“Today at USF Health we say no more,” said Donna Petersen, ScD, MHS, dean of the College of Public Health. “We will no longer tolerate smoke on the USF Health campus.”

      Banning smoking on campus tells USF Health faculty, staff and students that the institution cares about their health, Dr. Petersen said. USF Health is offering a variety of smoking cessation classes and other programs to help smokers quit.

      She hopes the change also gets attention from the broader community, Dr. Petersen said.

      “We truly believe it is our job to improve the health of the community,” she said. “Today, we send a message.”

     The campus went smoke-free on the same day as the national Great American Smoke-Out.

     Brandi Jacobs, 17, a student at Bowers/Whitley Career Center in Tampa, said she got that message loud and clear. Jacobs got her face electronically aged by the state’s Smokifier van. The van has equipment to take a photo, then electronically “age” it to show the photo subject how much older they will look if they smoke.

      “Ewww, Brandi, it looks like someone folded up your face,”  a friend told her.

      Jacobs, looking at the photo, had to agree.

      “I used to smoke for four months,” she said. “Then my mom caught me, and I quit.”

      Would she try it again? The photo made it an easy choice.

      “No, never, oh my gosh, no,” she said.

      Patricia Burns, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean of the College of Nursing, said the smoking ban is an important way for health care providers to speak out against smoking.

      “We, as health care providers, do not realize the impact we can have on our patient population,” she said.

      Yet one study has shown that if a health care provider spends just three minutes talking to a patient about smoking, those words can have a significant impact in moving the patient to quit, Dr. Burns said.

      One reason the move to ban smoking on the USF Health campus was a success, Dr. Petersen said, was because it started with students. She also praised USF's Area Health Education Center Program for putting the program in place. Dr. Petersen gave special kudos to Leila Martini, assistant director of tobacco prevention and cessation, for “her persistence, her tenacity and her passion.”

     The smokeout also provided an opportunity for AHEC to present its first AHEC Access to Health Care Award. Cynthia Selleck, program director, presented the award to Dr. Charles Mahan, dean and professor emeritus in the College of Public Health.

      Now that USF Health is smoke free, the work isn’t over, said Steven Specter, PhD, associate dean for student affairs and leader of a task force to implement the ban. He hopes students will push to ban smoking on the rest of the USF campus. He also hopes USF and its medical students can work with other medical schools to extend the state’s indoor smoking bans to outdoor areas of state institutions.

      “Today is a beginning,” he said. “Not an ending.”

      -- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications; photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Click here to read about Dr. Lezama's recognition in ACP Hospitalist.

USF Health’s Jose Lezama, MD, FACP, has been named one of the nation’s top 10 hospitalists in the November 2009 issue of ACP Hospitalist, a publication of the American College of Physicians.

Dr. Lezama, associate professor of internal medicine at USF Health and chief of medicine at the James Haley Veterans’ Hospital, was one of two physicians in the Southeast (and the only one in Florida) to be honored in the journal’s second annual Top Hospitalists issue. A hospitalist is a physician, without a private outside practice, whose time is devoted solely to caring for hospitalized patients.

The journal solicited nominations from its readership – hospital-based internists and third-year medicine residents – last spring and summer, asking for hospitalists making notable contributions to the field of hospital medicine, whether through clinical skills, research, innovation, teamwork, community involvement, improved work flow, patient safety, leadership, mentorship or quality improvement. The editorial board reviewed the nominations and selected the top 10, including Dr. Lezama, who are profiled in the November issue.

“He is an outstanding physician with more dedication to his patients than I have seen in my career from anyone else,” said Alexander I. Reiss, ACP member and a colleague who nominated Dr. Lezama as a Top Hospitalist. “His contributions as an expert at our medical morning report have established him as the ‘go-to guy’ for difficult cases and advice for younger faculty.”

One of the youngest chiefs of medicine in the nation in one of the country’s busiest VA hospitals, Dr. Lezama is known for his ability to motivate and inspire younger physicians. He was among 42 doctors nationwide nominated by his peers for the 2007 Humanism in Medicine Award, sponsored by the American Association of Medical Colleges. His board review series has been instrumental in boosting resident pass rates for the past seven years, and USF internal medicine residents have voted him Teacher of the Year for five years running.

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     That was 20 years ago, but now Bell wonders if those injuries could have had long-term effects.

     That question brought him to the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute Tuesday for the institute’s annual Memory Screening Day. About 100 people came to get free screening, a process that can show whether they should receive further testing for cognitive problems.

     Bell was among them. He sat down with Dr. Amanda Smith, medical director of the Byrd Institute, who asked him a series of questions.

     What’s the date? What city are we in? What county? What building are you in? What floor of the building are we on?

Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Jerry Bell answers questions on a memory screening quiz given by Dr. Amanda Smith, medical director of the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute.

     Bell, 50, answered the questions with ease. But he plans to return each year, to make sure his cognitive abilities show no signs of decline. Bell knows early diagnosis can slow progress of Alzheimer’s symptoms.

     “There’s no cure – but I might get to see my grandkids for five years more,” he said.

     Bell is thinking far ahead. His two children are in college, and he has no grandchildren yet.

     But his presence at Tuesday’s event had a larger purpose as well. Bell wants to bring more attention to the increased risk of Alzheimer’s for former NFL players. The potential long-term damage of head injuries to football players has been the subject of national debate recently, with a Congressional hearing held to discuss the risks and whether players are adequately safeguarded and treated.

     “The thing is, let’s find out what the risk is,” Bell said. “Nobody’s saying, ‘Stop playing football,’ because the guys won’t do it. But put some things in place to make it safer.”

     Working to design better helmets, strictly enforcing game rules to help avoid head injuries and treating head injuries with vigilance are among the steps that football coaches and physicians need to take, Bell said.
Both times Bell was concussed, nobody worried much, he said.

     “I played the rest of the game,” he said. “That’s how it was done.”

     Still, he figures he was lucky.  Now a senior account manager for a company that sells computer equipment, Bell played tight end. His linebacker teammates got hit harder and more often.

     “I had about half the amount of contact that some people did,” he said.

     On Tuesday, he fielded Dr. Smith’s questions correctly as they became more complex.

     I’m going to say three words: apple, book, cat. How do you spell “world” backwards? Please count backwards from 100, by 7s. How many words can you say that start with the letter “f?” What were the three words I said earlier?

     The range of questions is meant to test different aspects of how the brain works, Dr. Smith told Bell.

     “People tend to think of Alzheimer’s as just memory and forgetting,” she said. “But some people show up first with language problems. They can’t find words for things. They hold up a pen and call it ‘that thing you write with.’ “

Former NFL players Jerry Bell, left, and E.G. Green, right, stand outside the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute with Dr. Amanda Smith.

Getting that early screening will become even more important as medications now in development make it easier to prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, said Dave Morgan, PhD, chief scientific officer of the Byrd Institute.

     “The analogy that I like is that it’s better to take your statins before you have a heart attack, rather than after,” he said.

    Bell wasn’t the only NFL player answering such questions at the Byrd Institute Tuesday. Former Colts player E.G. Green, 34, got a screening test as well. Green may seem young to take such a test, but he said it’s important to show that it’s okay for football players to take steps to protect their health.

    “We grew up in a culture where you try to mask all injuries,” he said. “You have to be able to make it. You have to ‘tough it out.’ Once the game is over, it’s hard to think you’re not Superman anymore.”

      Players, their families and their doctors and coaches need to be aware of that mindset, he said, so that former players get appropriate care.

     “You transform from a gladiator to a citizen,” he said. “You need to be able to take care of yourself after football.”

     - Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications; photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Nearly 1,500 people of all ages gathered at the University of South Florida this Saturday, Nov. 14, to stride forward together in the American Diabetes Association’s StepOut to Fight Diabetes Walk. The ADA’s signature fundraising walk, coinciding with National Diabetes Day, was held at more than 150 sites across the country.

Hosting the walk was a chance for USF to showcase its bold initiative to fight diabetes on every front – from education and research to family-centered care. The University is planning a new center for people with diabetes – an inviting place that will be a hub for the diabetes community and where patients can practice the healthy eating habits and exercise so vital to diabetes.

The USF community was an integral part of the event. Teams from across the university walked to raise funds that will support critical research, provide community-based education programs and protect the rights of people with diabetes – a chronic disease expected to confront one in three U.S. children if current trends continue.

“It was a great opportunity for us to show the Tampa Bay community our commitment and forward momentum in the fight against diabetes,” said Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999 and director of communications and education for the USF Diabetes Center. “We were honored to partner with the ADA and play a role in fundraising for better treatment and an ultimate cure for diabetes.”

Johnson worked with the ADA to coordinate the walk, emceed the event, and led post-walk tours of the center’s new educational space. USF Health student volunteers helped conduct health screenings. Staff and faculty volunteered at booths for heart health education, stroke awareness and podiatry screening.

Adults and children had the opportunity to be screened for the TrialNet studies, which seeks to identify those with early signs of Type 1 diabetes to investigate new therapies that may halt or slow disease progression. The NIH-sponsored worldwide network of clinical studies is coordinated at USF by Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, professor and chief of epidemiology in the Department of Pediatrics.

See photo gallery of the day’s activates below:

Dr. Stephen Klasko, USF medical school dean and CEO of USF Health, gives a pep talk before the walk.

Nicole Johnson, director of communications and education for the USF Diabetes Center, greets walkers.

A zumba troupe warms up the crowd.

Walkers assemble at the starting line.

The route started and finished at USF Simmons Park near the Psychology/Communication Building.

Cara Capitena, a first-year USF medical student, checks Diana Persaud's blood pressure.

Nicole Johnson, with daugher Ava, helped lead post-walk tours showing off the USF Diabetes Center's new education space.

Johnson welcomes a group of young walkers to one of the Diabetes Center's child-friendly areas.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, Photos by Eric Younghans; USF Health Communicatons

Theresa Beckie, PhD, of the USF College of Nursing, compared the physical and psychosocial effects of a traditional cardiac rehabilitation to a program geared specifically for women.

ORLANDO, FL. (Nov. 17, 2009) — Depressive symptoms improved among women with coronary heart disease who participated in a motivationally-enhanced cardiac rehabilitation program exclusively for women, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2009.

Depression often co-occurs with heart disease and is found more often in women with heart disease than in men. Depression also interferes with adherence to lifestyle modifications and the willingness to attend rehabilitation.

“Women often don’t have the motivation to attend cardiac rehab particularly if they’re depressed,” said Theresa Beckie, Ph.D., lead investigator and author of the study and professor at the University of South Florida’s College of Nursing in Tampa, FL. “Historically women have not been socialized to exercise and their attendance in cardiac rehabilitation programs has been consistently poor over the last several decades. This poor attendance may be partly due to mismatches in stages of readiness for behavior change with the health professional approaching from an action-oriented perspective and the women merely contemplating change --- this is destined to evoke resistance.”

Cardiac rehabilitation programs tailored to the needs of women and to their current level of readiness to change may improve adherence to such programs and potentially improve outcomes for women, she said.

The primary goals of the 5-year randomized clinical trial were to compare multiple physiological and psychosocial outcomes of women who participated in a 12-week stage-of-change matched, motivationally enhanced, gender-tailored cardiac rehabilitation program exclusively for women compared to women attending a 12-week traditional cardiac rehabilitation program comprised of education and exercise. Depressive symptoms of 225 women (average age 63) who completed this trial were examined after the interventions as well as after a 6-month follow-up period.

Women with cardiac disease have unique needs and confront different challenges than men in adopting healthy behaviors as they recover, Beckie says.

Participants completed the 20-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale prior to beginning the intervention, one week after completing the intervention, and again six months later. The questionnaire asked them about how often in the past week they felt depressed, hopeful, lonely, happy and fearful.

Depression scores for the women participating in the traditional cardiac rehab dropped from 16.5 to 14.3 in 12 weeks, while scores in the augmented group dropped from 17.3 to 11.0 – “a significant decline compared to the traditional group,” said Beckie.

After a six-month follow-up, the traditional rehab group had an average score of 15.2 and those in the women-specific program had a mean score of 13. Beckie said “we found that improvements in depressive symptoms were sustained at the 6-month follow-up in the augmented group while those in traditional cardiac rehab were essentially unchanged. This intervention also led to significantly better attendance and completion rates than those in the traditional cardiac rehabilitation program.”

The intervention was guided by the transtheoretical model of behavior change and was delivered with motivational interviewing clinical methods. The motivationally-enhanced intervention began with an assessment of their stage of motivational readiness to change regarding three behaviors: healthy eating, physical activity, and stress management. The investigators then applied appropriate stage-matched strategies to promote the uptake of health behaviors.

“The stage-matched intervention used in conjunction with motivational interviewing applied the patient-centered principles of expressing empathy, rolling with resistance to change, respecting patient autonomy and supporting self-efficacy for change” Beckie said.

“We didn’t push them if they weren’t ready to make the changes,” Beckie said. “We have found that if some patients receive long lists of behaviors they are expected to change immediately — such as quitting smoking, eating healthier, exercising regularly — they are overwhelmed. Pushing such patients who are not ready can lead them to tune out or drop out. Instead, for these women, we acknowledged their ambivalence about change and gave them strategies to move toward being ready by reinforcing their own motivations for changing. It’s unrealistic to expect all patients to change their lifestyle all at once, right now in front of you.”

The positive impact of the women-centered program remained six months after the 12-week study ended.

The woman-centered program is a more individualized approach to rehabilitation.

“You can’t treat everyone the same when it comes to changing health behaviors,” she said.

Beckie hopes these results will lead to symptoms of depression being assessed more often in women suffering from heart disease and to more motivationally augmented, women-specific rehabilitation options. The participants may not be completely representative of the national population because they all had health insurance.

Beckie’s co-author is Jason Beckstead, PhD. The National Institute of Nursing Research funded the 5-year study.

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

L to R: Dr. William Dalton, Dr. Richard Roetzheim, Maria Pinzon, Dr. Leslene Gordon, Dr. B. Lee Green and Dr. Ralph Wilcox.

The USF-Moffitt Center of Excellence for Cancer Health Disparities was formally introduced to the community Nov. 12 at a reception attended by community leaders, elected officials and university and Moffitt Cancer Center faculty and staff.

The center’s new name -- Center for Equal Health: Community Partnerships in Research, Education and Training – was unveiled for the audience by community directors Leslene Gordon, PhD, of the Hillsborough County Health Department and Maria Pinzon of the Hispanic Services Council.

The center will focus on reducing cancer-related disparities among Florida’s minority and underserved populations. Researchers will address such questions as why African-American men are much more likely to develop and die from prostate cancer than white men. This summer, USF and Moffitt were awarded a highly competitive $6-million, five-year program grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health, to establish the center --- one of three in Florida.

Desiree Rivers, PhD, center director, was emcee for the reception.

“I’ve spent my entire career documenting the toll of health disparities, so it’s very exciting that we have the chance to do something to develop effective solutions,” said Center Co-Director Richard Roetzheim, MD, MPH, professor and director of research for the USF Department of Family Medicine. “It will be challenging, but we’ve assembled a tremendous team of talented people from USF, Moffitt and the community.”

“The community must be a vital and active participant in our Center,” said Center Co-Director B. Lee Green, PhD, professor and vice president of Moffitt Diversity. “The Center is not intended to be about statistics, but about addressing the needs of real people – some of whom unfortunately suffer disproportionately from serious diseases and disabilities.”

USF Provost Ralph Wilcox, PhD, said the legal, socioeconomic, structural and other barriers that lead to inequities in care and poorer health outcomes for minority and disadvantaged populations are daunting, but not insurmountable.

“The Center is exactly the type of partnership model that allows Moffitt and USF to unleash their complementary strengths,” Wilcox said. “I remain hopeful that this collaboration will help us better understand the scope and root causes of disparities and, most importantly, generate solutions to close the gaps of these disparities.”

