Graduate programs at USF Health had promising gains in this year’s rankings from U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News), with some programs breaking into the top 50 of their rankings.

In the U.S. News 2024 Best Graduate Schools list released on April 25, USF Health’s physician assistant, nursing and public health programs ranked among the best in the country.

The rankings released April 25 did not include medical schools or law schools; those rankings were released by U.S. News May 11.

Among the notable advancements this year are the two graduate programs from the USF Health College of Nursing, each of which had major gains, and the Physician Assistant Program in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, which made the ranking list for the first time in its young history after receiving its inaugural full accreditation needed to qualify.

“Our nursing school is clearly garnering attention on the national stage as both its master’s and doctoral programs are making incredible gains in the rankings, and proving to be the best in Florida,” said Charles J. Lockwood, MD, MHCM, executive vice president of USF Health and dean of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. “And the first-time ranking for our physician assistant program marks a significant milestone. While this USF Health program is still young, its inaugural ranking is among the top third of PA programs across the country. We anticipate further rankings gains as our program continues to develop.”

According to U.S. News, its methodology uses data from expert opinions and statistical indicators when measuring a program’s ranking, examining qualities students and faculty bring to the educational experience and graduates’ achievements linked to their degrees, such as job placement and research impact.

The posted results for USF Health this year include:

• #46 in Medical Schools for Primary Care: The USF Health Morsani College of Medicine improved significantly for U.S. medical schools for primary care, going from #56 last year to #46 this year, and breaking into the top 50 for the first time.
• #50 in Medical Schools for Research: The Morsani College of Medicine continues to rank well among U.S. medical schools for research, ranking at #50 this year.
• #65 in Health Doctoral Programs – Physician Assistant: The Morsani College of Medicine’s Physician Assistant program ranked for the first time, ranked at #65 this year, placing it in the top third of the more than 200 PA programs in the rankings.
• #31 in Nursing for Master’s: The USF Health College of Nursing jumped 11 spots, going from #42 last year to #31 this year, making it the top-ranked public nursing master’s program in Florida.
• #33 in Nursing for DNP: The College of Nursing also continues to improve in its DNP program ranking and skyrocketed into the top 50 for doctoral programs in the country with its 34-spot jump from #67 last year to #33 this year, making it the top-ranked public or private DNP program in Florida.
• #22 in Public Health: The USF Health College of Public Health remains the top-ranked public health program in Florida, with its rank at #22 this year.

U.S. News does not provide new rankings for all graduate programs each year, so the USF Health Taneja College of Pharmacy maintains its rank of #68, and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences maintains its rank of #49.

More on rankings for other USF graduate programs…

This year’s USF Health Research Day set new records as more participants than ever filled the USF Tampa campus Marshall Student Center on March 3 to showcase the best of their scientific work.

The 33^rd USF Health Research Day included 457 research poster presentations by students, postdocs, residents, faculty, and staff across all health disciplines. Research Day is the largest research-oriented event of its kind at USF and remains the largest celebration of health sciences research collaboration across all four USF Health colleges (medicine, nursing, public health and pharmacy) as well as with colleagues in other USF colleges, including social work and engineering.

From left, Dr. Charles Lockwood, Dr. Kim Orth, Rhea Law, and Dr. Steve Liggett.

Research Day kicked off with the Annual Roy H. Behnke, MD, Distinguished Lectureship featuring speaker Kim Orth, PhD, professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Dr. Orth’s presentation was titled “Black Spot, Black Death, Black Pearl: Tales of Bacterial Effectors” – click here for more about Dr. Orth and her work.

Dr. Kim Orth.

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Tampa General Hospital, the primary teaching hospital for USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, was the presenting sponsor for USF Health Research Day 2023.

Following Dr. Orth’s presentation was the judging of work. Judges reviewed the posters that lined the Marshall Center Ballroom, asking the students for more detail and clarifications about their research projects. Presentations ranged from pilot, preliminary, empirical and case studies to system reviews and reviews of literature or charts.

