Dr. Mark Moseley
In 2008, Dr. Mark Moseley was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects the lining of the digestive tract. Upon joining USF Health in 2017, he turned to Dr. Renee Marchioni Beery, DO, director of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, to treat him for Crohn’s disease. This summer, Moseley and his wife, Jennifer, decided to establish the Moseley Family Fund for IBD Research and Education, because of his positive patient experience at USF Health. Here’s what he had to say about giving back:
Why did you choose to be treated by a USF Health physician?
Some of it is because I work here and it is hard to find good providers that you trust, and that is true whether you are a layperson or you are a doctor. I think sometimes as a doctor it is a little bit challenging because you know some of the care that should take place, and it is hard to get that care because you have busy schedules. I was really fortunate when I started hunting around here that I found Dr. Marchioni Beery, who was fellowship trained at Harvard in inflammatory bowel disease. GI doctors are the ones who usually who treat inflammatory bowel disease, and they get that as part of their training. It is a very complicated disease, and each patient is different in how it impacts them. She actually did a fellowship, an extra year of training, specifically in the care of patients like me. That was one of the reasons that I chose to seek care here – her expertise and the expertise of USF Health.
How was your overall experience as a patient at USF Health?
Dr. Moseley with the USF Health Gastroenterology and Colorectal Surgery teams
It has been really good. [Dr. Marchioni Beery] and her team are very collaborative. They are collegial; you can see how well they function well as a team. She spends a lot of time talking to her patients and explaining things. I have had some difficult decisions to make about my care, about certain therapies or medications I was going to be on and weighing the side effects of those medications versus being able to do what I do. I have appreciated the opportunity to have a partner and in the gastroenterology and inflammatory bowel team, as they are important partners for the health of the people that they take care of.
What were your expectations going into your initial appointment?
My expectations were that I was going to be cared for by someone who was competent and caring. I assumed that they knew what they were doing, which I think most of us do when we go to seek care from somebody we picked out. Dr. Marchioni Beery had been recommended to me as an expert in inflammatory bowel disease by a lot of people I had talked to. I think doctors and caregivers do the same thing everybody else does, you talk to friends, family and people you work with and say “who do you go to?” and “who’s good?” and everybody I talked to brought up Dr. Marchioni Berry and her team.
In your experience as a patient, at what point were you inspired to make a gift?
I was inspired to make a gift because I was appreciative of the relationship and experience of the team that is taking care of me and I would really like to see it benefit more people. Inflammatory bowel disease is a difficult-to-manage, chronic disease that is, in many instances, life altering when you get the diagnosis and it is scary. I think that whether you are a doctor or a layperson, you just want somebody to help you who is competent. One of the things that inspired me, too, was that it is not common to have an “inflammatory bowel disease center of excellence,” and it is hard to get people that have that interest, skillset and training. To really be able to contribute, and I hope to contribute much more over time, will help with the education and research efforts that are going to be necessary to stand up an IBD center of excellence at USF Health. I am hopeful that our gift, my wife and I, that we have contributed, will help others find the center and hopefully we can find other people who are passionate about this topic and that will also give. This is something that is really important to us, and we wanted help create something that will maybe outlive us, so hopefully over time we will continue to make gifts on a regular basis to grow that education and research fund and hopefully others will as well so we can grow the clinical program here at USF Health. The goal would be to become the best inflammatory bowel disease center in Florida, the best inflammatory bowel disease center in the Southeastern United States, and maybe someday with the right support and the right team, one of the best in the country.
How did your experience open your eyes as the Chief Medical Officer/Chief Clinical Officer of USF Health?
I think it humanizes it a little bit. I am obviously very knowledgeable about our practice at this point but this is a very personal thing. When I go and check in, I am a patient. Yes, I am a doctor and I run the practice, but it is very humanizing when you are there on the other side.
What you would like to say to patients considering making a generous gift to USF Health?
I hope that they would. I hope that they would realize that we are going to be good stewards of their money and that without their support we are not going to be able to be as strong without them. Another part of what we have to do is fund the education of the next generation of providers in these areas and do the research to discover new knowledge to improve treatments for people for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. We cannot do that without people’s support. I hope that one day there is a cure for these diseases, or at least better therapies that are not as toxic, and that is not going to happen without funding and philanthropy to be able to support these programs to grow. We can only grow these programs so far, based on the clinical revenue we generate. We have to have generous and passionate donors that can advance the program, and that is really critical.
What does philanthropy mean to you?
I think that it is very important to make it personal. The two main things that I donate to here at USF Health are extremely personal to me. I donate each year as a Dean’s Level Sponsor for the white coat ceremony because I was there; I was a poor college student who became a very poor medical student, heavily in debt. That issue of student scholarships is real to me; I lived that life and I know how difficult it can be. I think it has to be personal to you and has to be something that you really care about or had an experience with. Same for me for my Crohn’s disease and inflammatory bowel disease, I want to connect people. I have been very fortunate as a doctor working at two great universities; I have been connected to really great care, but not everybody has that benefit. I would love people in the west coast of Florida when they are diagnosed with Crohn’s disease or inflammatory bowel disease to say, “I need to go to USF” and “I need to see the doctors at the inflammatory bowel disease center of excellence.” I am hopeful that over time, others will join me in donating to support that cause to really help it be all it can be.
What would you like our audience to know about you?
It is very important to me this idea of “paying it forward.” None of us have gotten to where we are in life without others who have invested in us. If we do not likewise invest in other people, whether it is our time, our effort, our mentorship, then that cycle doesn’t continue. I feel very fortunate that I had so many people that invested in me to help me get to where I am today, that I feel a sense of obligation to do that for others. I think that is something that’s really unique to the university-based setting. People are here because there is a mission to what we do. Our mission is making life better through the power of academic medicine, and one of the powers that we have in academic medicine is that investment we make in people. As I get older, I am really mindful of that idea of there have to be others that come after me that are more capable and better than I am, because that’s how we move things forward. I hope that people would look at what we are doing at USF Health with the idea of paying it forward so that we can really show the Tampa Bay region the power of what we do, but it is going to take that investment, time and resources to do that.
Anything to add?
This topic of philanthropy is so important. The difference between us really being a preeminent university health system and just being good is largely going to be determined by our ability to tell our story in why people should give to us. The clinical dollars we generate only go so far, and the education and research missions are really expensive so we need their support so that we can grow these programs. It may not be in inflammatory bowel disease, it may be something else that people are passionate about. It usually starts with the relationship between a patient and their physician, or provider, and that goes to the idea of “how can I thank you for doing what you did?” While one of the things we usually say as physicians is “well that’s my job, that’s what I’m here for,” I hope that with our Patient Engagement Program we can turn around and say “I so appreciate that and I value our relationship but you can do more by investing in what we’re trying to build here.” That is hard for us as doctors to do, but it’s really, really important. It is going to make or break us in the future.
To read the full article, click here.
If you would like to make a gift to the Moseley Family Fund for IBD Research and Education, click here. If you would like to make a gift to another area of USF Health, please visit giving.usf.edu/health.