Florida ranks second in the United States in the number of deaths from cancer, said Moffitt CEO William Dalton, PhD, MD. He noted that USF and Moffitt had a one in 10 chance of securing the highly competitive NCMHD Center of Excellence award. “Competing with the best and brightest in the nation to win this grant speaks volumes about this community and the partnership between USF and Moffitt,” he said.

USF Provost Ralph Wilcox, PhD, with the College of Public Health's Deanna Wathington, MPH, co-leader for the center's Community Engagement Core.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

RELATED STORY:
USF-Moffitt Center of Excellence Targets disparities in cancer care and outcomes

     She had five kilometers to run and she wasn’t sure she could do it.

     Once, it would have been easy.

     Schofield could always count on her body to perform. She grew up in Lakeland playing soccer. She could run fast, kick strong.

     Her athletic ability won her a scholarship and made her a soccer star at Florida State University. It helped her set college scoring records that remain unbroken. It guided her decision to move to Tampa to coach soccer for Tampa Preparatory School and competitive youth soccer teams.

     But all that was before.

     Now, 28-year-old Schofield was scared.

                                                                     ***

          It began on a Sunday afternoon in January 2008. Schofield had been at the soccer fields all weekend, coaching and leading personal training sessions. She started to feel dizzy and confused. 

     “My head was out to here,” she said. “I felt like I had been hit by a bus.”

     She called her mom in Lakeland, who told her she would drive over and take her to a doctor.

     But Schofield decided the pain was too bad. Her head felt like it was going to explode. She drove herself to a walk-in clinic, went in, waited, saw the doctor.

Cindy Schofield didn't know whether she would ever walk again after a sudden illness nearly killed her.

     Her mom met her in the parking lot and asked her what the doctor had said.

     “I don’t remember,” Schofield told her.

     Her mom drove her to a local hospital. Her father and her brother soon joined her. Doctors took her to get an MRI. Later, she wouldn’t remember any of that, either.

     Nor would she remember the MRI results. A doctor came out and delivered the news to her parents.

     “She has a cancerous brain tumor,” he told them. “She’ll be dead in two years.”

                                                                 ***

     Her parents, devastated, began making phone calls. They were determined to get their daughter the best treatment possible. They took her to H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.

     There, Schofield underwent surgery. Doctors were prepared to do a biopsy and to remove whatever part of the tumor they could.

     They didn’t find what they expected.

     This part, Schofield does remember: she was with her father when his cell phone rang with the biopsy results.

     He started to cry. It wasn’t cancer.

     Amidst his tears of relief, her father didn’t realize it was something just as deadly.

                                                           ***

     Schofield kept getting worse. Her vision kept blurring. The pain in her head was horrible. She could no longer move the left side of her body. She couldn’t even walk.

     Moffitt doctors believed her problem was related to multiple sclerosis. They suggested that Schofield see Dr. Stanley Krolczyk, USF assistant professor of neurology and director of the USF Multiple Sclerosis Center. Schofield was impressed when he came in to see her on his day off.

     But Dr. Krolczyk wasn’t happy with what he saw. On a disability scale of 1 to 10, Schofield scored an 8.5 – and 10 was dead.

     “She was going downhill very rapidly,” he said. “There was active inflammation in her whole brain, white blood cells attacking the brain, denuding the neurons of myelin and destroying the brain tissue.”

     Myelin is the protective sheath that covers nerve fibers, like insulation around a wire. When the body’s immune system attacks myelin, it can strip nerves bare, creating scar tissue and leaving neurons unable to communicate.

     Schofield had been attacked by an extremely rare form of multiple sclerosis, called tumefactive MS. While the severity and course of MS is different for every patient, most of them become more disabled gradually, sometimes following a pattern of remission and relapse. In contrast, tumefactive MS can hit somebody like a thunderbolt out of a blue sky.

     “There’s no way to predict which individuals develop this,” Dr. Krolczyk said. “It looks like an aggressive brain tumor on an MRI.”

     Nor is the prognosis any better. Most patients die within a few months.

Dr. Stanley Krolczyk, USF assistant professor of neurology and director of the USF Multiple Sclerosis Center, said the inflammation in Schofield's brain was so bad it could be mistaken on an MRI for a brain tumor.

      Schofield’s situation seemed bleak. About 460,000 people in the U.S. now have MS. But Dr. Krolczyk has found only a few dozen published cases that seem as severe as hers.

     With such a rare condition, there were no guidelines – no protocol to guide Dr. Krolczyk on the best way to save Schofield. He had to design his own treatment.

     Schofield’s best chance, Dr. Krolczyk decided, was aggressive action to try to reduce the swelling and inflammation in her brain before it created any more damage. He decided on a combination of three drugs to attack the inflammation in every way possible.

     Schofield received steroids to reduce the inflammation in her brain. Plasma exchange to remove antibodies and inflammatory mediators from her blood. And a special chemotherapy drug to suppress the T-cells that could attack her brain again.

     Schofield was hospitalized for weeks, but she would remember little of her time there. Only one decision stayed with her: sometime in her hospital bed, unable to walk, she vowed this would not be her future.

Schofield wound up in the hospital, unable to move the left side of her body.

      She would recover, she promised herself. She would walk again. And then she would run. Still in the hospital, she decided she would run a 5K.

                                                                  ***

     It was that vow to herself that Schofield thought of as she approached the starting line of her 5K – the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, held in St. Petersburg in October.

     She was still scared. Her balance wasn’t good. What if she stumbled? A stubbed toe might send her sprawling.

     But she stepped over the starting line and began to run.

                                                                 ***

     When she left the hospital, Schofield came home to a different world. Her parents left Lakeland and moved in with her. They rented a hospital bed for the living room. The once strong athlete was in a wheelchair. Not only could she not walk, she couldn’t even lift her left arm.

     Her life seemed to have turned into a shuttle between doctor’s visits and physical therapy sessions. At first, there were days when Schofield didn’t even want to get out of bed.

     And then she would tell herself: No. She was not going back to the hospital. She forced herself to do more.

     Her parents and Dr. Krolczyk encouraged her as well. He and Lise Casady, a USF nurse practitioner who works with Dr. Krolczyk, were in constant contact.

     “They pushed me when I needed to be pushed,” Schofield said.

     She set small goals. She had to work just to gain enough hand strength to squish a stress ball. To be able to lift her arm long enough to put her hair in a ponytail.

Schofield was determined to run again.

     She still felt mentally fuzzy as well. She had to work to remember daily routines, dates and even the trauma that had struck her life. She joked about the movie “50 First Dates,” in which Drew Barrymore suffers a brain injury and can’t remember anything for longer than a day. She tried to write things down to help her memory.

     Schofield had been through hard times before. In her sophomore year of college, her fiancé was killed in a skydiving accident. Shattered, Schofield nearly left FSU. It was her close ties to the members of her soccer team that pulled her through.

     “That was my family,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

     Now, she was relying on athletics to help her again.

                                                                ***

     As she ran, her mind began to slip backwards. Everything started to replay through her mind. Her brush with death, her fall into disability, and all she had been through just trying to walk.

     She struggled not to cry. She didn’t even think about the ground that she was covering, or the speed she was traveling. She just relived the struggle, stride after stride.

                                                               ***

      Schofield moved from a wheelchair to a walker, then to a heavy cane. Next to a lighter one.

      She gradually began reclaiming her life. She returned to her passion, coaching soccer, limping along the sidelines with her cane.

      One tournament weekend, she got tired of the cane. It was in the way. She decided on the spot that she could balance without it. So she put it down.

      The next day, she walked into her physical therapist’s office on her own.

      “I told her I graduated,” Schofield laughed.

      Still, Schofield wasn’t sure she could balance well enough to run. In the spring, she began to run on a treadmill – slowly, about 4.5 mph – so that she could hold on to the arm rails.

     Gradually she increased her speed and distance. Dr. Krolczyk was impressed with her determination.

     “She’s a very hard worker,” he said. “It’s great to have patients like that.”

     Schofield was learning as well about taking care of herself, being careful not to get overheated and giving herself more time to rest after exercise or long spells of coaching in the Florida heat. She also remained on a medicine to modify her immune system.

     Although MS patients are known for going through periods of relapse, Schofield and Dr. Krolczyk are cautiously optimistic.

     “So far she only appears to get better,” Dr. Krolczyk said. “We hope this was one unbelieveably bad case that will not recur.”

     Despite her progress, Schofield was still scared to run outside. Her balance remained a little shaky; she couldn’t balance while standing only on her left foot. She was still afraid of falling.

     Four days before the race, she went to the Upper Tampa Bay Trail with something to prove. She turned right, where the trees shade the path and the trail runs true north, and began to run.

                                                                     ***

      Step by step, the distance fell away. Thirty-two minutes after she began to run, Cindy Schofield, a woman left battered by multiple sclerosis, crossed the finish line.

Schofield runs along a sunny section of the Upper Tampa Bay Trail.

     Her mother cheered as she saw her daughter cross the line and then she began to spread the news. She got out the cell phone, calling everyone: Cindy did it. She finished. She really did it.

      But Schofield saw the clock coming over the finish line.

     “That’s it?” she asked herself.

     She had been so scared. She hadn’t run for speed – just to finish. Now, she thought, she could have run faster if she had pushed harder.

     She felt a rush of her old competitive spirit. In November, she decided, she would do another 5K. Then a half-marathon, maybe in the spring. And this time, she’d run faster.

     Then she knew.

     She was back.

Runner 3443, Cindy Schofield

                                                                ***

-- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications; Trail photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications; Other photos courtesy of Cindy Schofield

Read St. Petersburg Times story...

Tampa, FL (Nov. 12, 2009) -- A multidisciplinary team of USF Health and Tampa General Hospital physicians recently performed the first Ex Utero Intrapartum Treatment (EXIT) at TGH -- successfully securing an airway for a baby girl with a large benign tumor wrapped around her neck before fully delivering the 7 pound, 11 ounce infant by Cesarean section.

EXIT is an innovative procedure developed to deliver infants with severe congenital abnormalities that may make breathing after delivery difficult or impossible. During EXIT, the newborn is partially delivered in a manner similar to a C-section, but the umbilical cord supplying oxygen from mother to baby is not immediately cut. Instead, the baby is intubated -- a breathing tube is inserted through the mouth or nose into the windpipe – and delivery of the infant is completed and cord cut only after a clear airway has been established.

“The biggest challenge in this type of procedure is establishing an airway for the fetus while maintaining a steady supply of oxygen so that no neurological damage occurs,” said Valerie Whiteman, MD, lead USF obstetrician for the EXIT delivery on Oct. 1. “If you can’t successfully intubate on the first attempt, surgical intervention is required and that potentially increases the risk for both the fetus and mother.”

Dr. Valerie Whiteman, interim director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at USF Health, led the EXIT delivery.

This challenging, uncommon procedure (only about 100 cases have been documented in the United States) required extensive, seamless coordination by the USF-TGH team of 20-plus physicians, nurses and other health professionals assembled inside and just outside the operating room.

The following were the key physicians on the EXIT delivery team:

• Maternal-Fetal Medicine -- Dr. Valerie Whiteman, USF assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and interim director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, assisted by Dr. Aaron Deutsch, senior maternal fetal medicine fellow

• Anesthesia – Dr. Devanand Mangar, anesthesiologist with Gulf-to-Bay Anesthesiology and chief of staff at Tampa General Hospital, and Dr. Amrat Anand, Gulf-to-Bay anesthesiologist

• Neonatalogy - Dr. Terri Ashmeade and Dr. Laura Haubner, both USF assistant professors of pediatrics, and Dr. Lewis Rubin, professor and chief of neonatology at USF

• Pediatric Surgery - Dr. Charles Paidas, director of USF Division of Pediatric Surgery

Patty Bornick, RN, MSN, perinatal navigator for the USF Health Fetal Care Center of Tampa Bay, coordinated care for the high-risk obstetric patient, a 31-year-old woman who lives in Tampa with her husband and two other children.

Anesthesiologists delivered anesthesia to the mother and a medication to prevent contractions during intubation. Obstetricians performed the high-risk surgical delivery using a special autosuturing device to minimize maternal bleeding. Neonatologists intubated once the infant’s head and shoulders were delivered and assessed the baby after birth. The pediatric surgeon was on standby in case intubation proved difficult, so that some of the tumor could be cut away or a hole could be made in the windpipe. The infant’s heart rate was continually monitored by ultrasound for any signs of oxygen loss.

The USF-TGH team established protocols and contingency plans for the surgery and practiced with two dry runs in the operating room in August and September. During the actual EXIT procedure, intubation was successful on the first attempt.

“We were all familiar with our roles, our equipment and what steps needed to be taken when. We prepared for the best and worst case scenarios. It took teamwork, teamwork and more teamwork,” Dr. Whiteman said. “This EXIT procedure required tremendous collaboration, and the successful outcome speaks well of the partnership between TGH and USF and our extensive resources.”

“Preparing for the procedure with Dr. Laura Haubner, director of the Department of Pediatrics Center for Team Education and Multidisciplinary Simulation was vital,” said Dr. Ashmeade, the neonatologist who placed the breathing tube. “She is an expert in critical resource management and patient safety. I knew that she was aware of the entire situation in the operating room, which allowed me to concentrate solely on securing the baby’s airway.”

USF pediatric surgeon Dr. Charles Paidas has already performed one surgery to begin removing the benign tumor wrapped around the baby's neck.

The baby was discharged home from Tampa General’s neonatal intensive care unit on Oct. 12. The benign tumor, a cystic hygroma, will be resected in two stages because it is attached from the base of her skull to her tongue, and surrounds her heart, windpipe and great vessels. She underwent a first operation Oct. 30 to remove the neck portion of the hygroma. In two to three months, a second operation will remove the remainder of the tumor in her right chest.

“This was not simply a team, but a team that practiced all aspects of the planned procedure and practice makes perfect,” Dr. Paidas said.

- USF Health –
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.3 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu

- Tampa General Hospital -
Tampa General is a 988-bed acute care hospital on the west coast of Florida that serves as the region’s only center for level I trauma care, comprehensive burn care and adult solid organ transplants. It is the primary teaching hospital for the University of South Florida College of Medicine. TGH is also one of only 16 comprehensive stroke centers in Florida and is a state-certified spinal cord and head injury rehabilitation center.

- News release by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

Dr. Alan Zelicoff (front center) with, from left to right, Wil Milhous, PhD, associate dean for research in the College of Public Health; John Sinnott, MD, director of Infectious Disease and International Medicine; and Phil Marty, PhD, associate vice president for USF Health Research.

A little-known smallpox outbreak in the Soviet Union years ago and its implications for biological weapons defense today was the topic when physician-scientist Dr. Alan Zelicoff visited USF Health last week. His Nov. 3 lecture in the College of Public Health Auditorium was sponsored by the USF Health Office of Research.

Dr. Zelicoff, a smallpox expert, is the former senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories. He and experts from the Monterey Institute of International Studies linked a 1971 outbreak in the Kazakh Republic to a Soviet field test of weaponized smallpox. The Soviet Union did not report the outbreak to world health officials as required by law.

In an interview in the New York Times, Dr. Zelicoff called the outbreak a “watershed” because it demonstrated that the smallpox virus was more easily spread than previously thought and that there may be a vaccine-resistant strain.

“His lecture was a reality check on our continued need for diligence in areas of infectious diseases, disaster preparedness and biowarfare,” said Phillip Marty, PhD, associate vice president for the USF Health Office of Research.

Dr. Zelicoff’s current interests include risk and hazard analysis in hospital systems and office-based practice and technologies for improving the responsiveness of public health offices and countering biological weapons and terrorism. His latest book is Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague?, a comprehensive account of the public health threat posed by microbial pathogens, including naturally emerging disease threats, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or West Nile virus.

Dr. Alexander Rosemurgy was recognized for his dedication to pancreatic cancer research and patient advocacy.

