LITTLE ROCK, ARK – May 31, 2018 – Dr. William L. Mason and Dr. Pramod K. Nelluri have joined the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care (AFMC) as associate medical directors, according to Chad Rodgers, MD, Vice President and Chief Medical Director, AFMC. For 46 years, AFMC has served Arkansas physicians and the health care community as a health improvement organization.
Dr. Mason earned his medical degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, (UAMS) Little Rock. Following his internship, Mason joined the U. S. Air Force as flight surgeon for the Strategic Air Command. He attended UAMS for his residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in pulmonary disease; he is board certified in both specialties. In 1975, he established Pulmonary Associates, a private group practice.
Mason has served as chief of staff at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center and later worked with CHI St. Vincent Infirmary to help develop an integrated health care delivery system. Working with the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) from 2002-2018, he served as medical director and branch chief for the Preparedness and Emergency Response Branch and associate director for science at ADH’s Center for Health Protection.
In 2009, he earned a Master of Public Health from UAMS’s Boozman College of Public Health, where he is an adjunct professor of environmental and occupational health and an adjunct associate professor of epidemiology.
Mason has served on the board of directors of several health care organizations. He received the 2013 Professional of the Year award from the University of Arkansas Little Rock.
Dr. Nelluri has been a physician for 36 years, earning his medical degree from Gandhi Medical School in Hyderabad, India. He completed residencies in ENT, and plastic and reconstructive surgery in India and a year in general surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, where he was also a research fellow in the division of plastic surgery. He received fellowship training in hand surgery at the Kleinert Institute in Kentucky, a fellowship in microsurgery at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, and a hand and upper extremity fellowship at UAMS. Upon returning to India, he was an associate professor and a staff member in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad.
Nelluri returned to the United States and currently serves as the hand surgeon at John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital, Little Rock, and is an associate professor in the UAMS Department of Orthopedics. He served as president of the Arkansas Society for Hand Surgeons in 2006-07.
His ongoing research on hand surgery and nerve regeneration is also the subject of his numerous papers, presentations and two book chapters. In 2009, he received the Selakovich Faculty Teaching Award from UAMS.