• Allon Goldberg, PhD, PT, from assistant professor to associate professor in the Physical Therapy program, Department of Health Care Sciences. He also received recommendation for tenure.
•  Kim Dunleavy, PhD, PT, OCS, from assistant professor –clinical to associate professor- clinical in the Physical Therapy program, Department of Health Care Sciences.
• Sheila M. Wilhelm, PharmD, BCPS, from assistant professor-clinical to associate professor-clinical in the Department of Pharmacy Practice.

The Board of Governors is expected to approve the recommendation at their June meeting and promotion and tenure assignments will become effective Aug. 17.

Goldberg joined the Physical Therapy program in August 2005 after completing a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship in gerontology at the University of Michigan from 2003-5. He currently directs the Physical Therapy Mobility Research Laboratory and holds an adjunct appointment as assistant professor within the Institute of Gerontology. His research focuses on the physical performance capabilities of older adults and people with neurological disease with specific attention to gait and balance deficits as measures of falls risk. A second area of scholarship is the application of advances in genomics to physical therapy education and practice. Since arriving at Wayne State, he has published 2 invited book chapters, 13 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and 1 invited review article. There have been 50 peer-reviewed research presentations of his work in the past six years, 30 of which were at international and national scientific conferences. As an educator, Goldberg has made significant contributions in the classroom, teaching multiple core courses in the physical therapy curriculum. Numerous students under his direction have made award-winning poster presentations on their research. He has been the primary mentor for 14 doctor of physical therapy (DPT) student research groups and co-mentor for 9 DPT student groups as they conducted their doctoral research projects in his laboratory. Eight of his doctoral students have received awards for scientific posters presented at the Michigan Physical Therapy Association annual conferences, and the annual research days of the college and the Institute of Gerontology. Goldberg has served on many committees in the Physical Therapy program, the college and the university. He serves as a manuscript reviewer for nine scientific journals including the Journals of Gerontology Series A; Biological and Medical Sciences, Gait and Posture, The Gerontologist, Journal of Aging Research and the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He also serves as a conference abstract reviewer for national scientific meetings of the American Physical Therapy Association and the Gerontological Society of America. Regionally, Goldberg serves as a representative to the research committee of the Michigan Physical Therapy Association; nationally, he is a member of the American Physical Therapy Association Department of Practice task force on genomics education for the physical therapy profession.

Dunleavy joined Wayne State in 1995 in a part-time position, becoming full-time in 2005. She is a recognized American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) specialist in orthopedic physical therapy and has developed a unique practice area related to the treatment of musculoskeletal and soft tissue injuries sustained by dancers. As an educator, she is responsible for four major required courses in the physical therapy curriculum. This demands significant laboratory teaching time above didactic classroom teaching. Dunleavy maintains an active patient care practice focusing on professional performing artists and prevention and treatment of repetitive use injuries for the neck and spine. Her commitment to excellence in this unique patient population is nationally recognized. In addition, Dunleavy uses her expertise to train rehabilitation specialists in developing countries. She has designed clinical education curricula and delivered specialized training to fledging rehabilitation programs around the globe for more than 20 years. In the past 6 years, Dunleavy has had 13 peer-reviewed articles; 9 papers in conference proceedings or published abstracts, all as first author; 4 non-refereed articles and reports on her global initiatives; 4 instructional workbooks; and 36 peer-reviewed or invited scientific conference presentations, 26 of these at the national or international level. She has served on 20 different university, college and department committees. She also has served the APTA in several capacities, including appointment to the APTA Global Taskforce. Dunleavy also reviews manuscripts for Medical Education, Disability and Rehabilitation, and Physiotherapy Therapy and Practices. She serves on the board of directors of the international, non-profit agency Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) and was honored in 2009 with the Golden Apple Award, recognizing her “extraordinary commitment to the HVO’s ideals of teaching and knowledge transfer to develop local capacity to strengthen the health care sector’s ability to deliver medical care.”

Joining the pharmacy program in August 2004, Wilhelm holds a joint position between the university and Harper University Hospital (HUH) where she serves as a clinical pharmacy specialist in internal medicine. As an educator, she is effective both in the classroom and in the clinical setting. She provides lectures in two modular courses in the PharmD curriculum and is a contributor to the Patient Care Lab IV. Wilhelm and pharmacy colleague Pram Kale-Pradhan collaborated in the design and presentation of an elective course in nutrition support. At Harper Hospital, Wilhelm precepts PharmD students on rotation during their final year of study as well as first and second-year pharmacy residents. Since 2005, she has coordinated the HUH Longitudinal Advanced Pharmacy Practice program, enabling PharmD students to complete their final year rotation experiences at a single hospital rather than at multiple sites. Wilhelm received the Roche Preceptor of the Year award in 2008 and the EACPHS Excellence in Teaching award in 2010 as well as several other teaching awards. In the past 7 years, she has published 15 peer-reviewed papers of which she was first or corresponding author on 9. She has authored or co-authored 5 book chapters, 1 invited review paper, and 15 scientific meeting abstracts. The bulk of her service activities relate to her appointment at HUH, where she fulfills clinical functions in addition to being a member of Harper Hospital’s Residency Advisory Committee. Within the college, she is a member of several committees. Wilhelm also serves on the board of the Oakland Country Pharmacists Association, and has been active in the Southeastern Michigan Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Nationally, Wilhelm is a member of the editorial board of Annals of Pharmacotherapy, a reviewer for three journals, and active in the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. She also serves as the secretary and treasurer of the Gastrointestinal and Liver Practice and Research Network.
 