USF -TGH surgeon Alexander Rosemurgy, MD, was recently honored for his leading expertise and research contributions in the field of pancreatic cancer by the patient-based advocacy organization Pancreatic Cancer Action Network of Tampa Bay.

Dr. Rosemurgy was recognized for his years of dedication to helping patients and families understand and fight the devastating disease Nov. 5 at the local PCAN’s 3rd Annual Auction for Action at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City.

Dr. Rosemurgy, professor of surgery and medicine and surgical director of the Digestive Disorders Center at Tampa General Hospital, holds the Vivian Clark Reeves/Joy McCann Culverhouse Endowed Chair for Digestive Diseases and Pancreatic Cancer at USF.

He is world renowned for his expertise in resecting pancreatic cancers and has extended the lives of many patients through surgery. Dr. Rosemurgy and colleagues at USF-TGH continue to conduct innovative research in the field of pancreatic research and have published numerous high-impact papers about how to best operate on patients with pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is among the top four cancer killers in the United States. Most of the more than 30,000 Americans diagnosed with pancreatic cancer die of it because the symptoms are often so subtle that the disease is far advanced before it is diagnosed.

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is a nationwide network of people dedicated to working together to advance research, support patients and create hope for those affected by pancreatic cancer. The organization raises money for direct private funding of research -- and advocates for more aggressive federal research funding of medical breakthroughs in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer.

- Photo by Ellen Fiss, Tampa General Hospital

"Dr. Charles Cox is one of the country's great pioneers in surgical treatment for breast cancer, as well as staging tumors to minimize the surgery itself," said Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, Vice President for USF Health and Dean of the College of Medicine at the University of South Florida.

"A veritable community of patients, friends and supporters gathered together to raise $50,000 in support of his program at USF's new Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare on campus in Tampa."

USF Health surgeon Dr. Charles Cox

Cox Charles Cox, MD, FACS, professor of surgery at USF and CEO of the USF Health Breast program has more than 30 years experience helping patients navigate the diagnostic and treatment options for surviving breast cancer. His work on breast conservation and nipple-sparing techniques is known the world over. In the 1990s, he pioneered a critical advance in staging tumors through lymph nodes through intra-operative sentinel node biopsies.

The Hooked on Hope volunteers are committed to ending breast cancer. Their website is here: http://www.hookedonhope.org/

Tampa, FL (Nov. 9, 2009) – Kevin B. Sneed, PharmD, has been appointed the founding dean of the USF School of Pharmacy. Dr. Sneed, associate professor of family medicine and assistant dean and clinical director of the College of Medicine’s Division of Clinical Pharmacy, was selected for the high-profile position following a nationwide search.

Dr. Sneed championed and was the major architect of the proposal for USF’s four-year Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program, which was approved by the Florida Board of Governors this January. Housed within the USF College of Medicine, the School of Pharmacy plans to admit the first class of students in August 2011.

Kevin Sneed, PharmD

“USF is going change the face of pharmacy practice with our graduates and faculty,” Dr. Sneed said. “Tomorrow’s pharmacists will be expected to take a lead role in managing and delivering technologically-advanced pharmaceutical care based on a patient’s genetic makeup and individualized responses to medications. We are building a program strategically designed to prepare pharmacy clinicians for this challenging new model of patient-centered practice.”

“With his impassioned commitment to academic pharmacy education, his vision of entrepreneurial academic excellence, and strong scholarly, research and clinical skills, Dr. Sneed is well prepared to lead the pharmacy school of the future,” said Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO of USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine. “The innovative clinical pharmacy program he continues to advance will embody the interprofessional education model we’ve begun in public health, medicine, nursing and physical therapy.”

The interdisciplinary program will draw upon faculty and other resources from USF’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health and create opportunities for collaborative teaching and research university-wide. The curriculum will emphasize medication management for the elderly, research-based drug discovery and development, and personalized care for chronic illnesses. Dr. Sneed has already established key partnerships with USF-affiliated teaching hospitals and outpatient sites where USF pharmacy students will receive their clinical training. The pharmacy school intends to establish academic and clinical partnerships across the greater Tampa Bay area.

Dr. Sneed received his PharmD degree from Xavier University of Louisiana College of Pharmacy in 1998 and completed a primary care pharmacy residency at Bay Pines VA Medical Center in St. Petersburg.

He joined the USF Department of Family Medicine in 1999 as a visiting professor from Florida A&M College of Pharmacy, where he was an associate professor and ambulatory care clinical coordinator. At Florida A&M, he was a key member of curriculum committees and participated in several accreditation reviews – experience that has helped in building USF’s PharmD program to comply with new accreditation standards.

In addition to teaching pharmacy, medical and other health-professions students and conducting funded clinical research, Dr. Sneed created the USF College of Medicine’s first primary care clinical pharmacy program. More recently, he developed consultant pharmacy services for the Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare, a USF Hemophilia Center Pharmacy, and a USF Clinical Research Pharmacy.

Dr. Sneed’s primary clinical and research interest is cardio-metabolic disorders. He has published numerous peer-reviewed papers and a book chapter. He established USF Health as a member of the National Pharmacy-Based Research Network, which will serve as the foundation for future USF pharmacy faculty to conduct national-level studies with other pharmacy programs across the country.

Dr. Sneed has a long history of community service to underserved communities. He created and directed the Inter-collaborative Student and Community Health Assessment Project and Evaluation (IN-SCHAPE), a nationally-recognized cardiovascular health disparities project that addresses cardiovascular risk factors in Hillsborough County communities. He has received statewide recognition from the Florida Prostate Cancer Network for his efforts to educate African-American men about cardiovascular risks.

- USF Health -
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.3 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu

- Release by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The NBC cameraman sets up a shot in one of CACL's exam rooms, flanked by fourth-year medical student Catherine Kubiak. TODAY Show reporter Jenna Wolfe (sitting left), playing the role of a standardized patient, listens.

USF Health’s Center for Advanced Clinical Learning (CACL) was featured on the national television program, NBC’s Today Show, this Monday, Nov. 16.

TODAY Show co-anchor and national correspondent Jenna Wolfe visited USF Health on September 29th to step into the shoes of the center's standardized patient program – folks who are hired and trained to serve as a patient and act out an illness. Opened in 2005, the center was developed to both teach and evaluate students on their clinical and patient communication skills. The comprehensive standardized patient program allows students to practice healthcare skills with real "patients" in a risk-free medical environment. It also emphasizes communication and interpersonal skills vital to patient safety, satisfaction and quality care.

Jenna donned a medical gown and jumped right into role play, learning from Dawn M. Schocken director of the Center for Advanced Clinical Learning, and Fred Slone, MD, the center's medical director. We won’t give away the details of how Jenna survived her experience; you’ll have to watch!

TODAY Show's Wolfe (far right) meets with CACL directors and standardized patients before the shoot.

Discussing her patient case scenario with Dr. Fred Slone, CACL medical director, and Dawn Schocken, director.

The cameraman zooms in for closeup of Wolfe talking with Dawn Schocken.
TODAY Show producer Lindsay Grubb (left) checks her emails.

Getting some standardized patient tips from Schocken.

Checking out SimMan, one of CACL's state-of-the-art patient simulators.

Wolfe evaluates the USF medical student who examined her.

TODAY Show crew with USF Health faculty, staff and students involved in the standardized patient production.

- About the Center -

The Center for Advanced Clinical Learning has 12 state-of-the-art clinical examination rooms, all equipped with advanced digital video monitoring as well as a closed circuit computerized evaluation system, with computer capabilities both inside the room as well as a student station immediately outside the clinical room. Each room is linked on a master video monitoring display in the control room, as well as having accessibility in the Video Monitoring Room itself. This year the center has had 36,000 standardized patient visits with a bank of 167 cases that represent a different medical ailment.

- Story by Susanna Martinez Tarokh, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

The podcast appears on the division-sponsored website www.idpodcasts.net, which contains a series of video lectures presented by the staff, faculty, or affiliated guests of the Division. The site was co-founded by John Sinnott, MD, division director, and webmaster Richard Oehler, MD, associate professor of medicine, in 2007.

The newest podcast features Dr Oehler, who discusses the growing problem of MRSA, staph infections resistant to antibiotics, transmitted from dogs and cats to their owners. The issue received worldwide media attention this summer when it was written about by Dr. Oehler and colleagues in a review article for The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Other recent topics covered by IDPodcasts.net have included 2009 H1N1 Flu: Seasonal Flu with a Twist, Food Safety in America, and A Global Swarming: Infectious Disease and Climate Change.

Below are some site stats obtained by Dr. Oehler from www.statsrely.com:

• IDPodcasts.net received more than 6,500 hits since August, 2007 (month Division started tracking web hits)

• Among the top 3 more requested infectious diseases podcasts on Itunes, along with the series produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Lancet.

• The top search result on Google for "Infectious Diseases Podcasts" and in the top 2 for "USF Podcast."

• Commercially-free, university supported, and up-to-date scientific content by more than 20 academic faculty

• Averages 9 to 10 hits per day, about 250 to 260 a month

• This year, averaged approximately 170 new visitors per month and over 2,000 a year

• 86 percent of visitors are from the United States; 13 percent from international locations

• Visitors from 27 countries including India, Singapore, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Peru

Representatives from the USF Health student-run BRIDGE Healthcare Clinic and the USF Health Service Corps received UACCA Community Appreciation Awards.

L to R: Karen Alonso, BRIDGE Co-Director; Florida Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp; Elizabeth Morgan, BRIDGE Physical Therapy Co-Director; Vanessa Bonet, BRIDGE Social Work Administrator; and Melanie Elliott, BRIDGE Co-Director

A national prototype, the BRIDGE Clinic brings free primary care and social services to uninsured people living in the University Community Area adjacent to the USF Tampa campus. Founded by USF medical students in 2007, the clinic brings together USF students from medicine, physical therapy and social work to provide supervised care to underserved patients.

Florida Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp with Ellen Kent, MPH, AHEC faculty coordinator for USF Health Service Corps (holding plaque), and Cynthia Selleck, DSN, ARNP, AHEC program director (back right).

Sponsored by the USF Area Health Education Center, the Health Service Corps provides student volunteers opportunities to gain valuable interdisciplinary training while serving communities in need. USF Health students routinely provide health screenings and education to residents of the University Area Community. The Corps was recognized for its successful “Tools for Schools” donation program, an annual drive that collects new school supplies and distributes them to families at the University Area Back to School Health Fair, where children receive free immunizations and physicals.

RELATED STORY:
Community partner recognizes Dr. Holt's leadership, service

Newschannel 8 anchor Gayle Sierens interviews Dr. Stephen Klasko, USF medical dean.

The USF College of Medicine was featured on last night’s (Nov. 3rd) newscast of WFLA Newschannel 8 in a story titled “A New DNA for Doctors.”

COM Dean Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, was interviewed by veteran news anchor Gayle Sierens for a segment on the college’s innovative approaches to teaching the next generation of doctors.

In introducing the interview with Dr. Klasko, Sierens said: “He’s old enough to remember Marcus Welby, MD, experienced enough as a doctor to know communication is the key to really helping patients, smart enough to have an MBA from Wharton, and wily enough to speak out and say the old way of getting kids into medical school needs a little tweaking…”

USF 2nd year medical student Elisa (Margret) McQueen and 3rd year student Courtney Bovee – both enrolled in the Business and Entrepreneurship scholarly concentration – were also interviewed.

Click here for video of the newscast "A New DNA for Doctors.".

Sierens continued the conversation with Dr. Klasko, discussing healthcare reform’s impact on medical education, on the 11 a.m. newscast scheduled to air Friday, Nov. 13. Dr. Klasko commented on the shortage of primary care physicians who will be needed to anchor a health system insuring more people.

Click here for video of newscast "Where Will The Doctors Come From?"

Dr. Holt accepts his award from MaryEllen Elia, superintendent of the Hillsborough County School District.

Douglas Holt, MD, FACP, recently received the USF Area Community Civic Association’s Edwin Radice Distinguished Service Award for his leadership in public health and community partnering. Dr. Holt is director of the Hillsborough County Health Department (HCHD) and professor and associate director of the USF Division of Infectious Disease & International Medicine. The Edwin Radice Award recognizes individuals or groups who have consistently “given of themselves for the enrichment of others and betterment of their communities.”

In addition, the county’s “Back to School Coalition,” received a Community Appreciation Award for its initiative to ensure all Hillsborough County children entering a Florida school for the first time receive physicals and immunizations. Margaret Ewen, HCHD immunization program manager, accepted the award on behalf of the department.

Both awards were presented Oct. 13 at the civic association’s 20th Annual Awards Ceremony, attended by more than 1,000 people, including legislators, city and county commissioners, school board representatives and other community leaders.

Dr. Holt was recognized for his leadership and support of the Back to School Coalition and USF Health’s BRIDGE Healthcare Clinic.

Each year before the start of the school year, more than 3,500 children receive free physicals and immunizations at eight strategically located Back to School Coalition sites across Hillsborough County. The service has reduced the number of clients filling the Health Department clinics and reduced the wait time for appointments at pediatrician’s offices after school has begun.

Dr. Holt has been a pioneer in raising awareness among USF medical students about the importance of giving back to communities in need. He helped to establish the student-run BRIDGE Clinic, which brings free primary care and social services to uninsured people living adjacent to USF in the heart of the University Area Community. BRIDGE (Building Relationships and Initiatives Dedicated to Gaining Equality), operates out of the health department’s University Area Health Clinic. Each week USF students in medicine, physical therapy and social work provide faculty-supervised care to underserved patients.

Under Dr. Holt’s leadership, the Hillsborough County Health Department has initiated new alliances with community organizations and universities to advance the public health system and better leverage its available funding. Dr. Holt directs the fourth largest of Florida’s 67 county health departments. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the USF College of Medicine and been a faculty member since 1989.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

RELATED Story:
BRIDGE Clinic, USF Health Service Corps awarded for community service

The move was deliberate – a way for the military C-17 to evade ground fire as it landed in Bagram, Afghanistan.

It was just one more sign of the dangers that soldiers face every day – signs that USF's Nicole Johnson saw firsthand a few weeks ago, as she went to visit the troops with a group of five other former Miss Americas.

"It changed my life," said Johnson, Miss America 1999 and director of education, communication, and outreach for the USF Diabetes Center. "You see their struggle and what they're giving up. They're 20 years old, and they're dying for us."

USF's Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999, surrounded by soldiers in Afghanistan with a banner of well-wished from USF Health faculty, staff and students.

The group made the trip to boost morale among the soldiers and thank them for the work they do. Unlike traditional USO shows, the Miss Americas didn't perform for crowds. Instead, their work was more personal. They listened to soldiers' stories of home and families far away. They joked about the irony of beauty queens in flak jackets. And they cried with soldiers as they talked of comrades who had died.

"We'd just hug them, and say, 'We love you, and we are here because we want you to know that,' " Johnson said. "It became that intense and emotional."

The group spent the most time with soldiers who had been under heavy fire, often witnessing the deaths of their battle buddies. With little prompting, soldiers would pour out stories of loss and talk to the women about trying to cope with grief while standing guard in a lonely land.

"We would get back on the helicopters every night, and we'd just cry for about 30 minutes," Johnson said. "It just still hurts, thinking about it – a kid that's 20 or 21, they don't deserve to have their lives cut short. And I don't know how they deal with all the psychological turmoil."

Nicole Johnson, front left, and five other Miss Americas visit with soldiers in Afghanistan.

The trip was physically demanding as well. In an effort to reach as many soldiers as possible, the women were up at 3 a.m. each day, often not returning to their temporary home – a wooden hut – until at least 10 pm. Reminders of danger were constant. They wore helmets and flak jackets, and a bomb shelter loomed just a few dozen feet from the hut. One helicopter crashed the day after Johnson rode in it. A village was bombed the day after the women visited.

But there were lighter moments too.

"I think we shocked the soldiers," Johnson laughed.

