemistry, Wells received his medical degree in 2008 from the University of Glasgow, and served as a foundation house officer at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, United Kingdom, for one year. He completed residency training in internal medicine from 2009-12 at Baystate Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine Western Campus, Springfield, Massachusetts, and a pulmonary disease and critical care fellowship from 2012-15 at the Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans. During his final year of pulmonary and critical care fellowship, he served as a senior administrative fellow. He completed an additional year of fellowship training in pulmonary vascular diseases from 2015-16 at Stanford Hospitals and Clinics, California.

Wells is an active member of the American Thoracic Society and the American College of Chest Physicians. He is the lead author of an article published in the Southern Medical Journal, “Factors Associated with Emergency Department Visits for Asthma Exacerbation,” and for the last four years he has given several poster and oral presentations at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.