Following the 13^th Annual Joseph Krzanowski Invited Oral Presenters by select students representing medicine, nursing, public health, and pharmacy, Research Day culminated with an Awards Ceremony in the Oval Theatre announcing the winners in 29 competitive categories – including 18 monetary awards totaling $8,600.

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For the list of Research Day 2023 award winners, click here.

For the list of Research Day judges and sponsors, click here.

More photos

Photos by Freddie Coleman, video by Allison Long, USF Health Communications

The Taneja College of Pharmacy has enhanced its foundational, didactic, and experiential curriculum to accommodate the diversity of students entering pharmacy school, many with diverse backgrounds in study, work, and life experiences. The curriculum includes components that allow students to pursue their passions, become workforce-ready, and pursue nontraditional pharmacy career paths.

As the USF Health Taneja College of Pharmacy’s (TCOP) new 30,000-square-foot home in downtown Tampa continues to progress, plans include a Maker Space/Creativity Lounge, a space that will connect students, faculty, and staff with leaders and innovators to promote creativity as part of professional development.

“The key to this vision is the ITEHC Academy (Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship in Healthcare). What originally started as a student-developed organization has grown to become the foundation for initiatives focused on advancing our student’s creativity, innovative and disruptive mindsets. It is now the pinnacle of the pillars and strategic plan of the USF Health Taneja College of Pharmacy,” said Kevin M. Olson, MBA, PharmD, CPh, assistant professor at the USF Health Taneja College of Pharmacy and director of the ITEHC Academy.

To help elevate and advance pharmaceutical education further, the new space will include virtual and augmented reality, a multitaction video wall, CAD drawing software, 3D printing, and holographic technology.

The space will allow various student groups, such as ITEHC, to develop innovative ideas and prototypes for health-related devices.

“Envision a space where students, faculty, staff, and community partners can come together and collaborate, a space where they can discover new ways of creating value that will advance pharmacy practice, differentiate pharmacist career opportunities, and reshape the future of pharmacy and health care,” Dr. Olson said.

Story and video by Ryan Rossy, USF Health Communications and Marketing

Rendering of the Student Commons outside the Creativity Lounge.

Rendering of the Creativity Lounge.

We all know our workmates at work, but few of us know how they spend their spare time. It can be a fun surprise to learn about our colleagues’ hobbies and interests.

One such example is with Robert Pelaia, deputy general counsel at USF, who provides legal support services for USF Health. He recently held a role in the local production of The Drowsy Chaperone, produced by mad Theatre of Tampa and held at the Straz Center of Performing Arts in Tampa (here’s the Playbill from the performance).

This play follows a show-within-a-show structure, creating a musical within a comedy that pokes fun at the many facets that characterize musical theater. The plot includes mistaken identities and dream sequences, looking at a fictitious “famous” musical through the eyes of a fan of musical theater. As he narrates and plays that show’s soundtrack album, the musical comes to life in his living room. The original U.S. stage performance of The Drowsy Chaperone opened on Broadway in 2006.

In the recent production in Tampa, Pelaia played Aldolpho, a character who is a bit of a womanizing cad who is very impressed with himself, and who takes part in a ploy to derail the wedding of the two main characters in the fictitious musical. Like other roles in The Drowsy Chaperone, Aldolpho’s character employs Vaudeville-style acting and good comic timing, and Pelaia met that mark as he played Aldolpho.

Participating in community theater is not new for Pelaia – he has been acting since he was in elementary school and involved in community theater for a few decades. In high school, he connected with community theater group in his hometown in New Jersey and, at the start of his career after college, he connected with community theater in Jacksonville. In Tampa, he’s in touch with theater groups throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Pelaia’s acting interests cross all genres and he has acted in a full range, from drama to musicals.

He urges others to get involved in community theater but to know that the commitment can’t be taken lightly.

“Rehearsals are nearly every evening of the week, so getting involved in a production that isn’t nearby means you will drive a lot for a few months to get to rehearsals and then go to every performance, which can typically run for several weeks, including at several weekends,” he said.