Soldiers' jaws would drop as they saw a platoon of beauty queens hit the ground and begin competing against each other to see who could do the most push-ups. The women invented a comic "Miss America formation," starting by standing at attention and segueing into a series of hokey model poses.

The oldest in the group, Miss America 1948, Bebe Shopp, 80, told all the soldiers the same thing:

"You may not know my name – but your grandfathers did."

The group flew first into Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and spent nearly two days there. While the soldiers there are physically safer at that base, known as "The Rock," than those on the front lines, Johnson said, it's still difficult.

"It's very safe, but desolate," she said. "It was dirt, dust and more dirt. It was very depressing. There was nothing there to do."

Visitors usually arrive there on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan, so soldiers based in Kuwait rarely interact with them. When Johnson and her companions did, they saw a universal response when they were introduced.

"It was a lot of joy," she said. "Their faces would light up, and then their eyes would get big."

Then she laughed.

"The sobering fact was, I was easily older, at 35, than almost everybody there."

Ericka Dunlap, Miss America 2004, and USF's Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999, as their Blackhawk helicopter takes off.

As a public health doctoral student, Johnson was pleased to see health messages about hand-washing, flu prevention and dehydration everywhere she went. Soldiers couldn't enter the cafeteria without washing their hands first.

"They really do so much better than we do at motivating people to practice good health and providing access to the right tools," she said.

There were scarier signs too: one warned to be on the lookout for cobras.

In the midst of the bomb shelters and the unfamiliar terrain, reminders of home stood out. There was a Subway and a Pizza Hut. Soldiers had painted concrete construction barriers in bright colors to honor other military units and to memorialize Sept. 11.

When the women visited Bagram Hospital, where Johnson saw a boy injured by a bomb and scrubbed in to witness a surgery to help an Afghan man wounded by insurgents, Johnson took photos of the hospital beds. Each one was ready to receive injured soldiers, covered with a quilt sewn by American hands and marked by at least one letter written by anonymous American well-wishers.

Making the journey wasn't an easy decision for Johnson. It meant a long separation from her 3-year-old daughter, Ava, and, since Johnson has type 1 diabetes, the possibility of health complications in a place with limited care.

Johnson was able to use Skype a few times during the trip to contact her family, but she wound up in a base hospital on the last night of her stay when her insulin pump backed up, sending her blood sugar level to a dangerous high. Because soldiers diagnosed with diabetes usually leave the Army, the base hospital did not have any insulin. Johnson had brought her own store of insulin, and was able to use the hospital's syringes for an injection.

Still, even Johnson's diabetes provided opportunities. She posed for a photo with one soldier holding her insulin pump high in the air. The soldier wanted to show his wife, who has diabetes, that even Miss America uses an insulin pump. Johnson also brought two banners from USF Health, signed by USF faculty, staff and students with messages of support for the soldiers. One banner is now displayed in Bagram Hospital; the other is in the terminal at Bargram Air Field.

Nicole Johnson also brought this USF Health banner to Afghanistan.

Johnson also brought five banners signed by children at her daughter's school. They are now displayed at the various Afghanistan bases the women visited, including some in base churches.

Despite the hardships of the trip, Johnson has already volunteered to return.

"War doesn't seem real to us here. I'm thankful to understand a little more about that reality," she said. "We get so wrapped up our world and our lives, and we're all spoiled. We all owe it to do more for the people who are sacrificing their lives – to do more to support them."

-- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications; Photos by Nicole Johnson, USF Diabetes Center

Oct. 29, 2009 -- USF Health has received a very limited quantity of the H1N1 Vaccine and has begun vaccinating our patients, employees, and students who meet the criteria established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the Florida Department of Health. Because the vaccine is currently available in limited quantities, the following TARGET GROUPS will receive the vaccine before others, in the following order:

1) Pregnant women
2) People who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age (e.g., parents, siblings, and daycare providers)
3) Healthcare and Emergency Medical Services personnel with direct patient contact (OB & Pediatric patient contact first).
4) Children 6 months through 4 years of age
5) Children 5 through 18 years of age who have chronic medical conditions.

Once the demand for vaccine for these target groups has been met, we will begin vaccinating all others in the following order:

1) All Healthcare personnel
2) Persons between the ages of 4 and 24 years old
3) People ages 25 through 64 years of age who are at higher risk for 2009 H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems
4) All other people ages 25 through 64 years
5) People over the age of 65

We do not expect that there will be a shortage of 2009 H1N1 vaccine and anticipate that vaccine will be available for all patients, employees and students who choose to get vaccinated. This vaccine is offered free of charge to all eligible USF Health employees, faculty, staff and students. We will keep you informed of the vaccine supply and availability and how you can obtain your vaccination.

USF Health employees and students:

If you fall in one of the top 5 target groups, the vaccine will be available to you at the South Tampa Center on the 3rd floor beginning Thursday, October 29th at 1 pm. Please review the H1N1 Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) for 2009 prior to coming for your immunization, and contact us ahead of time if you have any questions regarding your eligibility to receive the H1N1 influenza shot. If you are pregnant, you will need clearance from your OB/GYN provider and must bring the verification with you. The consent form you will complete is a duplicate. You will be given a copy for your records and we will keep the original copy to verify you have received the H1N1 influenza vaccination. Employees and students who are normally at the North Tampa Clinical sites and meet the criteria for one of the top 5 target groups, should contact the Medical Health Administration office (Employee Health) at 974-3163 or by email at llennert@health.usf.edu.

Patients:

If one of your patients falls in one of the top 5 target groups, you must write a prescription for the H1N1 vaccine and give a copy to the patient. The patient must present this order to receive the vaccine. The vaccine will be available for eligible Adult patients at the South Tampa Center on the 3rd floor beginning Thursday, October 29th at 1 pm. All eligible pediatric patients at the South Tampa Center will receive the H1N1 influenza vaccine in the Pediatric Clinic. If your patient is located at one of the North Tampa Clinical sites, the H1N1 vaccination will be handled through the clinic appointment system. If you have any further questions regarding patient vaccination at the North Tampa Clinics, please contact clinic administration at 974-2252.

It is anticipated that the Department of Heath will audit all sites who receive and distribute the vaccine. Therefore, we must ensure that we are keeping accurate records and entering the data into the Florida Shots Program.

Remember, Influenza is spread by direct and indirect contact and by droplet contact so the virus is easily spread from person to person via coughing, sneezing, and contact with contaminated items. Don’t forget to wash your hands properly and frequently and follow proper cough etiquette http://www.coughsafe.com/index.html to minimize the spread of influenza. Remind those around you, also! Stay healthy and thanks for doing your part this Flu Season!

________________________________
Linda R. Lennerth, RN, MSN
Associate Director, Medical Health Administration
Infection Prevention & Control
Employee/Student Health & Wellness
USF HEALTH - MDC 19
College of Medicine / Department of Internal Medicine
Division of Infectious Disease & International Medicine
Email: llennert@health.usf.edu

A special forum at USF on Wednesday, Nov. 4, will focus on how water usage and responses to shortages here in Tampa Bay can have global environmental and health implications. The Tampa Bay chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the USF College of Public Health are sponsoring “The Global Water Crisis: Solutions from Tampa Bay,” at the USF College of Public Health auditorium, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd, in Tampa. Refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m. and the event starts at 7 p.m.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Noel J. Brown, president and CEO of Friends of the United Nations, is an internationally recognized expert on global water issues and champion of environmental sustainability. Dr. Brown and others have noted the unprecedented demand on water resources can have profound implications for the world’s water supply, protection of human health and the viability of aquatic ecosystems.

A panel discuss will feature Mary Mulhern of the Tampa City Council and Karl Nurse of St. Petersburg City Council, as well as Frank Mueller-Karger, PhD, of the USF College of Marine Science, Dr. David Randle, managing director of Waves of Change, and Phil Compton, regional representative of Sierra Club Florida.

For more information go to www.psr.org/tampa.

The USF arm of the NIH trials will be performed at Genesis, Tampa General Hospial and USF clinics.

Tampa, FL (Oct. 26, 2009) -- The University of South Florida is participating in two federal studies to see whether the H1N1 vaccine can safely elicit a protective immune response in pregnant women, as well as in children and young adults, all of whom are HIV-infected.

USF will be one of 35 sites and eight sub-sites in the United States and Puerto Rico participating in the two studies, which are sponsored and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), both part of the National Institutes of Health. Investigators plan to vaccinate about 130 HIV-infected women and 140 HIV-infected children and young adults around the country.

USF is participating in both studies as part of its role as a site of the International Maternal-Pediatric-Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Group (IMPAACT) network, a project of NIAID and NICHD that develops and implements multi-center HIV treatment and prevention research trials.

In the first study, on HIV-infected pregnant women, about 10 women are expected to be enrolled in the Tampa Bay area, said Dr. Karen L. Bruder, USF assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and the principal investigator for USF’s study site. Dr. Bruder also is medical director of the Genesis at HealthPark clinic of Tampa General Hospital.

The study is particularly important for this group of women because pregnant women already are at greater risk of suffering serious complications from the H1N1 virus, largely because their immune systems do not function at their normal levels. If a pregnant woman also is infected with HIV, her immune system is further compromised.

“She is already immuno-suppressed,” Dr. Bruder said.

Dr. Karen Bruder leads the USF study site testing whether the H1N1 vaccine protects HIV-infected pregnant women.

The study will look at how the vaccine affects the woman and her infant -- for instance, how many antibodies to the H1N1 influenza virus does the woman develop in response to the vaccine? Are those antibodies transferred to the fetus? After the baby is born, does it still have antibodies to the virus?

The study will also evaluate whether the vaccine affects the woman’s HIV viral load or the cells in the immune system that are often affected by HIV.

Women in the study will receive two doses of vaccine. The women’s response to the vaccine will be evaluated during pregnancy, at delivery, and at 3 and 6 months after delivery. The babies will be evaluated when they are 3 and 6 months old.

USF’s work in the study will be performed at Genesis, Tampa General and at USF clinics.
In the second study, at least four HIV-infected children or young adults will receive the H1N1 vaccine at the USF clinics, said Dr. Jorge Lujan-Zilbermann, associate professor of pediatrics and principal investigator for the USF site of the study.

This study will divide subjects into three age groups: ages 4 to 9, 10 to 17, and 18 to 24. As in the first study, the children and young adults will receive vaccine in two doses three weeks apart. Study subjects will be followed for seven months.

The study will examine how safe the vaccine is, how effectively it stimulates the immune system to make antibodies to the H1N1 influenza virus, and how long children and young adults maintain these antibodies in their blood after being vaccinated. The study will also look at other immune responses.

The vaccine all study subjects will receive contains inactivated virus, so it will not be possible for them to contract H1N1 influenza from the vaccine. Because of the increased vulnerability of HIV-infected pregnant women, children and youth, the trials will test whether doses of the licensed 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine that are higher than doses being tested in other groups can safely elicit protective immune responses in these populations.

The IMPAACT sites participating in these studies will receive vaccine from Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics of Cambridge, Mass, through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

For more information about NIH-sponsored clinical trials of H1N1 influenza vaccine in HIV-infected pregnant women, children and youth, see http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2009/H1N1HIVTrials.htm and http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/H1N1VacHIVChildYouthPregWomenqa.htm

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu

- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

USF is one three sites for the $1-million study, sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The other two sites are the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Miami. The USF arm of the study will receive approximately $500,000.

USF's Eric Storch, PhD, is principal investigator for the multi-site behavioral therapy trial.

Autism spectrum disorders, collectively referred to as autism, cause pervasive impairment in thinking, feeling, language and the ability to relate to others and can range from a severe from (called autistic disorder) to a much milder form known as Asperger syndrome. Anxiety disorders affect as many as 80 percent of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders, triggering distress and impairment over and above that caused by an autism diagnosis alone, said Eric Storch, PhD, principal investigator for the multi-site trial and associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at USF Health.

“As yet, there are no tried-and-true methods for treating the anxiety that often accompanies autism,” Dr. Storch said. “Cognitive behavioral therapy has worked very well for typically developing kids with anxiety. The goal of this study is to adapt this therapy for use in early adolescents with autism and co-occurring anxiety.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) involves exposing a patient to what they fear in controlled, graduated doses in an attempt to decrease their anxiety over time and prevent a compulsive or avoidance response. It has become a gold standard treatment for youngsters with anxiety disorders who do not have complicating conditions like autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The researchers will first adapt a CBT protocol they have developed for younger children to meet the characteristics and clinical needs of early adolescents (ages 11 to 14) with autism. They will accomplish this by treating numerous youngsters and consulting with other autism experts. Then, the team will enroll 32 adolescents with autism in a randomized trial across the sites. The participants will receive either the newly developed CBT protocol or a modified relaxation training protocol (control group). Those who receive the control treatment will receive CBT afterwards.

“Considering the rising number of young adolescents diagnosed with autism, and the lack of proven treatment options for those suffering from anxiety,” Dr. Storch said, “our work developing a treatment protocol could substantially help address the mental health needs of early adolescents with autism.”

USF co-investigators for the NICHD study include Tanya Murphy, MD, professor and Rothman Endowed Chair of Developmental Pediatrics in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry; and Adam Lewin, PhD, and Jane Mutch, PhD, both assistant professors of pediatrics.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

A USF College of Public Health researcher has received a highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant to create and evaluate a web-based training program to help dentists and dental hygienists identify patients with eating disorders and refer them for treatment. Rita DeBate, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, was awarded the two-year NIH Challenge Grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The ARRA funding is expected to be $985,517 over two years.

NIH AARA Challenge Grants were designed to spur new areas of research and trigger an influx of research dollars into communities across the nation starting in September 2009. With NIH receiving 20,000 challenge grant applications, competition was called “fierce.” While Florida universities received 177 awards through the ARRA, only a few were awarded in Florida.

Eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa, have potentially serious health consequences that can contribute to, or cause, death, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics. Most people diagnosed with an eating disorder are under age 25, but deaths from eating disorders are highest among those between the ages of 25 and 64, NCHS statistics show.

Early identification, referral, and treatment significantly increase the likelihood of recovery, said Dr. DeBate. “Oral health providers play a fundamental role in the early detection, patient-specific oral treatment, and referral for care of eating disorders, because they are often the first health professionals to observe overt health effects. However, few dentists and dental hygienists are practicing this important clinical responsibility.”

Rita DeBate, PhD, received one of three highly competitive NIH ARRA Challenge Grants in Florida.

Over the two NIH-funded years, Dr. DeBate, the project’s principal investigator, and co-principal investigator Herbert Severson, PhD, senior research scientist at Oregon Research Institute, will customize their prototype web program, “Eating Disorders and Oral Health,” for use within dental and dental hygiene academic training programs. Adaptation of the prototype will be guided by input from dental and dental hygiene faculty and directors, an expert consultant panel, previous pilot data, and current e-learning methodology. Evaluation of the adapted web-based training program will involve 12 dental schools and dental hygiene programs across the country.

Damage to teeth, gums and oral tissue from disordered eating behaviors can begin as early as three months after excessive dieting or vomiting.

“The state of one’s oral health can be considered an early warning system for numerous health issues, including eating disorders,” Dr. DeBate said. “Consequently, oral health professionals can be among the first to observe the effects of eating disorders, but may not intervene for a variety of reasons. For instance, they may lack training and skill in identification of oral and physical symptoms of eating disorders, such as signs of malnutrition, dehydration and vomiting.”

Dr. DeBate’s previous research, which included focus groups with dentists and dental hygienists, revealed that they often felt uncomfortable approaching patients on sensitive topics such as an eating disorder.

“They realize that this is an important oral/systemic health issue, but also noted that they lacked confidence in patient approach, communication, and referral for treatment,” Dr. DeBate said. “In part, this program aims to improve skills in patient communication regarding this sensitive topic.”

