CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

Sept. 16, 2014

DANCE MARATHON TO PRESENT CHECK TO FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Dance Marathon at Florida State University and Children’s Miracle Network at UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital will present a check for more than $380,000 to the Florida State University College of Medicine for the benefit of children throughout Gadsden and Leon counties.

The proceeds are part of the record $782,000 raised in 2014 by Dance Marathon, the largest student-run philanthropy on the Florida State campus. Children’s Miracle Network at UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital distributes part of the money raised to the Florida State College of Medicine for use in pediatric outreach programs.

The College of Medicine is using part of the proceeds to pay for a school-based health program in Gadsden County designed to address health care disparities among area children. Other projects include equipment for the pediatrics unit at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and bereavement services for children at Big Bend Hospice.

Scheduled to participate are Dr. John P. Fogarty, dean of the FSU College of Medicine; Heather Mears, director of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals; Susan LaJoie, assistant professor and a nurse practitioner who oversees the Gadsden school-based clinic; members of the Dance Marathon student executive committee; and students from the medical school’s Pediatrics Interest Group. The presentation will take place:

THURSDAY, SEPT. 18

NOON

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown, travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Stadium Drive. The College of Medicine is located on the corner of Stadium Drive and Call Street. Limited media parking will be available by RSVP in a parking lot located off of Call Street between the College of Medicine and the Psychology Building. Additional parking is available in the parking garage on the corner of Stadium Drive and Spirit Way.

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American Geriatrics Society Joins
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
to Help Older Adults Steer Clear of Car Crashes

Media Contact:
Zhenya Hurd
Project Manager
zhurd@americangeriatrics.org
212-308-1414

New York, NY - The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is pleased to announce a new cooperative agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to educate healthcare providers and the public about older driver safety.

This collaboration is in response to current national trends. Over the last decade, the number of older drivers in the U.S. has increased more than 20 percent. Statistics from the Federal Highway Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety indicate that per mile traveled, fatal crash rates increase starting at age 75 and increase notably after age 80. This is largely due to increased susceptibility to injury and medical complications among older drivers rather than to an increased tendency to get into crashes.

As part of the cooperative agreement, AGS is building on programs previously created by NHTSA and the American Medical Association. AGS and NHTSA will work together to revise and streamline web-based Continuing Medical Education (CME) content on how to assess and counsel older drivers, with the goal of increasing the number of participating health care providers. Materials for the interprofessional team and a mobile app that includes NHTSA's current safe driver assessment tools will also be developed.

Existing public educational materials for older adults and caregivers will be revised and disseminated through the AGS Health in Aging Foundation's website, HealthinAging.org, and on the AGS professional information portal, GeriatricsCareOnline.org. Medical practices and health plans can customize materials with their own "brand."

Dr. Alice Pomidor, MD, MPH, AGSF, is leading the editorial board for the AGS/NHTSA collaborative project. Dr. Pomidor is chair of the AGS Public Education Committee and Professor, Department of Geriatrics, Florida State University College of Medicine. "Most helper organizations have a great tendency to say, 'This is important. You should know this. Here.' — and they develop handouts that get thrown away. We're doing it a bit differently," she says, "by providing the information in multiple formats and having people choose which one is right for them."

The new professional and public education materials will be launched in Summer 2015. In the interim, NHTSA has a web page devoted to older drivers.

"We're pleased to have the opportunity to work with NHTSA in this effort to help older people remain safe behind the wheel, as well as to determine when the time is right for older adults to modify driving routines or to stop driving," says AGS Board of Directors President, Wayne C. McCormick, MD, MPH, AGSF, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington, Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Harborview Medical Center.
________________________________________

The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a not-for-profit organization of over 6,000 health professionals devoted to improving the health, independence and quality of life of all older people. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policy makers and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Ron Hartung
Nov. 3, 2014

STUDY FINDS PARENT INTERVENTION IS BEST FOR HELPING TODDLERS WITH AUTISM

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — For the first time, toddlers with autism have demonstrated significant improvement after intensive intervention by parents rather than clinicians, according to a new Florida State University study published online in the journal Pediatrics.