With a full-time career, he is careful when choosing productions with which to be involved.

“For me, it has to be a show I really like and the location is also a key factor,” Pelaia said. “It’s a big commitment of time and it has to fit into your schedule.”

Pelaia appreciated the positive response he received for his involvement and role in The Drowsy Chaperone.

“I’m honored by the outpouring of support,” he said.

And now that his USF Health colleagues know about his talent for acting?

“We work with people every day and yet we have no idea what they do in their spare time,” he said. “So, while it’s rewarding to share my interest in acting with others, it’s a great opportunity to hear what their interests are, too.”

Images courtesy of Chaz D. Photography

Faculty across several disciplines at USF Health earned National Institutes of Health funding to streamline prenatal, obstetric, pediatric, treatment, behavioral and community health care for patients with opioid use disorder.

Called CADENCE (Continuous and Data-Driven Care), the new program will better serve pregnant patients and new parents, as well as their infants, as they navigate the care they need for managing opioid dependence.

Co-principal investigators for the HD2A R61/R33 grant are Kimberly Fryer, MD, MSCR, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and Jennifer Marshall, PhD, CPH, associate professor in the USF Health College of Public Health, and fellow in the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center.

The primary aim of the new program is to streamline the integration of four “clinics” – or areas that patients might typically access separately. By streamlining these disciplines, care and scheduling will be more coordinated and holistic, and health outcomes of the parent and baby could greatly improve.

The four USF Health clinics being streamlined include office based opioid treatment (OBOT), the maternal family medicine prenatal/obstetric clinic, the PEDI pediatrics clinic, and behavioral health/mental health service.

A “secret shopper” study led by Dr. Marshall a year ago found that only about 20 percent of over 1000 attempts for pregnant women with Medicaid experiencing opioid use disorder were able to set appointments for prenatal care, indicating that many providers may hesitate to take these patients because they do not have the capacity or know how to connect their patients to the addiction treatment critical to helping these patients succeed in caring for themselves and their babies.

By bringing the four primary disciplines together, patients will have access to integrated, continuous, care that will improve maternal engagement in recovery or treatment for maternal opioid use disorder at delivery, neonatal outcomes, and timely referral to early intervention.

The new CADENCE includes two components: a data stage that will create in the first two years an interactive data dashboard that tracks maternal, neonatal, and infant outcomes for pregnancies affected by opioid use disorder and pilot the CADENCE program within USF Health and Hillsborough County; and an implementation stage in the third, fourth and fifth years that will focus on measuring improvement in clinical outcomes at the program level using the data from the dashboard and assessing the implementation and costs of the CADENCE program.

This program of integrated, continuous, care will be rapidly refined using a data-driven approach towards improving maternal engagement in recovery or treatment for maternal opioid use disorder at delivery, neonatal outcomes, and timely referral to early intervention.

A long-term aim of the project is to develop a model that can be shared throughout Florida and at other academic medical programs to help pregnant women in their communities.

Faculty and clinical staff from both USF Health and Tampa General Hospital learned the nuances and best practices of ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) at a special course held on the TGH campus last month.

The recent ECMO course provided the newest information associated with the life-saving procedure and was led by Kapil Patel, MD, associate professor and director of the USF Health Center for Advanced Lung Disease in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and director of the TGH Lung Transplant Program, and M Raheel Qureshi, MD, assistant professor and associate medical director of the ECMO program in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and associate director of the Lung Transplant Program at Tampa General Hospital.

ECMO is used in critical care situations, when the heart and lungs need help as the patient heals. In ECMO, blood is pumped outside of the body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. Blood flows from the right side of the heart to the membrane oxygenator in the heart-lung machine, and then is rewarmed and sent back to the body.

This method allows the blood to “bypass” the heart and lungs, allowing these organs to rest and heal.

Many providers and hospitals around the world saw an uptick in patients needing ECMO as part of the COVID-19 care they received in intensive care units. Now, as COVID continues to subside, expanding training on ECMO better prepares health care teams and hospitals if another surge of COVID – or other related viruses – take hold.