Many dental health professionals also felt they could not start an oral treatment program with patients who, because of the secretive nature of their behavior, might be denying their eating disorder, she said. “Treatment can only begin when patients are ready for it. So assessing patient readiness to address disordered eating behaviors and secondary prevention are linked.”

Dr. DeBate and colleagues hope that the training program will increase dental professionals’ capacity to deliver eating disorder-specific secondary prevention and, ultimately, increase the rates of early treatment for people with eating disorders.

- Story by Randolph Fillmore, Florida Science Communications
- Photo by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

The National Institutes of Health recently announced a second phase of its Rare Disease Clinical Research Network (RDCRN), which includes a Data Management Coordinating Center led by the University of South Florida’s Jeffrey Krischer, PhD. The USF center and 19 new and returning consortia will be awarded $117 million over the next five years. The research conducted with this second round of funding will explore the natural history, epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of more than 95 rare diseases.

Dr. Krischer, professor and chief of epidemiology and biostatistics for the USF Department of Pediatrics, has been principal investigator for the RDCRN’s data coordinating center from its start. Under his leadership, USF has become the hub for epidemiological research in both rare diseases and juvenile diabetes and garnered world-wide attention as a model for large-scale clinical research. The consortia within the RDCRN funnel their data to USF for collection, storage, management and analysis.

USF has received nearly $15.3 million for the NIH’s rare diseases research initiative over the last five years. With this second phase of funding, Dr. Krischer expects to receive another $15 million over the next five years as data from the new studies come in.

"The great success of the first five years meant we coordinated 10 networks of studies. We'll now nearly double this to 19 networks,” Dr. Krischer said. “We built a foundation that we're now expanding to many more diseases, many more countries, and designing studies that will help many more patients. It’s a testimony to the methods we’ve developed at USF that we can now expand into new areas of study.”

“We built our strength in autoimmune disorders,” Dr. Krischer added. “This new funding will expand our scope to primary immune disorders and immune-mediated disorders, as well as many others that we don’t understand well. Some are genetic and some simply have unknown causes. By looking at these rare diseases, we can look at the different facets of the immune system and the role it plays in health.”

"The progress made by researchers through the network is important and impressive," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD. "We have shown that this approach can be a catalyst for progress in meeting the challenge of rare diseases, and we are eager to launch this next phase of the program."

Since its creation in 2003, the RDCRN has enrolled more than 5,000 patients in 33 clinical studies of various rare diseases, ranging from ataxias and primary immune deficiency disorders to inherited neuropathies and mitochondrial diseases. A rare disease is defined as a disease or condition affecting fewer than 200,000 persons in the United States. Approximately 6,500 such disorders have been identified, affecting an estimated 25 million Americans.

The RDCRN is unique in its approach to addressing rare diseases as a group. Previously, the NIH's institutes and centers funded research on individual rare diseases in their respective disease-type or organ domains. The RDCRN is the first program that aims to create a specialized infrastructure to support rare diseases research.

Patient recruitment for clinical studies is a fundamental challenge in rare diseases research because typically so few patients are affected in any one area. The RDCRN was designed to address this problem by fostering collaboration among scientists and shared access to geographically distributed research resources. Network consortia have also established training programs for clinical investigators who are interested in rare diseases research.

"Collaboration is a critical element of rare diseases research and the partnerships represented in this program have tremendous potential to make great strides in understanding these diseases," said Stephen C. Groft, PharmD, director of NIH's Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR). "The network emphasizes collaboration not just among investigators from multiple research sites but between investigators and patient advocates as well."

The direct involvement of patient advocacy groups in network operations, activities, and strategy is a major feature of the RDCRN. Each consortium in the network includes relevant patient advocacy groups in the consortium membership and activities. These patient advocacy group representatives serve as research partners within their own consortia.

Funds and scientific oversight for the RDCRN will be provided by ORDR and seven NIH Institutes, which will also contribute considerable administrative support to the network: the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Several consortia will also receive financial support from their associated patient advocacy groups.

In the RDCRN's first phase, the network's Data and Technology Coordinating Center (DTCC) led by Dr. Krischer developed a management system for the collection, storage, and analysis of RDCRC data, and additional systems to address needs of individual studies, such as a laboratory data collection system, a specimen tracking system, and a pharmacy management system (to support blinded distribution of study agents and placebos).

The DTCC also created RDCRN's central public Web site, developed as a portal for the rare diseases community, including patients and their families and health care professionals, to provide information on rare disease research, consortium activities, RDCRN-approved protocols, disease information, and practice guidelines. Located at http://rarediseasesnetwork.epi.usf.edu/, the Web site had over 3.4 million visits in 2008. The RDCRN DTCC also developed a unique voluntary patient registry that provides ongoing contact with approximately 5,000 individuals from over 60 countries representing 42 diseases, alerting them when new studies are opened in the network or when ongoing studies expand to new sites.

In this second phase of the RDCRN, USF will continue these data management efforts, under a new name and with a slightly different charge, as the Data Management Coordinating Center (DMCC). The DMCC will develop uniform investigative clinical research protocols for data collection in collaboration with the RDCRN Steering Committee, monitor protocol adherence, data collection and data submission, and work with the each consortium's Data and Safety Monitoring Boards to establish protocols for adverse events notification and reporting.

It was all part of a gala to launch the public phase of the most comprehensive capital campaign in USF’s history. The goal: to raise $600 million. More than 500 donors, alumni, faculty, staff and friends were on hand to hear the announcement by Judy Genshaft, president of the USF System, USF Foundation CEO Joel Momberg and Campaign Chair Les Muma.

The USF Health exhibit presented a vision of Health 2020.

So far, the campaign has raised $317 million in donor gifts and pledges.

“Tonight is a night to celebrate two things: perseverance and promise,” said Genshaft. “Our students are solving big problems. Our faculty is changing the world. USF is building the university of the future. We believe our mission to serve the educational, economic and health needs of our community, Florida and the world are too important to be deterred or delayed.”

President Judy Genshaft displays a test tube full of USF Health's favorite beverage: a Health-tini.

Two of the campaign’s most significant early gifts have gone to benefit projects at USF Health. Frank and Carol Morsani donated $10 million, used to help build the Frank and Carol Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare, as well as for sports facilities.

Muma and his wife, Pam, donated $6 million to fund neonatal research, as well as to build an neonatal intensive care unit at Tampa General Hospital. They gave another $3 million to athletics.

At Tuesday’s event, the USF Marshall Student Center was transformed by nearly two dozen exhibits showing off USF programs. At the USF Health exhibit, guests were treated to the “Health-tinis,” full of pomegranate antioxidants and delivered in mock test tubes. Video monitors featured Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine, sharing USF Health’s vision for the future of health care, Health 2020, along with a montage of images from medicine, nursing and public health.

NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders gets his balance checked by physical therapy students Heather Matako, left, and Elizabeth Morgan.

Physical therapy students helped guests measure their balance using a Biosway Balance machine. Guests who stood on the machine’s platform – including a spell with their eyes closed, teetering on a block of foam – got to see how they compare to others their age on several measures of balance. Physical therapists can use the data to develop therapies to improve balance and prevent falls.

He may be the CEO, but Dr. Stephen Klasko still delivers babies...real or, in this case, simulated.

The star of the show may have been the exhibit’s youngest member: the simulator baby. Faculty members from the College of Nursing dressed the baby in a “Future Bull” T-shirt and named him Rocky to mark the occasion. A steady stream of visitors came to play with Rocky, hearing him cry, feeling his heart beat, and even watching him turn blue because of breathing difficulties. Each time, of course, he was swiftly rescued by clinical instructor Jenny Molloy and teaching lab assistant Freida Lahti, who demonstrated some of the skills that nursing and medical students learn by caring for Rocky.

Dee Jeffers, program director in the College of Public Health’s Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, stopped by and was captivated. She donned a stethoscope and listened to Rocky breathe.

“I didn’t know we did this,” she said. “There’s so much happening at USF, you just can’t keep up with it. The knowledge explosion for students – it’s amazing.”

Freida Lahti helps Baby Rocky's simulated breathing return to normal.

- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

      Chances are, the federal government spends nearly twice as much on the Miami retiree as the Tampa one.

      Those are among the findings of a project called the Dartmouth Atlas, an ongoing examination of differences in health care spending around the U.S. On Friday, Jonathan Skinner, senior author of the Dartmouth Atlas John Sloan Dickey Third Century Chair of Economics at Dartmouth College, discussed those differences at a talk presented by the USF College of Public Health.

     Health economist Jonathan Skinner, PhD, chats with Donna Petersen, ScD, MHS, dean of the College of Public Health

       The nation’s most expensive Medicare patients are in Miami, where Medicare spends $16,351 per enrollee each year. Compare that to Tampa, where spending is $8,911 per enrollee.

      Those cost differences mount up, Dr. Skinner said.

      “You start ending up with enough money for, if not a new Ferrari, at least a used Ferrari,” he joked.

      The cost differences are particularly puzzling when you look at health quality measures , Dr. Skinner said. For example, Medicare spends far less per enrollee in San Francisco than in Miami.

     “Yet by all measures,” he said, “San Francisco is at least as good as Miami.”

      Those differences have important policy implications, Dr. Skinner said – both for reining in Medicare’s spiraling costs and for health care reform. What if we could deliver the same quality of care across the country on a San Francisco budget instead of a Miami one?

      “Could we get closer to universal coverage?” he asked.

      Dartmouth Atlas researchers have tried to find non-medical ways to explain the cost disparities. But possible differences in patients in different cities don’t seem to explain the gaps, Dr. Skinner said. Researchers have adjusted for differences in age, sex, race and income without explaining the disparities.

      What does have an effect? In some places, what Dr. Skinner describes as “entrepreneurial surgeons” – doctors who are aggressive adovocates for a particular procedure – can affect costs. Cardiologists in Elyria, Ohio, for instance, attracted national publicity after Dartmouth Atlas research showed that residents there were getting angioplasties at four times the national average.

      Similarly, another factor that explains regional differences is the amount of money each region spends on health care during the last two years of life -- how chronically ill patients are treated and how often they’re hospitalized.  Small differences in how doctors make decisions about whether to send a patient to a hospital or a specialist can add up to big changes in spending.

- Story by Lisa Greene, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Chris Madramootoo, a cardiac sonographer, is administered a flu shot by medical assistant Leticia Moorer.

No time to break away from work to get a flu shot? That's no longer an excuse for those working at USF Health's South Tampa Center for Advanced Healthcare. Each Friday since mid-September a mobile cart has rolled through all floors of the STC to provide free seasonal flu shots.

As of Oct. 9, 225 USF Health employees, practitioners, residents and students have been vaccinated, said Kim Clifford, a clinical nurse manager at the STC. "The staff love it. We believe this convenience encourages more of our healthcare workers to get vaccinated."

The STC flu cart service runs through Nov. 20. So quit your excuses and roll up your sleeve... you'll even get to pick out a lollipop after the shot!

Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine, makes a point while speaking with Jessy Divo de Romero, President (Rectora) of the University of Carabobo, and USF President Judy Genshaft.

The University’s global health initiative got a boost last month when USF President Judy Genshaft met with representatives from three Latin American universities -- the University of Carabobo in Venezuela, the University of Panama College of Medicine, and the Universidad Latina College of Health Sciences -- to sign agreements for collaboration.

During their two-day visit here, Sept. 21-22, top officials of the University of Panama and Universidad Latina also held extensive discussions with USF Health leadership on ways the College of Medicine can partner with their medical schools on education and research.
The guests met with Hispanic medical students and faculty. They toured the Morsani and South Tampa Centers for Advanced Healthcare, several USF Health-directed programs at Tampa General Hospital, USF Health’s new da Vinci Center for Computer Assisted Surgery, the Shimberg Health Sciences Library and the Center for Human Morpho-Informatics.

Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine, presented some recent achievements of USF Health and its medical college, including PaperFree Tampa Bay, simulation training, iTunes Health and others.

Leaders of USF Health and the Panama schools discussed institutional and regional needs in medical sciences. John Sinnott, MD, vice dean of International Affairs and director of Infectious Diseases, and Lynette Menezes, PhD, director of International Affairs for the College of Medicine, have facilitated faculty and student exchanges and capacity building to enhance HIV clinical research and infectious diseases education in Panama.

Discussions with Deborah Sutherland, PhD, USF Health associate vice-president for Continuing Professional Development, focused on ways to advance continuing medical education, technological training and leadership. With the support of IT technology, the discussions are continuing long distance to develop Memoranda of Understanding for approval.

“With these efforts the USF College of Medicine and USF Health are moving forward to achieve the global mission of USF,” said Carlos Callegari, MD, PhD, professor of public health and pediatrics and senior advisor for the Ibero-Americas Programs at USF Health, “We’re incorporating our distinguished friends from Panama and Venezuela into a long-lasting partnership committed to improving world health.”

After hours of hard work, the Latin American visitors joined their USF colleagues and members of the Hillsborough County Medical Association for a night of music and medicine at the Dean’s Lecture Series. They were entertained at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center by psychiatrist-pianist Dr. Richard Kogan, who played pieces by composer George Gershwin and spoke about the power of music to heal.

L to R: Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine; Dr. Ann DeBaldo, associate vice president, International Programs, USF Health; Jessy Divo de Romero, President (Rectora) of the University of Carabobo; USF President Judy Genshaft; Veronica Arce, secretary of Board of Directors, University of Latina; Dr. John Sinnott, director of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at USF; Dr. Julio Rodriguez, dean of the University of Panama College of Medicine; Dr. John Curran, USF Health associate vice president for academic and faculty affairs; and Maria Crummett, dean of International Affairs at USF.

Jessy Divo de Romero, President of the University of Carabobo, Venezuela, and USF President Judy Genshaft sign the collaborative agreement.

Top officials from medical schools at the University of Panama College of Medicine and the Universidad Latina College of Health Sciences met with USF Health leadership to discuss opportunities for educational and research collaboation.

Dr. Donald Hilbelink, director of the Center for Human Morpho-Informatics, which combines the resources of medical and engineering faculty, shows the visitors a 3-D computer reconstruction of human anatomy.

Dr. Carlos Callegari (right), senior advisor for Ibero-Americas Programs at USF Health, shows one of the guests the same reconstructed human anatomy on a personal hand-held device.

Dr. Julio Rodriguez, dean of the University of Panama College of Medicine, tries out the high-fidelity endovascular simulator at the USF Health Simulation Center at Tampa General Hospital.

Veronica Arce, secretary of the Board of Directors of Universidad Latina, checks out a device held by Dr. Lennox Hoyte, medical director of the USF Health daVinci Center for Computer Assisted Surgery.

L to R: Jessy Divo de Romero, President of the University of Carabobo; Dr. John Curran, associate vp for USF Health academic and faculty affairs; and Veronica Arce, secretary of Board of Directors, Universidad Latina.

- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications, and Dr. Carlos Callegari, Ibero-Americas Programs at USF Health

Dr. John Adams was recognized for the publication of “Comparative Genomics of the Neglected Human Parasite Plasmodium vivax Illuminates Malaria Parasite Biology” in the journal Nature and two articles in Public Library of Science Pathogens (PLoS Path). A member of the USF College of Public Health’s Global Health Infectious Diseases Research team, he studies protein ligands that help malaria parasites bind to a person’s red blood cell wall. His team uses advanced analytic technologies to pursue effective vaccine and mosquito-based therapies to prevent malaria caused by P. vivax and P. falciparum, the most common types of malaria. Dr. Adams contributed to a major international research initiative comparing the genome of the malaria parasite P. vivax with other sequenced Plasmodium genomes. Comparing similarities and differences between parasites’ genomes can help determine genetic targets for new drugs and vaccine development. Dr. Adams oversees the Vector-Borne Pathogen Laboratory, or insectary, where researchers study the complex life cycle of the malaria parasite transmitted by mosquitoes.

Dr. Russell Kirby was recognized for receiving the Godfrey P. Oakley, Jr. Award by the National Birth Defects Prevention Network for his significant contributions to the field of birth defects and his senior leadership in several collaborative research projects undertaken by the network. Dr. Kirby is a doctorally-trained geographer with extensive training and experience in public health practice, academic medicine and academic public health. While his research interests in maternal and child health are quite broad, he focuses on population-based research in birth defects and developmental disabilities epidemiology and prevention, as well as on risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes. He recently co-authored the book Perinatal Epidemiology for Public Health Practice, and collaborates extensively with professionals from a variety of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, public health, economics, sociology and psychology. Dr. Kirby is president of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research and of the Association of Teachers of Maternal and Child Health.

Dr. Hamisu Salihu was recognized for publication of a novel theory called “event memory hypothesis,” which suggests a possible molecular memory-recall programming pattern in human gestation using epidemiological and molecular evidence. The groundbreaking theory suggests that when fetal death occurs the event is retained (memorized) as a program that is replayed in future pregnancies. In 2008 this theory was published in the journals Medical Hypotheses and Obstetrics & Gynecology, and may help to understand and prevent the causes of fetal death. Dr. Salihu, director of the Center for Research and Evaluation at the Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at USF, is a leading researcher in the field of infant mortality. He is a key player in the Black Infant Health Practice Initiative – a statewide collaborative to address the racial gap in infant deaths in Florida and to recommend policy changes at the local and state levels. He has authored more than 100 journal articles; including recently published studies that shed new light on obesity’s role in the black-white gap in infant mortality.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Anyone age 18 or older may get a flu shot that day while supplies last.

COPH offered free flu shots last year, as well.

In addition to the vaccinations, educational exhibits will be provided by the COPH Office of Academic and Student Affairs; USF Health Office of Communications; USF Health Service Corps; COPH Student Organizations; and the American Lung Association Face of Influenza Campaign.

The USF College of Public Health is at 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., in Tampa. For more information, please call (813) 974-3623.

USF-TGH general surgeon Dr. Sharona Ross addresses guests at the launch of the USF Women in Surgery initiative.

The USF Women In Surgery initiative, the first Tampa area professional and academic organization dedicated to encouraging more women to pursue careers in surgery, was formally launched last month. About 100 people attended the group’s inaugural program Sept. 26 at the home of Sharona Ross, MD, an assistant professor of surgery and director of surgical endoscopy at USF Health and Tampa General Hospital.

Most attendees were women, including undergraduate students, graduate and PhD students, medical students, USF Health physician interns and residents, and USF-TGH attending surgeons.

Dr Ross, together with a distinguished panel of guests, addressed the Women in Surgery attendees. The speakers stressed the importance of developing and furthering an organization dedicated to addressing issues that arise when steering more women toward careers in surgery, as well as in providing effective and practical remedies for those issues.

L to R: Lindsay Rumberger, Linda Barry, Krista Haines, Lori Starr, Linda Richetelli, and Dr. Ross.

Across the country, including at USF, more than 50 percent of medical school students are female. Yet, Dr. Ross said, only a fraction of those women actually choose careers in surgery. A 2006 article published in the journal Archives of Surgery concluded that, while women were not more likely than men to be deterred by lifestyle, workload issues or lack of role models in deciding on a career in surgery, the surgical culture and personality were sex-specific deterrents to women.

Dr. Ross said she plans to work with a growing team of innovative and highly motivated students and professional colleagues to develop the USF Women in Surgery organization into a national resource for women who want careers in surgery.

The Women in Surgery kickoff meeting drew a large group of women, including undergraduate students, graduate and PhD students, medical students, interns and residents, and USF-TGH attending surgeons.

USF Women in Surgery will sponsor its first regional program, The 1st Annual Surgical Career Symposium, on Feb. 27, 2010, in Tampa. The symposium will feature keynote speaker Julie Freischlag, MD, the William Stewart Halsted Professor Chair and Department of Surgery Surgeon-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

For more information about USF Women in Surgery or the upcoming symposium, please contact Dr. Ross at sross@health.usf.edu or 813-844-4006.

USF Health neuroscientist Doug Shytle, PhD (right), accepts the Excellence in Innovation Award from Paul Sanberg, PhD, DSc, associate vice president for research and innovation.

The University of South Florida’s 2009 “Excellence in Innovation” award was presented last week to R. Douglas Shytle, PhD, associate professor and research scientist in the USF Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair and the USF Silver Child Development Center. The award recognizes Dr. Shytle’s translational research achievements in developing new intellectual property based on clinical research and novel pharmacological discoveries which have led to newly commercialized therapeutics.

His most recent success is with a new experimental antidepressant, known as TC-5214, which is covered by USF patents and licensed to Targacept, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops neuronal nicotinic receptor therapeutics. Targacept recently announced the positive results on TC-5214 as an augmentation treatment (add-on treatment) in a large clinical trial of adult patients with treatment resistant major depressive disorder.

While the Innovation Award encourages USF faculty to “think out of the professorial box,” for Dr. Shytle the road leading “out of the box” and to the success of TC-5214 was long, winding, and strewn with professional and emotional ups and downs as well as moments both serendipitous and Eureka.

“TC-5214 is a unique form of an old Merck drug called ‘mecamylamine,’ once used to treat severe hypertension in the 1950s,” explains Dr. Shytle. “Because later research suggested that mecamylamine interacted with brain nicotine receptors, we thought it might have a variety of therapeutic effects similar to nicotine, but without the side effects and addiction.”

Building on earlier USF clinical research using transdermal nicotine to treat patients with Tourette’s syndrome (characterized by body movements (tics) and vocalizations), Dr. Shytle, worked closely with USF professors, Archie A. Silver, MD, David Sheehan, MD, and Paul Sanberg, PhD, DSc, to investigate the effects of mecamylamine in Tourette's patients to see if it could help control their symptoms, as observed with nicotine.

“After carefully designing and conducting a large clinical trial in children with Tourette’s syndrome in 1999, we were shocked and disappointed to find that the drug had no effect on the tic symptoms,” recalls Shytle. “After reading several reports about how many antidepressants appeared to be interacting with nicotine receptors the same way as mecamylamine did, we decided to go back and take a second look at the data from our clinical trial. And there it was, like finding a gold nugget buried under the sand, clear evidence for an antidepressant effect of mecamylamine, but not for the placebo, in those Tourette’s subjects who had depressive symptoms.”

Based on those clinical findings, the researchers published a hypothesis paper in the prestigious journal, Molecular Psychiatry, proposing that nicotine receptor blockade might represent a novel pharmacological target for achieving therapeutic antidepressant properties. That hypothesis has now been supported by three clinical trials with mecamylamine, one by a group at Yale and two larger studies conducted by Targacept. The latest trial was conducted using TC-5214, a unique form of mecamylamine, predicted by the USF patents to be more effective with fewer side effects when compared to the older parent drug.

The results of this study are expected to have profound implications for the future treatment of major depression, making TC-5214’s impact on the market potentially huge.

“The Excellence in Innovation Award that Dr. Shytle received this year is a testament to the kind of creative translational research that attracts excellent industry partners, like Targacept, who have the vision and technical expertise to take our intellectual property to the next level of commercial development”, said Dr. Sanberg, associate vice president for research and innovation, who presented the award to Dr. Shytle Oct. 5 at USF's ResearchOne celebration. (Dr. Shytle was one of three USF faculty members who received the innovation award this year; the other two awardees were from Chemistry and Computer Science).

The USF license agreement with Targacept includes a percentage of sublicense and milestone payments as well as a royalty stream through 2021 should the drug achieve FDA approval.

"I am simply delighted that Dr. Shytle received this award for finding a 'diamond in the desert' after years of work," says Dr. Sheehan.

Dr. Shytle is an inventor on several USF patents in addition to four on mecamylamine and related compounds.

Story by Randolph Fillmore, Florida Science Communications
Photo by Joseph Gamble, USF Communications & Marketing

Cesar V. Borlongan, PhD, a neuroscientist at the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair, worked with a team of researchers from Medical College of Georgia to test the treatment in laboratory experiments.

“To date, the thrombolytic agent tPA is the only effective drug for acute ischemic stroke; however, only about 2 percent of ischemic stroke patients benefit from this treatment due to its limited therapeutic window,” Borlongan said. “There is a desperate need to develop additional neuroprotective strategies. This research is an important step in rectifying the treatment issues, presenting a new, more effective treatment for stroke patients.”

USF neuroscientist Cesar Borlongan, PhD, was the study's principal investigator.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, and currently accounts for almost 10 percent of deaths worldwide, claiming more lives than HIV/AIDS. During a stroke, a clot prevents blood flow to parts of the brain, which can have wide ranging short-term and long-term implications.

This study recorded the effect of intravenous minocycline in both isolated nerve cells and animal models after a stroke had been experimentally induced. At low doses the antibiotic was found to have a neuroprotective effect by rapidly reducing neuronal cell death (apoptosis) and alleviating behavioral deficits caused by stroke. The researchers also found that this neuroprotection was dose-dependent, underscoring the importance of the dose delivered for a safe outcome. While low-dose minocycline inhibited neuronal cell death at the early, or acute, phase of a stroke, a higher dose aggravated the brain injury from stroke.

An ongoing phase 1 clinical study funded by the National Institutes of Health is exploring the use of intravenous minocycline to treat acute ischemic stroke.

“The safety and therapeutic efficacy of low dose minocycline and its robust neuroprotective effects during acute ischemic stroke make it an appealing drug candidate for stroke therapy,” Dr. Borlongan said.

     The grant comes from the National Institutes of Health and is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

     The Nanomedicine Research Center’s  mission is to research areas of nanomedicine that ultimately could treat heart, lung and blood disorders. Research focuses closely on drug delivery and detection of disease cells, as well as integrating nanomedicine to tissue engineering and cell technologies.

     Nanomedicine uses extraordinarily tiny materials – too small to be seen with the naked eye -- to develop innovative ways to detect and treat disease. For example, a researcher might look for ways to use particles small enough to deliver drugs or therapeutic genes inside a tumor cell.

     Shyam Mohapatra, PhD, director of the Nanomedicine Research Center, is doing research using nanoparticles made of chitosan, a substance found in  shrimps, prawns and shellfish. His laboratory has shown that chitosan particles can safely and effectively deliver therapeutic genes into cells lining the lungs and effectively treat lung diseases such as  asthma or lung cancers in mice.

     Another project in the Nanomedicine Research Center has federal funding from the Office of Naval Research to develop ways to turn stem cells into blood cells.

     “In the battlefield, there’s never enough blood,” said Dr. Mohapatra. “This technology is very futuristic. It could lead to the development of devices that would be like a wristwatch with stem cells in it that could travel into your bloodstream and become blood cells” in case of injury.

     This grant, for a two-year period, will enable the Nanomedicine Center to hire one new faculty member and three support staff. Dr. Mohapatra, who also is the Mabel & Ellsworth Simmons Professor of Allergy & Immunology, expects the new personnel to add to the center’s ability to conduct interdisciplinary research between faculty in Medicine with those in basic sciences such as chemistry, physics, and biology and in engineering.

     -- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications

At last month's FSN annual meeting in Lake Buena Vista, FL, Reza Behrouz, DO, , and Ali Bozorg, MD, both assistant professors in the USF Department of Neurology, and third-year neurology resident Elizabeth Carroll, DO,were elected to various positions. Their new FSN roles are: Dr. Behrouz, co-chair of the Website/Communication Committee; Dr. Bozorg, executive board member; and Dr. Carroll, resident board member.

These three joined three USF neurology faculty members who already serve on the society’s Board of Directors --- Charles Brock, MD,, associate professor and director of the neurology residency program; Rossitza Chichkova, MD, assistant professor and neurology clerkship director; and David Decker, MD, assistant professor. Dr. Brock is an FSN executive board member; Dr. Chichkova is secretary-elect; and Dr. Decker is treasurer-elect and chair of the Website/Communication Committee.

USF neurology residents presented 18 of the 26 research posters at the FSN annual meeting and several USF neurologists were featured speakers.

The Florida Society of Neurology, one of the three largest and most developed state neurology societies in the country, is dedicated to promoting high quality care for patients with neurological disorders and their families, education for physicians and allied health professionals, and advocacy. FSN is closely associated with the American Academy of Neurology through its State Affairs Committee.

     When John Malone was 17, a doctor told him he had diabetes.

      There were a host of restrictions: he’d have to disinfect and safeguard a glass syringe for his daily insulin injections and closely monitor his diet. He even got a brochure listing suitable careers for diabetics.

      Doctor was on the “should not pursue” list.

      Dr. John Malone, USF professor of pediatrics, did not listen. He not only went on to become a doctor, but to specialize in his own disease.

      “You always want to tell kids stuff like that,” Dr. Malone said. “They’ll do just the opposite.”

       This spring, Dr. Malone received a medal from Joslin Diabetes Center as a 50-year survivor of diabetes. And on Saturday, Oct. 3, he was honored by the Tampa Bay chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for hitting that 50-year milestone, as well as for his service to Tampa Bay families.

     “Dr. Malone is so revered in this region and across the country because of his commitment to diabetes,” said Nicole Johnson, Director of Education, Communication, and Outreach at the USF Diabetes Center
and a member of the JDRF’s board in Tampa Bay.

      Johnson, Miss America 1999, has type 1 diabetes herself and is one of the country’s leading advocates for people with diabetes. That gives her a special appreciation for Dr. Malone’s work.

     “Living with diabetes himself, so many of those of us who have the disease too admire him and his perseverance,” she said. “He has long been known to the diabetes community as the guy who will try anything! He is known as the one to ask about innovative techniques and ideas related to caring for one's diabetes. What a tremendous resource we have and what a blessing to work with and learn from him."

     Dr. Robert M. Nelson Jr., professor and chairman of USF’s pediatrics department, pointed out that Dr. Malone’s diabetes work is known and respected around the country. But it’s not just Dr. Malone’s work that people admire, he said.

      “Everyone who works with him loves John, whether that’s his colleagues, his trainees, his patients, or their families,” Dr. Nelson said.

     Dr. Malone is especially gifted as a mentor for students and young physicians, Dr. Nelson said.

     “No matter what you present to him, he is able to both correct you if you’re wrong and do it in a fashion that encourages and guides you,” he said.

      When Dr. Malone learned he had diabetes, he had already decided he wanted to become a doctor. What he hadn’t decided was that treating and researching diabetes would become his life’s work. Nor could he know that he would one day co-found USF’s Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, co-direct the USF Diabetes Center for nearly 20 years, and publish more than 200 scientific articles and publications about diabetes.

     Before all that came medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. His first steps into diabetes research began when he started working in a basic research lab with a nurturing faculty member, Dr. Albert Weingrad. He never looked back, continuing his research activities in metabolic disorders at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and then moving to USF with the first chairman of pediatrics, Dr. Lewis A. Barness, in 1972.

      When Dr. Malone arrived here, he was one of four founding members of USF’s Department of Pediatrics. There was little specialized treatment available in Tampa Bay for children with diabetes. Many of the children went to Gainesville.

      So Dr. Malone started a clinic to see children with diabetes in Tampa. There wasn’t even a real place to operate. He began running a clinic on Saturday mornings in the closed outpatient department at Tampa General Hospital. But the clinic grew, and moved, and became a success. Medical students began training there. The state became interested.

      The state interest eventually blossomed into USF becoming home to one of three diabetes centers in Florida. In the meantime, Dr. Malone also became involved in helping to lead diabetes camps. That meant spending part of each summer living with hundreds of children of all ages, all with their own diabetes challenges.

     “We lived with a whole bunch of kids with diabetes,” Dr. Malone recalled. “We could see what they followed and what they never followed.”

      Despite Dr. Malone’s own struggles with diabetes, he doesn’t routinely tell patients that he has the disease. He doesn’t want them to think it gives him some kind of special standing.

     "Then you’re telling them you’re an expert just because you have it,” he said. “I think that’s false.”

     Still, Dr. Malone knows his own experiences show just how much diabetes care has changed. He kept that first glass syringe and needle he got when he was 17 for nearly 10 years, using it once or twice each day to inject himself with insulin.

     For many years, Dr. Malone used a glass syringe to inject insulin.

    The insulin then was a longer-acting form than what’s commonly used today. Measuring blood sugar was harder, requiring urine tests instead of a simple finger stick. Checking blood sugar several times a day just wasn’t done. Today’s tight controls were unheard of.

      “Nobody had any clue what their blood sugar was most of the time,” Dr. Malone said.

     Over the years, Dr. Malone had his own share of problems related to diabetes, including some peripheral neuropathy and minor retinopathy. He’s also had a heart attack. But he stayed too busy to let any of that stop him. He and his wife, Gloria, have four children, ranging in age from 29 to 41. In addition to his busy clinical practice and faculty role, he also became an active researcher.

      On one research project, Dr. Malone and his team worked with colleagues from the University of Florida and the Pasco County school district to screen children all over that county for diabetes. They collected blood from the school children to measure islet cell antibodies (a marker for diabetes) – and then, five years later, did it all over again. That information was ultimately used to help define the natural history of autoimmune diabetes in children and identify those at greater risk for developing diabetes. The biostatistician who analyzed that data was none other than Jeffrey Krischer, PhD, USF professor and chief of pediatric epidemiology, recipient of some $400 million in federal funding for diabetes and related research.

      One of Dr. Malone’s other trials is still going on: a long-standing international trial to look at how tight control of diabetes affected the development of diabetes-related complications.

      Dr. Malone reviews data at a patient's bedside in 1989.

      Another of Dr. Malone’s studies was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989 and made national headlines after he and fellow researchers demonstrated that when children newly diagnosed with diabetes were attached to an artificial pancreas to completely normalize the blood glucose for two additional weeks, the procedure would help the beta cells in the pancreas continue to release insulin normally for more than an additional year.

      Today, Dr. Malone is getting to see the foundations that he built grow taller. USF has embarked on an initiative to build on its diabetes research and education efforts. The university is working to recruit new diabetes researchers, add more education programs and build a diabetes center that will both enable more ground-breaking research and provide an innovative model of service for diabetes patients and their families.

       For Dr. Malone, that’s good news.

      “It’s great,” he said. “To see that the University wants to focus attention on this important cause and help promote patient services, including research to prevent the complications and eliminate the basic problem of diabetes mellitus.”

Recently, the St. Petersburg Times spotlighted Dr. Malone, his work and his own battle with diabetes.

- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications and from USF Health archives

The fundraising event is based out of the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort in St. Petersburg and is directed by Captain Lori Deaton. The tournament kicks off Friday, Oct. 9, with a reception, silent auction and dinner. On Saturday, Oct. 10, anglers head out into the Gulf of Mexico at 9 a.m. and fish until 3 p.m. A Luau Awards Ceremony follows from 4 to 6 p.m. The entry fee is $1,500 per boat, which can include a team of three anglers, or $500 for an individual who will be paired with other individual anglers. All entrants are provided a captain and a boat, fishing equipment, Friday’s reception, Saturday’s awards ceremony, all meals, entertainment, tournament shirt and visor and other goodies.

Charles Cox, MD, FACS, professor of surgery at USF, is CEO of the USF Breast Health program. He has more than 30 years experience helping patients navigate the diagnostic and treatment options for surviving breast cancer. His work on breast conservation and nipple-sparing techniques is known the world over. Click here to read about his pioneering work reported recently by the St. Petersburg Times.

The USF Comprehensive Breast Cancer Program was started in 1984 under Dr. Cox’s direction and is now located in the new Carol & Frank Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare on the USF campus in Tampa.

Click here to learn more about the USF Breast Health program. For more information about the Get Hooked on Hope fishing tournament, visit www.hookedonhope.org.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Gregory Holder, left, and Chief Circuit Judge Manuel Menendez, right, donned white coats to help Dr. Steve Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the USF College of Medicine, into a black judicial robe.

     Lawyers and doctors came together in Tampa Oct. 6 for USF’s Black Robe Program, an event intended to bridge gaps between medicine and the law. The program allowed our USF Health faculty members to learn more about the legal system from those who know it best – Hillsborough County judges and lawyers.

Rhea Law, chair of the USF Board of Trustees, participated in the Black Robe program.

      The program was designed by Rhea Law, chair of the USF Board of Trustees; Hillsborough Circuit Judge Gregory Holder; and Dr. Steve Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the USF College of Medicine, to emulate the concept of the White Coat program at Tampa General Hospital.

Dr. H. James Brownlee, Jr., chair of family medicine at USF, makes a point during the Black Robe Program.

     Faculty physicians, along with a few medical students, met with judges Wednesday and then spent the day shadowing a judge, learning up close how the legal system works. The day also featured a discussion of health issues in the judicial and legal process.

Black Robe Program participants inluded, L to R: Judge Menendez; medical student Anna Wouters; medical student David Sindler; Dr. Klasko; medical student Lisa Daniels; Rhea Law; Dr. Alicia Monroe, vice dean for educational affairs; Judge Holder; and Jay Wolfson, associate vice president for health law, policy and safety.

     -- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Chad Dickey's team at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute focuses on manipulating with drugs or gene therapy the chaperone proteins that control the fate of the the Alzheimer's protein tau.

Tampa, FL (September 30, 2009) -- Inhibiting the protein Hsp70 rapidly reduces brain levels of tau, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease when it builds up abnormally inside nerve cells affecting memory, neuroscientists at the University of South Florida found. The study is reported online today in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“Now that we’ve discovered that targeting the chaperone protein Hsp70 can clear tau, it could be helpful in finding more effective drugs for Alzheimer’s disease,” said the study’s senior author Chad Dickey, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine who works out of the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute at USF Health “The therapeutic strategy may also be applicable to other neurodegenerative diseases involving Hsp70, such as Huntington disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and some cancers.”

Hsp70 is a one of several “chaperone” proteins that supervises the activity of tau inside nerve cells. The normal function of tau is to support the structure of nerve cells, much like the skeleton provides a scaffold to support the body. Tau is inside nerve cells, while another hallmark protein associated with Alzheimer’s, beta amyloid, is outside the neurons.

Working with researchers at the University of Michigan, the USF team tested the effects of several compounds on Hsp70 in cell models and brain tissue from mice genetically modified to develop the memory-choking tau tangles. Some compounds activated Hsp70, and others were Hsp70-inhibitors.

One of the more effective Hsp70-inhibitor drugs the researchers discovered was a derivative of methylthioninium chloride, or Rember™, the first experimental medication reported to directly attack the tau tangles in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Rember™ was heralded as a major development in the fight against Alzheimer’s when results in early clinical trials were announced last year at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s disease.

“But Rember™ and its derivatives do have some inherent problems; they’re not very potent so effective therapy would require fairly high doses, Dickey said.

“The drug does help prevent the protein (tau) from clumping together, but that in itself doesn’t mean it’s actively getting rid of the toxic tau,” he said. “Now that we know Hsp70 is a target of Rember™, we can develop similarly-acting drugs that will more specifically target this chaperone protein in affected areas of the brain, resulting in fewer side effects.”

The USF researchers originally thought activating Hsp70 would direct the chaperone protein to decrease the tau gone bad -- preventing tau from stacking up into tangles inside cells involved in memory and destroying them. But instead of restoring tau to its normal supportive function, activating Hsp70 actually led to tau’s preservation and even more accumulation, Dickey said. “Basically we think the chaperone binds to the tau, and somehow in the process of trying to fix things decides to keep holding onto tau when it shouldn’t. So, activating Hsp70 is not necessarily what we want to do; we ultimately want to inhibit Hsp70 to promote the release or clearance of tau …to kill the bad tau.”

Dr. Dickey emphasizes that problems with Hsp70 alone do not cause Alzheimer’s. It likely develops from a convergence of various factors in the brain, he said, including deposits of the other featured Alzheimer’s protein beta amyloid, or a genetic defect; disruption of cell signaling; a breakdown in the neuron’s support structure, and then accumulation of tau into the memory-choking tangles.

Dr. Dickey’s team at USF focuses on how to manipulate with drugs or gene therapy the chaperone proteins that regulate tau’s fate – determining whether it’s preserved or cleared from the brain. The University of Michigan team works on identifying and developing compounds that may be effective against Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies.

The study was supported by the national Alzheimer’s Association, the National Institute on Aging, the Abe and Irene Pollin Fund for CBD Research from CurePSP: The Society for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

The study’s other authors were Umesh Jinwal (lead author), Yoshinari Miyata, John Koren III, Jeffrey Jones, Justin Trotter, Lyra Chang, John O’Leary, David Morgan, Daniel Lee, Cody Shults, Aikaterini Rousaki, Edwin Weeber, Erik Zuiderweg, and Jason Gestwicki.

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, USF is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of 39 community-engaged, four-year public universities designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu

Listen to psychiatrist-musician Dr. Richard Kogan play Gershwin

Faculty, staff and students nearly filled the USF Health Auditorium Sept. 22 to hear award-winning concert pianist Richard Kogan, MD, play for the Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds. As a psychiatrist and a musician, Dr. Kogan provided key insights into how vital music is to medicine.

“Music is a highly underutilized modality,” Dr. Kogan said. “When science documents exactly what music does for healing, there will be an explosion in its use for treating people.”

From left, Dr. Lois Nixon, Dr. Francisco Fernandez, Dr. Richard Kogan, and first-year medical student Trey Penton.

In the Grand Rounds, Dr. Kogan focused on George Gershwin, noting that the world-renowned composer’s story is probably the most profound example of the healing power of music. Dr. Kogan said the young Gershwin would probably be diagnosed today with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and that his lack of focus and bad behavior as a child came to an abrupt halt when he first heard a violinist at a school assembly.

“Gershwin was transfixed by the music,” Dr. Kogan said, adding that Gershwin had come from a poor home and that hearing the violinist was probably his first real exposure to music. After that moment, Gershwin’s bad behavior stopped and he pored over learning music, even dropping out of school at the age of 15 to devote himself to it. Gershwin noted himself that “studying piano turned a bad boy into a good boy.”

Dr. Kogan displayed his own musical talent by playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (which Gershwin wrote in three weeks) and then Summertime (from the score Gershwin wrote for the play Porgy and Bess).

Although Gershwin’s ADHD may have been eased after finding music, Dr. Kogan said that Gershwin continued with mental illness, entering a boastful period in his 20’s that might have been signs of narcissism, and then serious depression at age 35, with sleeping troubles and crying spells. Interestingly, Dr. Kogan said, it was during these down times that Gershwin wrote mostly peppy love songs, and that writing the bluesy, melancholy tone for Porgy and Bess may have helped him deal with some of his depression.

Signs of the brain tumor that eventually killed Gershwin came next, with dizzy spells, pounding headaches, and the sense that he smelled burning garbage or rubber before blacking out. George Gershwin died July 9, 1937, following surgery trying to remove the tumor.

Dr. Kogan studied piano at the Juilliard School and medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is known for his lecture/recitals that explore music’s role in healing and the influence mental illness has had on the creative output of classical composers. The evening following USF’s Grand Rounds, Dr. Kogan performed for the Second Annual Hillsborough County Medical Association/USF Health Dean’s Lecture, an annual collaborative lecture also supported by Tampa General Hospital.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Communications
Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

The USF College of Medicine welcomed a new department earlier this month: Urology

Urology was a division in the Department of Surgery and in Clinical Affairs prior to this, but with its continuing growth, the time had come for Urology to become its own entity.

Dr. Jorge L. Lockhart was named the founding chair of the Department of Urology Sept. 1. After training at Duke University and the University of Uruguay, Dr. Lockhart came to USF in 1987 from the University of Miami. Dr. Lockhart is an internationally recognized leader in the field of urinary diversion and pelvic reconstruction. He has directed and developed the USF Urology residency program since that time, and under his guidance, it has steadily grown.

Dr. Lockhart will be joined by three other full-time faculty members: Raul Ordorica, MD, associate professor and chief of urodynamics and reconstruction; Rafael Carrion, MD, assistant professor and chief of andrology and sexual dysfunction; and new faculty member, David Hernandez, MD, assistant professor, who joins USF after training at the Brady Urological Institute of Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Lockhart said part of urology’s success is due to its relationships with its affiliate hospitals, which include Tampa General Hospital, the James A. Haley VA Hospital and Moffitt Cancer Center. The urology residents also receive training in pediatric urology at Nemours Children’s Clinic in Orlando. The affiliates help make the program attractive to residents, who want to come here because of the varied surgical experience, Dr. Lockhart said.

Dr. Lockhart is working to recruit two new faculty members and expects to increase the number of urology fellows and the amount of research funding.

- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications

Athletes know this. So do healthcare providers. But your immune system and emotions may be working against you. Any inflammation, whether part of an allergy, an infection, or associated with injury can derail your mood, your reaction time and your motivation to push on.

The USF College of Nursing will host “Frontiers in Psychoneuroimmunology: Emotions, the Immune System and Performance,” the second annual national conference for the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, September 17-20, 2009 at Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Florida. This symposium will bring together some of the nation’s leading experts to discuss the influence emotions and the immune system have upon performance — whether it’s in a sports arena, hospital, or war zone.

PNI is a scientific field dealing with the relationships among the mind (psyche), the brain (neuro) and the immune system (immunology) and what all that has to do with your health and susceptibility to disease.

“In the early days when the term ‘psychoneuroimmunology’ was coined, the bias was that the brain controls everything – that information flows in the direction of gravity, from the nervous system down to the rest of the body,” said Nick Hall, PhD, Professor and Director of the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the USF College of Nursing. “For more than 25 years researchers in the field of PNI have been accumulating evidence showing that what you think and feel may alter your immune system – that there are things you can do to help achieve optimal health. Now, we know the reverse is true. Your mood and level of motivation can be profoundly affected by your immune system.”

Stressful memories of traumatic events, shift-work and crossing time zones can affect the immune system and performance. Self-destructive emotions can be triggered by injury and the immune system. To gain a better understanding of the factors leading to suboptimal performance, as well as potential solutions, the “Frontiers in Psychoneuroimmunology: Emotions, the Immune System and Performance” program incorporates both theory and practical exercises. This will include experiencing the premier Saddlebrook Executive Challenge course used to train elite athletes and corporations to better cope with change and adversity. Upon completion of the conference, participants will gain a better understanding of the causes of sub-optimal performance, as well as learn practical solutions.

“More than anything else, Psychoneuroimmunology is about preventing illness and optimizing performance,” said Dr. Hall.

The conference’s keynote speakers are some of the nation’s leading PNI experts and include
Charles Figley, PhD, Professor and Distinguished Chair in Disaster Mental Health at Tulane University; Keith Kelley, PhD, Professor of Immunophysiology at the University of Illinois; and Teodor Postolache, MD, Director of the Mood and Anxiety Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Figley will present, “Stress Injury and Performance: Lessons from the Battlefield’, Dr. Kelley will discuss inflammation, mental fatigue and motivation and Dr. Postolache will discuss the impact shift work and crossing time zones has upon health and performance. 

Other top scholars include USF College of Nursing’s Maureen Groer, RN, PhD, FAAN, Director of the Center for Women’s Health Research; Theresa Beckie, PhD, FAHA, Professor; and Nick Hall, PhD, Professor and Director of the Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. Dr. Groer will discuss performance of police officers in stressful virtual reality scenarios, Dr. Beckie will present information regarding the ability of exercise to reduce inflammatory biomarkers in women with coronary disease and Dr. Hall will present the interrelationships between emotions and performance. Dr. Hall’s research on emotions and health has been featured on “Nova” and the Emmy-Award winning television series “Healing and the Mind” produced by Bill Moyers for PBS. 