“We’ve come up with a treatment model that can teach parents to support their child’s learning during everyday activities, and we’ve documented that the children improved their developmental level, social communication skills and autism symptoms,” said Amy Wetherby, director of the Autism Institute at Florida State University’s College of Medicine and lead author of the Pediatrics study.

Social communication includes eye gaze, facial expressions, gestures, sounds, sharing of emotion, listening, learning to understand words, discovering how to use objects — things that children with autism have difficulty learning.

“The findings are important because this treatment is viable for any community,” Wetherby said. “We have early intervention that’s federally and state funded. Now we’ve tested a model that any early intervention system should be able to offer to all families of toddlers with autism. It’s affordable, and it’s efficient in terms of clinicians’
time.”

Most children are not diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) until age 4 — and even later in lower-income, rural and minority families. By contrast, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants every child to be screened at 18 and 24 months of age.

Early diagnosis, however, does little good without early intervention.

In recent years, some intervention trials had achieved improved outcomes for children but required an inaccessible amount of time from clinicians. Others that focused on teaching parents found that the parents learned, but the children didn’t show significant gains from the treatment.

This study, “Parent-Implemented Social Intervention for Toddlers With Autism: An RCT,” outlines the results of a seven-year randomized controlled trial, in which families of 82 toddlers with ASD who were 18 months old were assigned to one of two nine-month interventions.

“We compared the effects of teaching the parents in a group once a week and teaching them individually, where we went to their homes three times a week for six months, and then twice a week for three more months,” Wetherby said. “For both, children improved in using words and autism symptoms. However, children in the second group improved even more on understanding and social communication, demonstrating the impact of the individual sessions at home.

“With our specialized methodology, we taught families to work with their children 20 to 25 hours a week in their everyday activities — not only play but also meals and snacks, caregiving, family chores — and taught them how to bring their children into that activity. We also taught them how to go out in the community, how to take the child to a playground, to a grocery store, to a restaurant, and use these strategies.

“We tried to help parents make interactions fun and fruitful learning moments. But we also taught the parents how to push their child — because their child has autism, and we are finding these children at this very critical moment when their brain is more able to learn. If the parent can start early, then we are more likely to change the child’s trajectory of learning for the rest of their life.”

Wetherby and her Autism Institute team are looking ahead. With National Institutes of Health support, they’re working with Emory University to identify autism and begin intervention in children as young as 12 months. They’re also interested in looking at children with language delays, a much larger share of the population.

“This approach might work for them, too,” Wetherby said. “We want to find out.”

The FSU Autism Institute has developed web-based courses and tools that are being distributed by Autism Navigator (www.AutismNavigator.com) to teach early intervention methods to providers, primary care professionals and families. Wetherby and her team will be building on the research and studying its impact along with researchers at Emory University, Weill Cornell Medical College and Drexel University.

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Wetherby’s co-authors are Whitney Guthrie, FSU Autism Institute; Juliann Woods, FSU School of Communication Science & Disorders; Christopher Schatschneider, FSU Department of Psychology; Renee Holland, Autism Institute; Lindee Morgan, Autism Institute; and Catherine Lord, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York.

EBOLA DISCUSSION TO BE HELD AT COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Florida State University College of Medicine experts in viral biology, infectious diseases, public health systems and global medicine will discuss the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, clinical care and the protection of health-care professionals and the general public.

Speakers include:

• Dr. Les Beitsch — Former deputy secretary of health for the Florida Department of Health and former Oklahoma commissioner of health; teaches health policy and directs the college’s Center for Medicine and Public Health; serves as chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.

• Dr. Daniel Van Durme — Chair and professor of family medicine and rural health; directs the college’s Center on Global Health; has led numerous medical mission trips to African countries.

• Jamila Horabin — Molecular biologist; associate professor of biomedical sciences.

• David Meckes — Expert in the areas of microbiology, immunology and virology; associate professor of biomedical sciences.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 12

6 P.M.

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Stadium Drive. The College of Medicine is located on the corner of Stadium Drive and Call Street. Limited press parking will be available by RSVP in a parking lot located off of Call Street between the College of Medicine and the Psychology Building. Additional parking is available in the parking garage on the corner of Stadium Drive and Spirit Way.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

Nov. 18, 2014

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE TO HOLD PANEL DISCUSSION ON AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

The Florida State University College of Medicine will host a panel discussion Wednesday about the impact and future of the Affordable Care Act one year after the health care law’s implementation.

Scheduled speakers are:

• Paolo Annino, J.D., Ph.D. – Glass Professor of Public Interest Law at the FSU College of Law.
• Andrew Borom, M.D. – Orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the Florida Medical Association.
• Ken Brummel-Smith, M.D. – Professor and chair of the Department of Geriatrics at the FSU College of Medicine.
• William Dillon, J.D. – Chair of The Florida Bar Health Law Section.
• Jarrod Fowler, M.P.H. – Policy analyst for the Florida Medical Association.

The panel discussion, sponsored by the College of Medicine’s student Health and Law Organization and the FSU College of Law’s Health Law Society, is free and open to the public. It will be held:

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 19

6-8 P.M.

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AUDITORIUM

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

For details on viewing a recorded version of the panel discussion, contact Doug Carlson at (850) 645-1255 or doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu.

Directions: From downtown, travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Stadium Drive. The College of Medicine is at Stadium Drive and Call Street. Limited media parking will be available by RSVP in a parking lot off Call between the College of Medicine and the Psychology Building. Additional parking is available in the parking garage at Stadium Drive and Spirit Way.

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CONTACT: Doug Carlson, College of Medicine
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

December 2014

PROFESSOR RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE FELLOWSHIP

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Kendall Campbell, associate professor of family medicine and rural health in the Florida State University College of Medicine, is one of four physicians in the nation to be named a 2014 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Anniversary Fellow.

Campbell is recipient of the James C. Puffer, M.D./American Board of Family Medicine Fellowship.

The fellowship program, created in 2005 to commemorate the IOM’s 35th anniversary, enables “talented, early-career health science scholars to participate actively in the work of the IOM and to further their careers as future leaders in the field.”

Selected fellows will continue to serve in their primary academic posts while also engaging part-time over a two-year period in health and science policy work with the IOM. The fellows will work with an IOM board and an expert study committee or roundtable related to their professional interests, including contributing to IOM reports or other products. The fellowship includes a $25,000 research stipend.

“The fellowship is an opportunity to work with health-care leaders, scientists, clinicians and policy experts from all over the country to impact the health of our communities and inform our government, health-care administrators and policymakers,” Campbell said. “This opportunity will give me additional skills and perspective for teaching our learners to provide care for underserved populations.”

Campbell completed the Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS) at Florida State before earning a medical degree from the University of Florida in 2001. As an undergraduate at Florida A&M University, he was one of the first to serve as a mentor in the PIMS SSTRIDE outreach program. SSTRIDE continues to operate at the College of Medicine as a successful effort to create a more diverse pool of applicants to medical school.

In addition to his teaching duties, Campbell serves as co-director of the Center for Underrepresented Minorities in Academic Medicine at the College of Medicine.

Fellowship recipients were selected based on professional qualifications, reputations as scholars, professional accomplishments and relevance of current field expertise to the work of the IOM. Each will collaborate with eminent researchers, policy experts and clinicians from across the country. They will help facilitate initiatives convened by the IOM to provide nonpartisan, evidence-based guidance to national, state and local policymakers, academic leaders, health-care administrators and the public.

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    TALLAHASSEE, Florida – A dozen years after becoming one of only four U.S. medical schools to devote an entire academic department to geriatric medicine, the Florida State University College of Medicine is naming a new chair for that department.
     Paul Katz, currently vice president of medical services and chief of staff for Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System in Toronto, Canada, will replace Kenneth Brummel-Smith in May. Brummel-Smith has served as the first and only chair of the department since the school’s founding.
     Brummel-Smith will continue in his role until Katz’s arrival, and then will remain on the faculty, focusing on teaching, research and advocacy in aging-related issues.
     “I am very pleased that Dr. Katz Is joining us to help us further our mission of training future physicians who will be responsive to and understand the needs of the aging patient,” said J. Fogarty, FSU College of Medicine dean.
     “With his clinical and teaching skills, national reputation for excellence, and superb academic credentials, he is the perfect person to lead our geriatrics department into the future."
     Brummel-Smith arrived as a past president of the American Geriatrics Society, and Katz brings outstanding qualifications to the position as well.
     Among other achievements, he is past president of the American Medical Directors Association, the national association of professionals practicing long-term care medicine committed to the continuous improvement of patient care.
     Katz, a widely published author and noted speaker on aging issues, also currently is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He previously served as chief of the Division of Geriatrics/Aging at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and for 16 years was medical director at Monroe Community Hospital, a highly regarded academic nursing home in Rochester, N.Y.
     ”I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the stellar faculty that comprise the Department of Geriatrics and help build upon their many great accomplishments,” Katz said. “FSU is truly unique in recognizing the importance of geriatrics to the well-being of society as a whole. The university not only demonstrates how young physicians can successfully be taught the core principles of geriatrics but, importantly, how such knowledge is translated into high-quality care at the bedside.
     “I am looking forward to being part of this process as well as further integrating the Department of Geriatrics into the community.”
     Katz also spent five years as chief of staff for research at the Canandaigua Veterans Administration Medical Center and Rochester VA Clinic.
     He graduated with an M.D. from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, and completed a geriatric medicine fellowship from SUNY Buffalo at the VA Medical Center in Buffalo, N.Y.
     Katz is co-editor of the textbook Practice of Geriatrics and Psychiatry in Long-Term Care and is a senior editor for the Springer Series: Advances in Long-Term Care. One of his co-editors is Marshall Kapp, director of Florida State’s Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law.
     “I've known Paul for 30 years,” Kapp said. “Through his scholarship, organizational leadership, and example he has been and continues to be a key figure in the national education of medical students and physicians to care competently and compassionately for older people, especially in the long-term care context.”
     Katz currently is co-lead investigator on a $3 million grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to create a new nursing home-focused Centre for Learning, Research and Innovation. He also previously held grants totaling more than $6 million from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Veterans Administration and the Health Resource Service Administration (HRSA).

Paul Katz (photo courtesy of Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System)

CONTACT: Ron Hartung
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

Jan. 22, 2015

FUTURE PHYSICIANS OF RURAL AND UNDERSERVED FLORIDIANS TO RECEIVE CPR CERTIFICATION

More than 150 eighth- through 10th-graders from rural and medically underserved areas across Florida who participate in the Florida State University College of Medicine’s SSTRIDE program will be trained and certified in CPR on Friday, and for some it will be their first time on a college campus.

SSTRIDE (Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence) began in 1994 in Leon County to encourage students underrepresented in the medical field, often minorities, to take interest through classes and after-school activities. It has grown to include Gadsden, Madison and Okaloosa counties. In the past year, SSTRIDE expanded to five new schools and Orange County. This is the first year all five counties will be represented at the training, and students will wear scrubs with their county’s new official SSTRIDE logo.

SSTRIDE operates on the basis of studies showing that physicians return to practice in areas similar to their hometown. More than half of SSTRIDE participants choose a science, math or health major upon entering college. Over 60 percent attend medical school, and more than half choose a primary care residency, increasing their likelihood of hometown practice.

Scheduled to participate along with the students are Thesla Berne-Anderson, director of outreach and advising at the College of Medicine; Tracey Alexander, assistant director of outreach and advising; Roosevelt Rogers, Leon SSTRIDE coordinator; Darel Robinson, Gadsden SSTRIDE coordinator; Selena Phillips, Madison SSTRIDE coordinator; Kathryn Thompson, Orange SSTRIDE coordinator; Penny Eubanks, Okaloosa rural SSTRIDE coordinator; and Barry Hartin, Southeastern School of Health Sciences CPR trainer, and his team. The training will take place:

FRIDAY, JAN. 23

10 A.M.

FSU OGLESBY UNION, ROOMS 312–315

75 N. WOODWARD AVE.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown Tallahassee, travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Woodward Avenue. The Oglesby Union is on the left. Parking is available in the parking garage on the right.