Published studies show that hospitals and facilities with more ECMO experience have better outcomes. ECMO is complex in its execution, requiring trained staff and specialist equipment, making the USF Health/TGH training course a critical part of preparation for another COVID surge or pandemic.

Health care providers across the country learned very quickly during the pandemic that ECMO could save lives and it was used largely in patients with COVID-19 with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Published studies show importance of carefully selecting patients for a critical care treatment requiring intense staffing, specialized equipment and advanced expertise.

The USF Health/TGH training sessions mean that more providers are prepared to treat patients sooner with ECMO and improve outcomes.

Photos by Freddie Coleman and Ryan Rossy, USF Health Communications

With virtual and augmented reality becoming more prominent, the USF Health Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) is expanding its research efforts to explore the use of virtual and augmented reality in medical simulation training. 

“Traditionally, health care simulation has been actors, task-trainers, and mannequins. Virtual reality allows us to be fully immersed in an alternate world and that world can be an operating room, an outpatient clinic, or an ambulance, and be changed quickly. You will really feel like you’re there, which is challenging to do in a simulation center.” said Yasuharu “Haru” Okuda, MD, FACEP, FSSH, executive director for USF Health CAMLS and associate vice president for USF Health Interprofessional Education and Practice.

As the research mission at CAMLS develops, the goal is to easily export its virtual medical simulation trainings to different parts of the world so other medical professionals can take advantage of the research expertise there.

“You can connect to VR training scenarios from anywhere. You will be able to bring it to your home, bring it to your classroom, and conduct a training within only a headset that is just as powerful as anything in person,” Dr. Okuda said.

Shannon Bailey, PhD, Sr. Human Factors Scientist for USF Health CAMLS and assistant professor for the Department of Medical Education at the Morsani College of Medicine.

To help expand its research efforts, CAMLS hired a PhD, tenure-track researcher, Shannon Bailey. She has over 10 years of experience designing and testing extended reality (XR) training simulations and educational games. In her research, she explores how augmented, virtual, and extended reality technology can be used to inspire effective student learning through adaptive training and natural user interfaces.

Before coming to CAMLS, Dr. Bailey worked for the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD). After gaining extensive experience in military simulation training, she transitioned to the field of medical simulation training as a researcher director for a technology company called Immertec, which develops medical simulation training to impact how medical professionals learn.

“This research is important because it is moving the field forward by systematically testing different ways to approach simulation training and finding ways to optimize the training for both the learner and the medical professionals, which could lead to better outcomes for patients,” said Dr. Shannon Bailey, assistant professor for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

“VR at CAMLS will not replace real-world mannequin-based training,” Dr. Okuda said, but offering a resource to those who lack access to high-fidelity simulation centers allows them to experience the same level of training and experience in a virtual environment. 

“We are thrilled to have Dr. Shannon Bailey as our first PhD tenure-track researcher at CAMLS. What she brings to CAMLS is the ability for us to really lean into this area of extended reality and then apply it into a health care academic setting,” said Dr. Okuda. 

Story and video by Ryan Rossy, USF Health Communications and Marketing

The USF Health College of Nursing is expanding its educational reach through new collaborations with two universities in Sicily.

The USF nursing school recently signed general agreements of understanding (GAUs) with nursing programs at the Kore University of Enna and the University of Catania, providing greater opportunity for global exchanges for faculty and students for training, internships, research endeavors and professional development.

Rector Francesco Priolo, Head of the University of Catania, and Dr. Usha Menon, dean of the USF Health College of Nursing, signed the first memo of understanding between University Catania and USF.

Plans to expand USF Health’s reach with both Kore and Catania were developed earlier this year and were more formalized in September when Usha Menon, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior associate vice president for USF Health and dean of the USF Health College of Nursing, among other faculty, traveled to tour the schools, hospitals and clinical facilities, and research laboratories, and GAUs between USF and each of the universities were signed.

