News Briefs

Local angle: Simsbury, Conn.

Dr. Douglas A. Drossman, professor of medicine and psychiatry within UNC’s School of Medicine, has been appointed to an Institute of Medicine committee studying long-term adverse health issues among veterans of the 1991 Gulf War and the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Drossman also co-directs the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders, within the School of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

The two-year study is a comprehensive review, evaluation and summary of the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature on the association between stress and long-term adverse health effects in veterans. Combat stress is the mental, emotional or physical tension, strain or distress associated with exposure to combat or combat-related conditions.

"Stress-related gastrointestinal disorders are already very prevalent in the general population, impairing work performance and attendance and overall quality of life," said Drossman. "It is important to understand the prevalence and consequences of functional GI disorders in the unusually high-stress environment of war and conflict, both in the short term during deployment and in the long term upon returning home."

Drossman has published more than 350 books, articles and abstracts relating to epidemiology, psychosocial and quality-of-life assessment, design of treatment trials and outcomes of research in GI disorders. One of his principal areas of research is on understanding the effects of psychosocial trauma, including abuse, on clinical outcomes in gastrointestinal disorders.

He recently was appointed as an ad hoc member of the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine grants advisory board responsible for final review and decisions regarding awards for NIH grants submitted in the area of complementary and alternative medicine.

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UNC student Sean Overbeeke and alumnus Paul Edwards have won the inaugural Saint-Hayden Media Award, established by actress Eva Marie Saint and her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden. The award was presented Thursday (July 28) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Overbeeke, a senior from Simsbury, Conn., won for his short film "A Christmas Wish." This summer he is a UNC Hollywood intern at Ridley and Tony Scott’s company, Scott Free Productions. A communication studies major, he is one of the first students enrolled in the new writing for the screen and stage minor.

Edwards, a 1979 UNC graduate, directs the UNC Hollywood Media Industries Program. His writing credits include the feature film "Fighting Words," as well as "Quincy" and "Fall Guy."

Each won $1,000 for the new award, to a student filmmaker whose work is life-affirming, provoking and enlightening -- and to his or her mentor.

Saint and Hayden, a 1946 UNC graduate, established the award with Interactive Media Producer Sandy Wetmore, a 1967 Carolina graduate, and Fox Senior Vice President Evans Wetmore. A gift from the four to UNC’s communication studies department began an endowment to fund the award, which they intend to present annually.

The gift counts toward the Carolina First campaign goal of $1.8 billion. Carolina First is a comprehensive, multi-year private fund-raising campaign to support Carolina’s vision of becoming the nation’s leading public university. The gift also supports the communication studies department and its goal of recognizing outstanding student and alumni work.

For more on UNC’s Hollywood internships, visit http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jul05/Hollywood05071805.htm.

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The cover of Lawrence Naumoff’s latest novel, "A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow," bears a photo illustration of flames and a sign that says "Hamlet, N.C. All-American City."

Though fictional, the story is set at the time of the very real fire at Imperial Food Products in Hamlet in 1991, which killed 25 workers and injured 56. Plant owners had locked some of the doors to keep workers from stealing, leaving them no escape route.

Naumoff, who teaches creative writing at UNC, precedes his tale by stating that no characters in the book are based on real people. Then, in separate vignettes and chapters, he lets us thoroughly get to know characters whom we realize will later be trapped inside the inferno. He describes bad luck and hard times, for individuals and the town, that have left some no choice but to work for low wages and in foul conditions in the plant.

The reader learns part of the true history of Hamlet, as a major railway hub in the early 1900s that boasted fine restaurants and hotels. Naumoff presents the assault on the prosperous merchant class by the Great Depression as described by the fictional great-great grandmother of one of his future chicken plant workers.

The novel’s graphic climax reads as though Naumoff were inside the plant during the fire, experiencing and observing the workers’ terror and suffering. The book, a paperback from Zuckerman Cannon Publishers, distributed by John F. Blair Publishers of Winston-Salem, follows five other Southern novels by Naumoff, from "The Night of the Weeping Women" in 1988 to "A Plan for Women" in 1997.

Naumoff is scheduled to appear on UNC TV’s "Bookwatch" at 5 p.m. Oct. 30.

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College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Spurr, (919) 962-4093 or spurrk@email.unc.edu

News Services contacts: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu; L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu