News of the Week

Bentze earns physician well-being certificate

Nicole Bentze, D.O., dean of the Florida State University College of Medicine’s Sarasota Regional Campus, recently completed a yearlong certificate program from the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) called “Leading Physician Well-being” (LPW).

Nicole Bentze, D.O.
Nicole Bentze, D.O.

Dr. Bentze was one of 120 physicians selected from a national pool to participate in this program, which was created to provide leadership development, training in physician well-being advocacy and performance improvement project skill-building.  In collaboration with the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, she developed a project called “Enhancing Medical Student Well-being using Art Guided Meditation” and presented it to peers in November.

AAFP LPW Scholars completing this certificate are felt to be well-positioned to fill leadership roles within health care systems where they can create value around physician well-being, which honors the doctor-patient relationship.  This leads to a more productive and engaged physician workforce and a better-served, and therefore healthier, patient population. 

The AAFP Leading Physician Well-being Program is a grant-funded program of the American Academy of Family Physician through the United Health Foundation. Additional information can be obtained by visiting the AAFP website or contacting Heather Woods.

Joedrecka Brown Speights, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health and co-chair of the College of Medicine Wellness Committee, is a member of the LPW faculty.

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Feb 07, 2023
in-Training
PRESS RELEASE

It was the first day of my inpatient internal medicine rotation and I felt as excited as ever to bein the hospital, participating in rounds. “How’s your day going?” I asked automatically in a cheery tone as I entered my first patient’s room.

“How do you think it’s going? I’m in the hospital,” the patient snarled dismissively. I stood there, a deer in the headlights, completely caught off guard.

News of the Week

Boyer to co-chair statewide GME group

Bill Boyer, associate dean and designated institutional official of the College of Medicine, has been named co-chair of the Council of Florida Medical School Deans’ GME Working Group.

Boyer oversees graduate medical education at the college, including residencies and fellowships and is also an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences.

He assumes the position previously held by Interim Dean Alma Littles.

 

Dean's Message, February 2023

Feb 01, 2023

Good afternoon!

Sharing messages with our FSU College of Medicine family is nothing new for me, though most often I’m focusing on various aspects of our medical education program, the curriculum and the administrative matters that are a part of our everyday life. This message feels different because today is my first day as your new interim dean. To say I am honored for this opportunity is an understatement.

Like most of you, I was drawn to this medical school by its mission. My life is enriched by the challenges we take on together so that we can serve our communities, especially the vulnerable and the medically underserved. I was raised in such a community just down the road in Quincy, and I know from personal experience – and from witnessing the obstacles faced by friends and neighbors – how important our mission really is.

When I meet our remarkable students and speak with our talented faculty members and staff, I am consistently buoyed by the confidence that comes with knowing our mission has brought us wonderful people who are committed to the same cause.

By many metrics, we are exceling in our mission, producing physicians, physician assistants and scientists who truly are making a difference in the world. What better reason to go to work every day?

As FSU Provost Jim Clark said when announcing that I had accepted this new role, the length of this assignment is not presently known. The search for a permanent dean has paused for the time being and nothing has been determined as to when it might resume.

Doesn’t matter. My intent is to serve as your leader for as long as I am needed and to focus each day on the ways we can work together to meet our goals.

Yet I acknowledge that the challenges are real:

  • We are embarking on new and exciting projects to develop a research and education facility near Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare vital to Florida State’s ambitions for growth in discovery. The medical school will play a major role.
  • You probably saw the news recently about the groundbreaking ceremony that took place in Panama City Beach, where we are partnering with the St. Joe Company and TMH to develop a clinical, educational and research “medical campus” in a community that will grow to include 3,500 homes in the coming years. Again, the medical school will be expected to be a large contributor to that effort.
  • Closer to home, we continue to seek the best way to grow our clinical practices (collectively known as the Florida Medical Practice Plan), including but not limited to FSU SeniorHealth, FSU PrimaryHealth and FSU BehavioralHealth.
  • Our graduate medical education programs will expand in the near future to include a new psychiatry residency program and additional fellowships.
  • The best sign that we are no longer in the early stages of our development as a medical school is that we continue to lose good people to retirement and sometimes to other universities. There certainly will be additional challenges in this area as we are forced to replace people who have played important roles in our success.

I am confident that we can meet all the challenges in front of us with the full support of our university.

Provost Clark and FSU President Richard McCullough have made clear they value the College of Medicine’s success in achieving its mission and have committed to supporting and investing in our future. It’s clear, we are taking on these challenges together.

Please join me in the atrium on Friday (Feb. 3) for the research fair, where an impressive array of projects will illustrate the scope of our college’s impressive growth in discovery.

Then on Wednesday (Feb. 8) at 12 p.m. we’ll have a short ceremony in the atrium to honor Dr. Fogarty, who served as our dean for 14 years, and to celebrate the passing of the torch. I am thankful for his leadership and friendship and for the opportunities I was afforded that helped to prepare me for this moment in time. Please join me in showing our gratitude for his service.

Next Thursday, February 9, we will join the PA Class of 2024 for their mini-Match celebration as they learn where they will spend the clinical year of their program.

Soon we will be gathering for the March 17 Match Day Ceremony and the spring clerkship directors’ meetings, and the M.D. student awards ceremony and commencement (May 19-20) will be here before you know it.

In the coming days, you will receive an email with a link to nominate students for awards, plus a separate email asking for nominations for the next class of inductees in the FSU Medical Alumni Hall of Fame. Help us recognize outstanding students and alumni by nominating someone you know is deserving of these honors.

I look forward to the great things we will accomplish together as the College of Medicine weaves the growth in front of us with the history of our wonderful mission, one that we remain steadfastly committed to.

Alma B. Littles, M.D.

Interim Dean

Dean's Message, November 2021

Nov 15, 2021

I am writing today to let you know that after 13 + years here at the Florida State University College of Medicine, I have decided that it is time to retire and enjoy more time with my wife, children and grandchildren as of next summer. This has been an amazing experience for me here at FSU, and I am blessed to have worked with so many wonderful staff, faculty, students and community members who made this job a joy.    

When I arrived here in 2008, our medical school had graduated only 4 classes and was still increasing enrollment and the number of students at our regional campuses each year. With the help of so many of you, we grew to 120 students/year, expanded our faculty, increased our graduate program and our research portfolio, revamped our curriculum for the 21st century, developed residency programs throughout the state, and launched a successful PA program in 2017 and an Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences degree program (IMS) in 2016. Our award-winning pipeline programs (SSTRIDE, celebrating over 25 years of success) and Bridge have made the dream of medical careers a reality for a generation of students. We now have thriving practices in the community in primary care, senior care, and behavioral care that are living our missions and serving others.

I recognize that there are many transitions happening here at FSU at this time, but I had planned to do this in 2021 in concert with my 50th anniversary of graduation from college, West Point. I looked forward to my 50th reunion this year, but like many things, it was interrupted by COVID. The COVID pandemic, lockdowns, remote meetings, online learning, and a disrupted special COM community here, along with some lingering LCME issues, kept me here for another year. I am confident in the leadership of our new President and his team, and I am excited about all the new and exciting initiatives underway that will make the COM even stronger going forward. Diane and I plan to continue to live in Tallahassee, so I will be looking for ways to continue to be involved in a very part time way in the future, only if I can be helpful. I know this is a very attractive medical school dean position and I am confident that there will be many highly qualified internal and external candidates who would love to take on this incredible role. The Provost has already reached out to identify a national search firm to lead a national search.

I thank each of you for your loyal and dedicated service to the FSU College of Medicine and for all of your amazing support to me over these past 13 years that I’ve spent here. Diane and I have been so very blessed to call you colleagues and friends. You have been an amazing family to us since 2008. I have informed the President and Provost that I will serve until my replacement is named and plan to be here at least through next July. 

With sincere appreciation and gratitude.    

J.

John P. Fogarty, MD
Dean

 

News of the Week

Sweeney, student promote financial literacy in minority first-generation medical students

College of Medicine Associate Professor Mike Sweeney and third-year medical student Kabir Grewal recently participated in “Making the Rounds” with the American Medical Association to discuss, “Promoting financial literacy in minority first-generation medical students.”

Sweeney, in collaboration with the FSU College of Business, created a personal finance elective for fourth-year medical students five years ago called Business and Medicine (BAM). The course curriculum addresses financial literacy, debt management, building generational wealth and retirement plans in an effort to empower medical students. It is a popular course, especially with medical students from marginalized racial and ethnic groups who are dealing with the financial realities associated with a medical education.

Grewal, an economics major as an undergraduate, is BAM’s president.

 

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Jan 31, 2023
Daily Commercial News
PRESS RELEASE

A tractor-loader-backhoe, bulldozer and skid steer are parked next to a large sign that has been erected on a sprawling, dusty, brown parcel of property just north of Panama City Beach, Fla., along State 79 near Philip Griffitts Sr. Parkway.

On the sign is the colorful rendering of a new health care campus.

