I am Community Medicine…
Name: Justin Van De Wiele
Hometown: Tulsa
Profession: Integrative Immunologist,
Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery,
OU School of Community Medicine
His folks are proud… Justin’s parents have provided constant love,
dedication to family, a work ethic and humility - by which he continues to
gauge his own accomplishments. Personally, Justin’s most important work
is raising his three children. Professionally, part of his reason for working
with the School of Community Medicine is to improve this community for
his children’s sake as well as for everyone else in the future.
He wants us to evolve from an “us/them” to a “we” mentality…Justin
understands that invoking a broader sense of spirituality and servantleadership is the first step for implementing social change and
accomplishing mutually beneficial outcomes.
His ideal “professional encounter” rejects the null… Justin’s perfect
professional encounter (i.e., a traditional laboratory bench experiment) is
one in which all controls perform as expected and in which a null
hypothesis is rejected that convincingly supports an idea that he knows will
garner grant support and yield publishable results in high-impact journals.
If set-up correctly, the experiment should yield useful information
regardless of the outcome. Justin never sets out to prove his hypotheses
correct, only to objectively test the reality of the system he is interacting
with.
He teaches through the lens of a developmental biologist with immunologic principles applied in somewhat unconventional ways…
Positive- and negative-selection are tenets of lymphocyte development that can be applied macroscopically in the classroom.
Immunologic concepts such as tolerance, rejection, transplantation and immunization also have larger-scale correlates that are
interesting to contrast with the microscopic realm. Justin posits that we all know that both good and bad ideas can be viral and
contagious, so why shouldn’t we immunize or vaccinate ourselves with knowledge, attitudes and skills to help shape our collective
best-case future?
Social responsibility requires mindful maintenance of the balance between development of community assets and consumption
by the community… Justin explains that disruption of this balance can manifest as social inequity. Attendance to the complex
flow of goods, services and assets within a designated area defines a community. Social responsibility then is manifested wh en
our highest and best, heartfelt intentions are aligned with purposeful, selfless actions.
Justin is committed to continuing to help shape and evolve the emerging four-year medical school… and to promoting social
innovation via amplification of positive deviants in accordance with principles espoused in Theory U and by proponents of positive
psychology.
Dr. Van De Wiele attended both elementary and high school in Tulsa North at Emerson Elementary and Booker T. Washington H.S.,
respectively, graduating in 1988. His junior high years were spent in his home district in South Tulsa at Nimitz Junior High. His
undergraduate work in Microbiology and Immunology was completed at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK (1988-1993). His
doctoral work was performed alternating between Oklahoma City, OK and Toronto, ONT at the Oklahoma Medical Research
Foundation and the Ontario Cancer Institute/AMGEN, respectively, from 1995 to 2001. He has specialized training in genetic
engineering and wilderness survival.
His primary research focus is determining to what degree bone-marrow derived T-cell precursors can be grown outside the body for
genetic reprogramming and/or expansion for eventual reintroduction into the body for a variety of immunotherapeutic reasons. More
recently, his work has focused on how macroscopic quorum-sensing and crowd-sourcing can be applied in the context of social
innovation interventions to facilitate rapid development and implementation of Prototype 0.8 projects.