Near the edge of Utah\u2019s Wasatch mountains lives Jake Krong \u201906. Every morning, he wakes before the sun rises and ascends the Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons \u2014 using skis when it\u2019s snowing and sneakers in the warmer months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After trekking back down, Krong spends his workday organizing clinical trials and running an organ transplant research department. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he\u2019s also been brainstorming ways to help patients get the care they need without putting them at risk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After work, he takes it easy \u2026 with a quick hike or run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spend some time in Krong\u2019s Saucony running shoes, from working out to working in health care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wake up around 4:30 or 5 a.m.<\/strong> Being in the mountains as the sun rises energizes me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSki touring is basically<\/strong> getting up mountains by your own power using backcountry skiing equipment. In the winter, I’m climbing mountains every morning in the dark by headlamp and then skiing down \u201cSometimes my wife and I ski three or four hours before work.<\/strong> In the summer, I run for an hour or two. It\u2019s been 20 years of rigorous endurance training. That\u2019s what makes me tick. [If] I don\u2019t do it, I feel off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Since the outbreak of COVID-19]<\/strong> I do a mix of working from home and working from the office at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m the operations manager<\/strong> of the liver and kidney transplant research program. We\u2019re the lead site nationally on a study where we\u2019re looking at a new way of transporting and preserving livers prior to transplant. We\u2019re putting them in this investigational device, essentially a pump, and we\u2019re keeping the organ working during that time when it normally would just be sitting on ice. This might lead to better outcomes, or might buy us the time needed to procure organs for patients when we otherwise might not have time to keep the organ healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m also the operations manager for Intermountain Healthcare Delivery Institute,<\/strong> where our mission is to take cutting-edge research findings and evidenced-based practices and get them into routine practice across our entire system from our flagship medical center to rural clinics. We try to constantly learn from what we are doing and adapt to best serve our patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m the person who manages all aspects of logistics.<\/strong> I am lucky to support many brilliant clinicians and researchers, and I help implement their ideas in real life. I\u2019m working with physicians, nurses, [and] sometimes patients. In the background, I\u2019m ensuring regulatory compliance, financial stewardship, and data integrity. I\u2019m a jack of all trades for the departments I support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEverything changed when<\/strong> we started to realize what was happening with COVID and how we would need to find better ways to treat our patients. Most centers don\u2019t have infectious disease research programs on the scale needed for this pandemic. We had to shift resources from all the different research groups, and bring people together to become our COVID research team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy job pivoted<\/strong> to become the director of our investigational treatments for outpatients statewide. We had to figure out ways to deliver care in the context of clinical trials without having one-on-one contact between our research staff and patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[We\u2019re now applying these new methods <\/strong>to] our liver and kidney transplant clinical trials for the patients\u2019 benefit, and also for our caregivers [and] researchers, leveraging telemedicine whenever possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUsually, after work, my wife and I go for a run or a hike.<\/strong> We have at least 15 trailheads within 15 minutes of our house, so there\u2019s never any lack of options to get your heart rate up.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Near the edge of Utah\u2019s Wasatch mountains lives Jake Krong \u201906. Every morning, he wakes before the sun rises and ascends the Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons \u2014 using skis when it\u2019s snowing and sneakers in the warmer months. After trekking back down, Krong spends his workday organizing clinical trials and running an organ transplant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1222,"featured_media":5162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[285,594],"coauthors":[168],"class_list":["post-5452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-updates","tag-medicine","tag-outdoors"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-1pW","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/08\/IMG_1953-2-copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5682,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/5682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nat sunrise. In the summer, I\u2019m running
\nthose trails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n