 

News of the Week

Biomedical Sciences researchers awarded DOH grant

Department of Biomedical Sciences researchers Jerome Irianto, an assistant professor, and Branko Stefanovic, a professor, were awarded a cancer research grant from the Florida Department of Health.

Through the Live Like Bella Pediatric Cancer Research Initiative, the Irianto Lab and the Stefanovic Lab will receive $124,025 over three years for a project titled, “Evaluation of LARP6 inhibitor for the treatment of pediatric glioblastoma.”

Glioblastoma is a fast-growing malignant brain tumor. According to the National Institutes of Health, it is a devastating disease in children with a five-year survival rate of less than 20%. LARP6 is a protein that, when it binds to collagen, augments the creation of fibroids. This project will verify the impact that inhibiting LARP6 has on the growth and invasion potential of pediatric glioblastoma organoids – tiny, three-dimensional tissue cultures that are derived from stem cells – and explain the mechanism behind it.

News of the Week

Wade Douglas, M.D., appointed to APDS

Dr. Wade Douglas
Dr. Wade Douglas

Wade Douglas, M.D., a PIMS alumnus and director of the College of Medicine’s general surgery residency program at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, has been appointed to the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

APDS was founded in 1977 to provide a forum for wide-ranging discussions and exchange of information regarding post-graduate surgical education. It works to maintain high standards of surgical residency training and has been at the forefront of developing and disseminating standards and practices among surgical programs.

"Dr. Douglas continues to advocate for and contribute to the excellent education of surgeons throughout the country,” said College of Medicine Interim Dean Alma Littles.

Press Release

NIH funds research in early-stage behavioral interventions to prevent premature deaths

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Audrey Post, audrey.post@med.fsu.edu
850-645-9428

September 2022

NIH FUNDS RESEARCH IN EARLY-STAGE BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS TO PREVENT PREMATURE DEATHS

Sept. Sylvie Naar is on a mission to train the next generation of researchers in methods for developing behavioral interventions, which could mean the difference between life and death for a lot of people.

That’s not hyperbole: The National Cancer Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is supporting that goal with a four-year grant totaling almost $1 million.

Naar is director of the Florida State University Center for Translational Behavioral Science, which is focused on translating research findings into patient treatment. She is the principal investigator on the grant project, and she’s passionate about the topic.

“An estimated 40% of premature deaths are attributable to preventable behavioral factors such as smoking, alcohol use, sexual risk, poor diet, and sedentary lifestyle, which have been linked to chronic illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes,” said Naar, a distinguished and endowed professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine at FSU’s College of Medicine.

“Accelerating the development and optimization of treatments to improve health behaviors is an urgent public health priority,” she said.

Until now, much of the research has focused on traditional clinical trial design. Naar will create a course that teaches rigorous and replicable new methods for early-stage behavioral intervention for cancer prevention and treatment.

“The past decade has seen significant advances in innovative methodologies to translate into new and more potent behavioral treatments,” she said. “The use of a variety of methods to answer focused questions promotes creativity, prevents premature abandonment or premature efficacy testing of a method, and encourages optimization.”

Jeffrey Joyce, senior associate dean for research and graduate programs at the College of Medicine, said the need for training in methods for rigorous early-stage behavioral intervention research is critical to truly impact chronic diseases.

“The importance of the training cannot be overstated and Dr. Naar has been at the forefront of the science of behavioral interventions,” he said. “This will have a lasting impact on the future of behavioral research and implementation.”

Researchers will use the ORBIT model for behavioral treatment development – a flexible and progressive process that uses pre-specified, clinically significant milestones for forward movement, and a return to earlier stages for refinement and optimization if that is what’s needed.

The ORBIT model was originally used to study obesity in South Carolina teens, hence the acronym for Obesity-Related Behavioral Intervention Trials. Naar developed the model with the NIH and was part of the obesity research team, the team that researched expanding its use for treatment of chronic disease and illness, and she has been a co-author on many research projects using the method.

Each year of this study, 25 fellows from multiple disciplines will be selected for a six-month course that teaches a variety of methods and skill-enhancement techniques to encourage more effective collaboration across the research spectrum. Fellows will include emerging researchers in behavioral interventions and established researchers looking to expand their focus.

The fellows will have substantial minority representation to ensure the project team is training researchers reflective of medically underserved populations to improve health disparities. The course will be a combination of in-person workshops and bi-monthly webinars, and frequent evaluation will contribute to ongoing curriculum development and refinement.

“The hope is that this could turn into an annual conference; a self-sustaining entity,” Naar said. “I want to train the next generation of scientists in this domain. That’s my thing.”

 

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