In addition, College of Nursing Professor, Barbara Smith, RN, PhD, FACSM, FAAN and Associate Professor, Jennifer Kue, PhD conducted classes for the Kore students during this trip, an expansion of the online courses taught last January.

This trip was supported by a generous contribution from Rosemary and Douglas Ferdinand.

The new collaborative affiliations form the foundation for more formal contracts that aim to nurture the education and research missions for the institutions, including establishing visits and exchanges of faculty, scholars, and administrators in specific areas of education, practice, and research; exchange of undergraduate and/or graduate students; fostering the development of research collaborations, lectures, symposia and potential training projects for specific areas of interest between faculty; exploring topics for joint proposals for international funding; and initiating discussion for cooperative development of courses and academic programs.

Enhancing academic programs globally is an on-going effort across USF, including USF Health Nursing, Medicine, Public Health.

]]> /blog/2022/10/12/antibiotics-intended-to-heal-can-actually-encourage-resistance-of-life-threatening-c-difficile-infection/ Wed, 12 Oct 2022 19:33:52 +0000 /?p=37318 USF research teams led by Dr. Yu Chen and Dr. Xingmin Sun describe ways to control the No. 1 hospital-acquired bacterial infection in a paper published in the […]

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USF research teams led by Dr. Yu Chen and Dr. Xingmin Sun describe ways to control the No. 1 hospital-acquired bacterial infection in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

The ironic joke goes that if you want to get sick, stay in a hospital. That’s because hospitals can harbor germs that take advantage of a patient’s weakened state, complicating the illness that brought them there in the first place.

But health officials have an arsenal to keep people safe, including cephalosporins, strong antibiotics that fight bacteria such as staphylococcus and streptococcus. Cephalosporins are often used against skin, soft tissue and surgery related infections.

Dr. Yu Chen

However, treatment with β-lactam antibiotics – particularly cephalosporins – is a major risk factor for the virulent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), which attacks the large intestine and can cause diarrhea and life-threatening colitis.

These complications are explained in a recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications by teams that includes senior author Dr. Yu Chen, professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and co-corresponding author Dr. Xingmin Sun, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine in the Morsani College of Medicine. Several other USF research teams, led by Rays Jiang, PhD, Prahathees Eswara, PhD, and Ioannis Gelis, PhD, also contributed to the study.

“When you give a person an antibiotic to treat a disease, one of the consequences is the antibiotic can wipe out a lot of the good bacteria in the gut,’’ Dr. Chen said. “But in this case, C. difficile is resistant to cephalosporins, so it creates a high-risk factor. And if people are under prolonged antibiotic treatment, they are at an even higher risk for CDI.’’

Cephalosporin resistance in CDI is well documented, but the underlying mechanism has, until this point, remained unclear. The USF Health team used a combination of experimental techniques to characterize the molecular basis of cephalosporin resistance in CDI, which is the No. 1 hospital-acquired bacterial infection in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Initially, antibiotics are administered for an unrelated infection or prophylaxis, causing the gut flora diversity to diminish. Without competition from the good bacteria in the large intestine, CDI can easily proliferate, secreting toxins that cause cell death.

“The primary risk factor for CDI are broad-spectrum antibiotics, specifically those with weak activity against C. difficile and strong activity against other gut bacteria,’’ the authors state.

These broad-spectrum antibiotics irreversibly inhibit a bacterium’s penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs), which are enzymes that assemble in the bacterial cell wall. These proteins are critical not only for the growth of C. difficile, but also to produce its spores, which are resistant to harsh environmental conditions and contribute to the high recurrent rates of CDI. The challenge for researchers is that, prior to the Nature Communications report, there was little information about the PBPs of C. difficile.

As a common hospital-acquired infection, the pathogenesis of CDI is well-understood. It causes about 500,000 infections each year in the United States, and one in about 10 people over 65 with the infection die within a month, according to the CDC.

“We want to know more about C. difficile resistance so it (data) can be used to create new therapies for the future,’’ Chen said. “This research will help us understand more about certain drugs that are risks factors for infection.’’