The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, one of the founding colleges of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from urban to global levels.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.

Date: May 4, 2012
Contact: Kathleen J. Karas, APR
Phone: 313-577-2312
Email: kkaras@wayne.edu

Kristen Evey, a physical therapy student, was selected from among a pool of exceptional candidates to receive the first Board of Visitors scholarship. “Kristen has been an outstanding student in all areas of the development of her physical therapy career – didactic, clinical and professional. She has gone above and beyond in service and has been very involved in research initiatives. She is an excellent representative of our program and this college,” says Sue Talley, physical therapy program director.

“All of the candidates for the Board of Visitors Annual Scholarship were extraordinary,” says Carlos Ortiz, chair, Board of Visitors Scholarship Committee. “It is an honor to be able to recognize Kristen for her leadership in and out of the classroom. We feel confident that she is on track to become a future leader in physical therapy and a Wayne State warrior in our community.”

The Board also presented smaller scholarships to Sonia Hassan, pharmacy student, and Margaret Leone, physician assistant studies student.

The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, one of the founding colleges of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from urban to global levels.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.

Date: May 3, 2012
Contact: Kathleen J. Karas, APR
Phone: 313-577-2312
Email: kkaras@wayne.edu

This is the second and third awards which Martin has received in 2012 as a junior faculty researcher. Earlier this year, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) named Martin among 18 recipients of the 2011-2012 New Investigator Awards. Martin received the award for her study Influenza & Obesity: A Prospective Study of Patient Outcomes and Antiviral Resistance.

The Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards provide seed money for research by junior faculty at Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) member institutions. These awards, according to the program’s website, are intended to enrich the research and professional growth of young faculty and result in new funding opportunities.

Prior to joining Wayne State University (WSU) in 2010, Martin did a post-doctoral fellowship in infectious disease epidemiology at Seattle Children Research Institute. She earned both a doctor of philosophy and master of public health from the University of Washington, and bachelor of science in microbiology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has had articles published in peer reviewed publications and presented at both invited lectures and professional organizations. In addition to the AACP, Martin is a member of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, and the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.

The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, one of the founding colleges of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from urban to global levels.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.

Date: April 13, 2012
Contact: Kathleen J. Karas, APR
Phone: 313-577-2312
Email: kkaras@wayne.edu
 

Michael Rybak, PharmD, MPH, professor of pharmacy and medicine and director of the Anti-Infective Research Laboratory in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharacy and Health Sciences, recently received $223,000 for six months from the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) to create a mechanism to enable better stewardship of antimicrobials and reduce resistance to them.

In recent years pharmaceutical companies have produced fewer antibiotics, which are used to treat microbial infections. That is because they offer smaller returns on investment than drugs used to treat chronic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis or hypertension and because of the difficulty of getting new anti-infectives approved by the Food and Drug Administration. A decade ago, Rybak said, companies were producing up to 20 new antibiotics a year, but now are down to maybe one or two — and in some years, none.

“We can’t continue the way we are,” he said. “We’re going to get to the stage where there are patients with serious infections but no effective antibiotics to treat them. We are simply not keeping pace with the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.”

To minimize the development of drug resistance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently made available a pool of money as part of the Affordable Care Act for which state health departments could apply; MDCH is among the first nationally to do receive such a grant.

Rybak’s project, “Improving Hospital-based Antimicrobial Prescribing Towards Reducing Antimicrobial-Resistant Hospital-Acquired Infections,” will involve working with medical support vendors to develop reporting software that can merge information with data already being collected by the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). The network enables health care providers to report epidemiology and infection data to the CDC.

Previously, researchers could look only at resistance patterns and compare them to hospital purchases of antimicrobials, but Rybak said such data yields only a rough estimate at best on how antibiotics are being prescribed.

“Just because somebody purchases drugs doesn’t mean they’re using them,” he said.

Rybak’s project is a surveillance attempt to determine how antibiotics are being prescribed. By allowing additions to the NHSN report, his grant will help researchers validate which patients receive a particular antibiotic in a specific unit in a given hospital.

The new module will derive data from bar coding systems in use at the Detroit Medical Center and the University of Michigan Health System and soon to be adopted by the Henry Ford and Beaumont health systems that document patient administration of antibiotics. It will enable researchers to trace resistance patterns to regions, states, cities and even hospital systems.

“This will vastly enhance our ability to discourage the development of antibiotic resistance,” Rybak said. “Stewardship of antimicrobials including antibiotics means trying to steer the appropriate use of antimicrobials at the most optimized dose so resistance doesn’t develop so quickly that we can’t keep pace with it.

“We’re not producing a lot of anti-infectives, so we really have to preserve the ones we have. Because unfortunately, antibiotic resistance continues to increase worldwide.

“Microbes are very quick and very smart, and they’ll be here long after we’re gone.”

###

The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, one of the founding colleges of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from urban to global levels.

Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information about research at Wayne State University, visit http://www.research.wayne.edu.

Release Date: March 27, 2012
Contact: Tom Tigani
Voice: (313) 577-1494
E-mail: tom.tigani@wayne.edu

 

The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, one of the founding colleges of Wayne State University, is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society through the preparation of highly skilled health care practitioners, and through research to improve health care practices and treatment from urban to global levels.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.

Release Date: March23, 2012
Contact: Kathleen J. Karas, APR
Phone: 313-577-2312
Email: kkaras@wayne.edu
 

Date: February 17, 2012
Contact: Kathleen J. Karas, APR
Phone: 313-577-2312
Email: kkaras@wayne.edu