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CONTACT: Ron Hartung
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

Feb. 6, 2015

FLU DISCUSSION TO BE HELD AT FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Three faculty members from the Florida State University College of Medicine will lead a public discussion of the influenza virus Monday evening. Topics will include the biology of the virus, its treatment and its prevention. A question-and-answer session also will take place.

The discussion, “The Flu: Biology, Prevention and Treatment,” is free and open to the public.

Speakers include:

• Claudia Blackburn, MPH, RNC, CPM, health officer from the Florida Department of Health and assistant professor in the medical school’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.

• Ricardo Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., professor and chair, Department of Clinical Sciences.

• David Meckes, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences.

The event will take place:

MONDAY, FEB. 9

6 P.M.

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AUDITORIUM

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown Tallahassee, travel west on Tennessee Street. and turn left on Stadium Drive. The College of Medicine is at Stadium and Call Street. Limited press parking may be available by RSVP in a parking lot off Call between the College of Medicine and the Psychology Building. Additional parking is available in the parking garage at Stadium and Spirit Way.

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CONTACT: Ron Hartung, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

March 2015

FSU DEPARTMENTS COLLABORATE TO IDENTIFY ‘MASTER REGULATOR’ IN CELL DIVISION

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Three years after discovering that a single, unidentified mechanism was modifying about 800 proteins simultaneously during cell division, Florida State University researchers have identified that mystery enzyme.

It’s TOPK, an enzyme that belongs to the family of protein kinases — which orchestrate much of the networking and signaling in cells. The discovery, led by College of Medicine researcher Raed Rizkallah in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, is significant because it advances our understanding of cell division and could lead to therapies that pinpoint cancerous cells without destroying healthy ones.

“This is a very promising target for cancer treatment,” said Myra Hurt, senior associate dean of the College of Medicine. “Some of the new generation of cancer drugs are kinase inhibitors.”

Rizkallah, who works with Hurt, also collaborated with the medical school’s Translational Science Laboratory and FSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The paper appeared in the online edition of Oncotarget, a specialized journal that publishes cancer-related research.

Other researchers had detected TOPK at high levels in many types of cancer, but Rizkallah is the first to identify its functional significance to dividing cells.

Proteins are the workhorses in cells, according to Rizkallah.

“Some continuously interact with the DNA, but not during that stage where cells are dividing. Something makes them back off — an enzyme or enzymes,” he said. “The shutting down of gene expression during cell division has been known for a long time, but people haven’t fully understood all its underlying mechanisms.”

So it was a challenge to learn the identity of this “master mitotic regulator” that can modify such a large family of proteins at the same time. Rizkallah used a fishing analogy to describe his work.

“We had the fish: Enzyme X,” he said. “We had the bait” — a molecule that the Hurt lab had found to attract the enzyme. “But it wasn’t on a hook, so we couldn’t pull out Enzyme X to examine and identify it. A chemical modification by chemistry Associate Professor Greg Dudley and his graduate student helped us put a hook in it.”

Next, he needed the cutting-edge help of the mass spectrometer in the Translational Science Lab, which analyzed exactly what was in the purified complexes. Then Rizkallah went down a list of 40 to 50 candidate proteins, comparing each one with what he knew about Enzyme X. Finally, he concluded that Enzyme X was actually TOPK. Now he’s following up on how TOPK is activated and how it’s regulated in cancer cells.

“Working with Raed has been extremely satisfying for graduate student Paratchata Batsomboon and me,” Dudley said. “It's one thing to think that the chemistry we develop can impact biomedical research in due course. It’s quite another to know that the fruits of our chemistry labor are going directly into biomedical experiments across campus. Intercollege collaboration adds value to both programs.”

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