The researchers emphasized two key findings in the journal report. First, by elucidating the three-dimensional structures of key PBPs from C. difficile and how they interact with beta-lactam antibiotics, the USF Health teams showed that cephalosporins do not have strong inhibitory activity against the PBPs essential for C. difficile growth and are thus unable to kill the bacterium.

Second, they also found that many of these proteins require zinc to be functional, partly explaining why dietary zinc is also a risk factor for CDI. Furthermore, the results can be used to develop new inhibitors of these PBPs to kill C. difficile and eliminate its spores. Such compounds can be developed into new antibiotics to treat CDI.

CDI can affect anyone, and symptoms often are painful and life threatening. Risk factors include:

• Being 65 or older
• Recent stay at a hospital or nursing home
• A weakened immune system, such as people with HIV/AIDS, cancer, or organ transplant patients taking immunosuppressive drugs
• Previous infection with CDI or known exposure to the germs

For more information, visit https://www.cdc.gov/cdiff/risk.html

The journal Nature Communications is an open access, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, health, physical, chemical and Earth sciences. Papers published by the journal aim to represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.

Story by Kurt Loft

The USF Health Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) first opened 10 years ago in March 2012, where leaders from the community, education, industry, and simulation partners from around the world met for the grand opening in downtown Tampa.

Under one roof, the 90,000 square-foot, three-story facility houses the latest simulation technology and experiences to train the full spectrum of health care professionals as one of the nation’s top medical simulation facilities.

Part of the mosaic of USF Health’s expanded presence in downtown Tampa, CAMLS, is within walking distance of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute in the Water Street Tampa urban development district.

CAMLS Grand Opening

“The goal was to build almost a Disney World for clinical providers who could travel from around the world to CAMLS to train with the best technology using simulation, incredible bio skills, fully realistic labs so that they can improve their procedural and clinical skills and then go back to their work and give the best practices both from USF Health experts but also utilizing the latest and greatest technology,” said Dr. Yasuharu “Haru” Okuda, MD, FACEP, FSSH, executive director for USF Health CAMLS and associate vice president for USF Health Interprofessional Education and Practice.

Until recently, CAMLS focused solely on training biomedical businesses and health care professionals. However, that initiative has expanded over the years to offer hands-on simulation training to USF Health students and faculty dedicated to advancing their clinical skills and improving patient safety and quality of care in Tampa Bay, Florida, the U.S., and the world.

“In the beginning, this advanced medical learning simulation was really focused around businesses and training and teaching health care professionals. But over the years, we’ve really evolved into a place where we conduct research in even more advanced training and education, like in virtual reality and augmented reality. We also now impact our future health care professionals by training students from our College of Medicine and College of Nursing both separately and as part of interprofessional teams,” Dr. Okuda said.

Dr. Charles Lockwood and USF President Rhea Law.

USF President Rhea H. Law and Charles Lockwood, MD, MHCM, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine (MCOM), have been active participants and contributed greatly to the success of CAMLS. President Law has been on the board of directors over the years and has continued to support the organization. Meanwhile, Dr. Lockwood has helped support the efforts of CAMLS around education, research, and innovation.

EMS instructors participated in a training class hosted by the USF Health CAMLS at the Pinellas County EMS Training Center.

Recently, CAMLS has been working on a new community outreach program called “CAMLS Without Walls.” The program was developed so the facility could go out into the community and deliver training through simulation-based education.

“The future of CAMLS is really bright,” Dr. Okuda said. “We have some incredible partnerships with startup companies in Tampa, where we’re building on our business relationships to innovate in areas such as virtual reality and augmented reality. We are also building our research teams to identify new technologies for training and education, and we’re publishing articles on that research. Now we are building a mobile training program called “CAMLS Without Walls,” so we are not bound by training only within CAMLS but can now go out into our community and deliver the training in hospitals in our rural environments and bring USF Health Expertise to places that need it the most.”

Story and video by Ryan Rossy, USF Health Communications and Marketing