Koslow joins Iowa Bystander staff as Health Coordinator

Koslow joins Iowa
Bystander staff
Health Coordinator
Dr. Alan R Koslow M.D. FACS, CIME has been practicing Vascular Surgery
for 21 years, since finishing his 11 years of specialty training after Medical
School. He is unusual as a specialist in that he feels he needs to look at the entire
patient and not just the small component that the patient comes to see him for.
To this end he tries to keep up with the entire field of medicine reviewing the titles
of over 1000 articles each week reading over 100 abstracts and 30 full articles
each week in almost every field of medicine. He attends national medical
conferences in fields from Diabetes, Heart disease, hunger and others.
He was Chairperson in HS of a medical conference for HS students research. He
attended SUNY Buffalo for undergraduate and Medical School and did his
General, Trauma and Vascular Surgery training at Stanford University, UMDNJ
at Newark and University of Rochester. He has been on the faculty of Albany
Medical College, Loma Linda University, Univ. of Rochester and adjunct
f a c u l t y o f D e s M o i n e s U n i v e r s i t y .
He has been fortunate to be involved in many medical firsts. As a HS student he
worked on the development of the Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump with the inventor
of the pacemaker. He assisted in Heart transplant research in 1967-68. He was
the first person to ever use MAST trouser to try to save a person in civilian realm.
He was in the operating room for the first ever combined heart-lung transplant.
He was involved and was awarded a medal of valor for saving two lives during
the first ever use of the Go Team from Baltimore Shock-Trauma Hospital.
Despite being a brilliant surgeon, Dr. Koslow’s real passion is making a
difference outside the field of medicine.
When asked to be specific about what he does Dr. Koslow stated “I am a
community activist who supports himself by being a Vascular surgeon.” He feels
this puts into perspective his priorities and what he gets the most satisfaction
from.
While maintaining a full time Vascular surgical practice he is on several local
boards and community organizations including The American diabetes Association and the ACLU and is in a leadership position in many others. His
Community efforts began in Junior High and High School being one of ten who
conceived of and organized the first ever March of Dimes Walk-A-Thon in NYC
which has led to all those walks/runs that raise money. He conceivedof/proposed
and got implemented the first program in the U.S.A. where HS students can get
academic credit by doing community service instead of one day of school each
week. In HS he was the only causcasian student in the Queens chapter of the
NAACP.
Since arriving in Iowa in 1995 he has run for School Board once and the Iowa
Legislature twice, though not winning.
He has won two major National Awards from both the March of Dimes and
The American Diabetes Association as the National Advocacy Volunteer of the
Year. These were for his work in organizing volunteers to get the organizations’
message to the presidential candidates, lobbying for and getting passed an
ambitious legislative agenda. He wrote the initial forms of three major legislation, 1) expansion of birth defect testing, 2) Iowa Farm to School Bill, and 3)
Iowa healthy Kids Bill.
He has gone on nine humanitarian medical missions including two to Haiti and
one to El Salvador for the earthquakes and is now a member of Team Rubicon,
an elite group comprised of specialist to respond to critical medical emergancies
around the world