“Everyone can learn how to take a more active role in preventing illness, improving quality of life and take advantage of therapies that may allow traditional medical treatments to work better,” Dr. Hall said. “There are scientifically based things you can do, such as mindfulness meditation, stress management or reframing exercises, that can make a significant difference in promoting your overall health – in ways you may have never imagined.”

For more information visit: www.health.usf.edu/nocms/nursing/pni or https://www.cme.hsc.usf.edu/pni/.

-- Story by Ashlea Hudak, College of Nursing Communications

Led by Yiliang Zhu, PhD, professor in the College of Public Health, the USF team draws upon a wide array of expertise from researchers at Colleges of Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Moffitt Cancer Center, Jaeb Center for Health Research, and Tampa VA hospital.

The summer institute, which will open in the summer of 2010, is a part of a national effort to train the next generation of biostatistical scientists. Its aim is to address a persistent shortage in biostatistics training and to support medical and health research.

Undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing an academic program or a professional career in biostatistics should consider applying to participate in the six-week summer institute. For more information, email Yiliang Zhu at yzhu@health.usf.edu.

USF athletic training student Tristen Webb measures the range of motion of fellow student T.J. Gilbert as Dr. Gianluca Del Rossi looks on.

The USF Athletic Training program has been granted reaccreditation for 10 years – the maximum period allowed by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE).

USF’s ATEP is one of only two (out of more than 350 programs nationwide) located within a medical school and the only one housed in an orthopedic department, said Micki Cuppett, EdD, ATC, director of Athletic Training Education at USF Health.

“USF serves as a model of excellence for other athletic training programs across the country,” Dr. Cuppett said. “We routinely receive inquiries from other ATEPs who look to us to learn how we positioned the program in the College of Medicine.”

The two-year undergraduate program recently moved into 6,200 square feet of space on the third floor of the University Professional Center, 3500 E. Fletcher Ave. That was just in time to accommodate the program’s newest group of 31 incoming students -- its largest class ever. The new space includes two classrooms and a state-of-the-art Athletic Training Lab complete with rehabilitation and emergency equipment, 17 examination tables and a research laboratory.

Approximately 250 pre-athletic training majors compete yearly for 30 admission slots in the USF ATEP; the program’s total student enrollment (juniors and seniors) is currently 59. Students gain 250 hours of clinical experience each semester and collaborate with athletic trainers, orthopedic surgeons and residents, primary care and musculoskeletal medicine physicians— professionals they will work with throughout their careers. The students rotate through area high schools, community rehabilitation/physical therapy clinics, USF Athletics and several professional sports organizations, including the Philadelphia Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays. Graduates receive a B.S. degree in Athletic Training and are eligible to sit for the national licensing exam.

Dr. Jeff Konin lectures to first-year athletic training students in their new classroom.

The USF ATEP was initially accredited in 2003, when the major was housed in the College of Education. The program transferred to the new Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in 2007.

Positioning the ATEP program in Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine allows athletic training students to take advantage of College of Medicine resources, including the gross anatomy laboratory and patient simulators in the Center for Advanced Clinical Learning. It also facilitates cross-disciplinary education. For example, athletic training faculty and student help teach medical students musculoskeletal content and skills in the Physical Diagnosis courses and in the fourth-year Skin and Bones Clerkship.

The ATEP program also strengthens USF’s Sports Medicine and Athletic Related Trauma Institute, a state-sponsored sports safety outreach program providing certified athletic trainers to high schools across the Tampa Bay region. Several of USF’s ATEP graduates now work for SMART at local high schools.

“Our graduates have established successful careers as athletic trainers in high schools, colleges and universities, professional sports programs, sports medicine clinics and other athletic health care settings,” Dr. Cuppett said.

About 70 percent of USF’s athletic training graduates continue on to earn another professional degree, including the MD degree or an advanced degree in physical therapy, she added.

The Athletic Training laboratory and classrooms occupy 6,200 square feet in the University Professional Center. The new space accommodates numerous exam and treatment tables.

Faculty and staff involved in the year-long self study and preparation for the reaccreditation site visit this spring were: David Leffers, MD, Chair, Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine; Jeff Konin, PhD, ATC, PT, Vice Chair, Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine, and Director, SMART; Micki Cuppett, EdD, ATC, Director, Athletic Training Education; Gianluca DelRossi, PhD, ATC; Barbara Morris, MS, ATC, CSCS, ROT; and Larry Collins, PA-C

For more information, visit www.usfatep.com

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Micki Cuppett, EdD, ATC, USF Athletic Training Education

The five-year grant from the National Institute on Aging was awarded to Jun Tan, MD, PhD, Robert A. Silver Chair and Director of the Rashid Laboratory for Developmental Neurobiology at the Silver Child Development Center, USF Department of Psychiatry. The study co-investigators are Paul Sanberg, PhD, DSc, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair, Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair, and David Morgan, PhD, professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology and chief scientific officer of the Byrd Alzheimer Institute at USF Health.

Recent USF studies have shown that immunity can be transferred using human umbilical cord blood cells, which improves the pathology associated with Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model. Other studies have demonstrated that a specific immune system suppression is correlated with significantly reduced abnormal levels of the beta amyloid protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

“This new NIH study will continue to build on our understanding of the HUCBC’s mechanism behind improvement in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Tan said. “It will help provide a better understanding of brain immune cells called microglia, which promote brain inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dr. Tan and his colleagues previously demonstrated that once a specific molecule, CD40, on the surface of these microglia cells becomes activated by its partner, CD40L (CD40 ligand), the scene is set for a cascade of events leading to brain inflammation that injures the brain’s neurons. They also showed that the trigger for this harmful immune response can be blocked by specific antibodies.

In this study, Dr. Tan and his team plan to test the hypothesis that HUCBC could reduce the interaction between the CD40L molecule and its CD40 target, which in turn would decrease Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain. The experiments will be performed on (transgenic) mice genetically modified to develop memory problems mimicking Alzheimer’s disease as they age.

Furthermore, the researchers plan to create a cocktail combining the precise molecules they believe are the key players behind HUCBC’s beneficial effects. “We will give the compound to these transgenic mice to assess the possibility of bypassing the need for HUCBC and making future therapies more cost effective,” Dr. Tan said.

"This approach shifts the focus from treating symptoms of Alzheimer's disease to treatments that slow down the disease or prevent it altogether.” Dr. Tan said. “Our long-term goal is to move this combination treatment into phase I human trials for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.”

Sept. 8, 2009 -- The USF Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center will hold its “Imagine” research fundraising gala on Saturday evening, Sept. 12, at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center’s Morsani Hall, 1010 W.C. MacInness Place, in Tampa.

The gala will include a food and wine tasting and silent auction from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. A Fun and Funky 70s Show with the TBPAC cabaret singers will follow from 9 to 10 p.m. in the Jaeb Theatre. It should be a night to remember!

The message of the evening is “Hope Through Research,” and funds raised will go to support the Center, its research efforts, and outreach programs including exercise and Tai Chi classes for patients.

“We have made great strides in understanding the mechanisms of Parkinson’s and continue our work to identify innovative therapies that will slow, and hopefully one day stop, progression of the underlying disease,” said Dr. Robert Hauser, professor of neurology and director of the Movement Disorders Center.

Established in 1986, the USF Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center is designated as one of only 41 National Parkinson’s Foundation Centers of Excellence worldwide. At the forefront of testing new medications to combat movement disorders, the Center also offers surgery including deep brain stimulation for patients who no longer benefit from drug therapy, and injections of botulinum toxin for a variety of movement disorders.

Please call (813) 844-4547 for more information.

Specifically, between 2000 and 2007, the Chronicle reports that USF grew 213 percent in "federal funds for academic research and development.” This was by far the highest percentage increase in the country.

“This means that during those seven years, no other American university grew its federal research at a faster rate than USF,” USF President Judy Genshaft said in her recent President’s Report to alumni. “Most importantly, no other group of faculty had a faster rate of earning new federal sponsorship for discovery and the creation of knowledge.”

It’s a big jump in a short time: In fiscal year 2000, USF’s expenditures of federal funds were $50.5 million. By FY 2007, those expenditures had risen to more than $158.4 million.

Federally-sponsored research for all universities is counted by the National Science Foundation, from which this report was derived.

President Genshaft will discuss USF's continued research success, including the contributions of USF Health, Sept. 9 at 3 p.m. in the Marshall Center Ballroom. You are welcome to attend or watch via a link at www.usf.edu

At USF Health, we are strongly connected to both the local and global communities and are passionate about enriching the lives of Tampa Bay and beyond through better health. We are committed to engagement initiatives that transform the way healthcare is understood, taught and delivered, which in turn, strengthens our community.

We are transforming health care in the Tampa Bay community, by:

• Researchers, designers and leaders from across the university are working together to find a cure for diabetes. USF has become the country’s epicenter for Type 1 diabetes research.

• USF Health students from all colleges opened the BRIDGE clinic, a student-directed clinic for uninsured adults.

• USF Health is creating new partnerships with hospitals to build nationally recognized medical services. USF Health’s hospital partners have been ranked among the nation’s top 50 hospitals by U.S. News and World Report.

• USF Health launched two centers for advanced healthcare, built from the ground up around quality, service, technology and superior education.

Watch this award-winning podcast, “Straight Talk with Dr. D.”

It captures the core value of USF Health: To see health as a spectrum that crosses all our colleges and disciplines, from the environment, to government policy, to community and family health, to wellness, to emergency, acute, chronic and end of life care. The messages contained within the podcast reflect that core value.

What motivates you? from USF Health, Univ. of South Fl on Vimeo.

Our Community Partners

	USF Area Health Education CenterWe inspire, train, recruit and retain a diverse and broad range of health professionals to practice in communities where the need is greatest.		Healthy Start: Chiles Center The Chiles Center is dedicated to determining the most effective strategies, programs and systems for reducing illness and death among mothers, their infants and young children.
			USF Health Service CorpsOur student group enables USF Health students in Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Physical Therapy to participate in health-related community service activities together.
	Ronald McDonald Care MobileHillsborough County School Board awards USF Health Pediatrics Read more...
	USF Area Health Education CenterWe believe a healthy community is a prosperous community, in the heart of the University Area Community		Centers for Advanced Healthcare We are committed to bringing USF Health's extensive expertise in research, education and healthcare to you — in one of our Advanced Healthcare Centers in Tampa.
	USF Health Diabetes CenterAlready a national leader in epidemiological research to understand and prevent diabetes, USF is working to dramatically increase its clinical research, expand its diabetes education program, and establish a comprehensive center

For questions please contact:

Hiram Green
USF Health | Director of Community Engagement
Office: (813) 974-1571 • email: hgreen@health.usf.edu

    Ataxia patients Avery Zaritsky, Kyle Bryant and Nygel Lanz spoke at USF Health last week about the need for more research into Friedreich's and other ataxias.

     Just a few years ago, living with ataxia was so much lonelier.

     Avery Zaritsky was diagnosed with the disease at 19. For a long time, she and her husband, Paul, felt it was, at least medically, them against the world. Doctors even told them not to have children.

     "Eight or nine years ago, we were all on our own," said Dr. Paul Zaritsky, a Tampa dentist. "Now we have hundreds of scientists backing us up."

     Patients and researchers voiced that same sense of optimism repeatedly at USF at how rapidly research into Friedreich's and other ataxias has started to show promise. USF hosted a series of events last week that will benefit the USF Ataxia Research Center and FARA, the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance.

     Friedreich's is a rare neuromuscular disorder which affects the body's ability to balance, as well as causing muscle weakness and other problems. There is no known treatment or cure.

     But just in the last five years, a host of promising research avenues have blossomed, said Jennifer Farmer, executive director of FARA, at a research symposium last week. Just since 2004, research has gone from three different avenues of attack to nine, she pointed out.

     "This is why we're so excited," she said. "We need multiple shots on goal."

     Among those shots is research by Dr. Theresa Zesiewicz, professor of neurology and director of the USF Ataxia Research Center. Dr. Zesiewicz is studying how the smoking cessation drug varenicline could be used as a treatment to help ataxia patients with balance difficulties.

     Dr. Zesiewicz wowed last week's crowd when she showed videos showing patients with limited balance and substantial difficulty walking before taking varenicline and notable improvements afterwards. She cautioned that those results are preliminary and that the drug has substantial side effects.

     Still, such efforts are among those that give Farmer hope.

     "I like to think of the last decade as the decade of progress," she said.

     Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, dean of the USF College of Medicine and CEO of USF Health, told the group that research is nearing the final step.

      "We know a lot about this disease," he said. "What we don't know yet is how to stop it."

      Dr. Stephen Klasko, dean of the USF College of Medicine, talks about USF's ataxia research.

     But that day will come, he said.

      "Thank you for your courage and your patience," Dr. Klasko said to the ataxia patients present. "We will beat this."

        That can't happen soon enough for patients like Kyle Bryant, who was diagnosed with Friedreich's ataxia at age 17.

"I think Friedreich's ataxia gives us all a sense of urgency," Bryant said. "I don't know where I will be in the next five years. I will never be as able as I am now."

Jennifer Farmer, executive director of FARA; Dr. Theresa Zesiewicz, director of the USF Ataxia Research Center; Dr. Clifton Gooch, USF neurology chair; Dr. Jeffrey Krischer, director of the USF Pediatrics Epidemiology Center and principal investigator of the NIH-funded Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network Data Management and Coordination Center

     Yet Bryant already had to give up bicycling, switching to a recumbent trike that is easier to balance on. He's made the most of that: in 2006, he founded a group called Ride Ataxia, a group that has biked 3,300 in the last two years, helping raise $700,000 for ataxia research.

"We were totally devastated in the beginning," Bryant said at USF last week. "We've taken an amazing journey and turned 180 degrees, and experienced some amazing things that we wouldn't have otherwise."

Still, Bryant feels time is short.

"We need to do it fast," he told the audience at last week's symposium. "We need to do it hard. We need to do it now."

-- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications; Video by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications; Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

RELATED STORIES:
- Energizing Research for a Cure
- From wheelchair to walking, ataxia patient finds hope through USF study

Dr. David Keefe

August, 31, 2009 -- David Keefe, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at USF Health, has accepted a position as the Kaplan Professor and Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York University and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tish and Belleview Hospitals.

Catherine Lynch, MD, has been appointed interim chair of OB/GYN by Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO for USF Health and dean of the USF College of Medicine.

“While this is a loss for us, I’m happy that Dr. Keefe is able to take this step and wish him well as he tackles the Big Apple. I’d like to thank him for all he has done to elevate our own department,” Dr. Klasko said.

“The mark of a great academic leader is a department with many members of the faculty who feel empowered to excel. That is what Dr. Keefe has accomplished in OB/GYN and why we are so optimistic about the future. In the more than four years that Dr. Keefe has been here, our OB/GYN department has gained recognition as one of the top 25 programs in the country in the prestigious U.S. News & World Report ranking.”

Dr. Catherine Lynch

Professor and Chief of the Division of General OB/GYN, Dr. Lynch was a key member of Dr. Keefe's leadership team in building the department. “Dr. Lynch a proud graduate of our medical school and also graduated from the USF Health Leadership Institute -- a great example of one of our own achieving success,” Dr. Klasko said.

Dr. Keefe came to USF to head the OB-GYN Department in 2005 from Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, RI. He is well-known for his work as one of nation’s leading reproductive endocrinologists and infertility specialists, researching ways to improve in-vitro fertilization success rates and how women lose their fertility with age.

A recent top medical news story described how U.S. researchers used the Oosight imaging system to develop a gene transfer technique with potential to prevent inherited diseases from being passed from mothers to their children through mutated mitochondrial DNA. That system was based on innovative imaging technology originally developed by scientists at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, in collaboration with Dr. Keefe.

Dr. Keefe’s leadership has helped bring other top-notch talent to USF. He significantly expanded the department’s reproductive medicine team, which now offers cutting-edge in-vitro fertilization services at satellite locations across West Central Florida as well as in Tampa. He also developed a high-quality research and treatment team for pelvic floor disorders.