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

May 14, 2015

RESEARCHER EXPLORING WHY OBESITY STRIKES SO HARD
AMONG MEXICAN-AMERICAN BOYS

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Fifteen percent of non-Hispanic white children in the United States are obese, but among Mexican-American boys the figure is a much more troubling 23 percent. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Angelina Sutin, a researcher in the Florida State University College of Medicine, will spend the next three years untangling the roots of that disparity.

She’ll need loads of data on children’s and parents’ health, height, weight, personality, family dynamics, economic history, social history and more. The good news is that the information already exists: California Family Project researchers have gathered eight years’ worth on nearly 700 adolescents of Mexican origin and their parents. Originally collected to study substance abuse, now it’s available to Sutin.

“It was a great opportunity to look at the interrelations between all these risk factors for obesity in the context of adolescent development,” said Sutin, an assistant professor in the college’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.

The NIH awarded Sutin a three-year grant totaling more than $450,000 to analyze and interpret the information. It was collected in California, which, like Florida, has a large population of Hispanic Americans.

“We will have an advisory committee in Immokalee,” said Sutin, referring to the Southwest Florida community that’s home to thousands of Hispanic farmworkers. The focus on Hispanic health is directly relevant to the College of Medicine’s mission to serve minority and underserved communities. “To what extent do we find things in the population in California similar to the population in Immokalee? What can we take from that to develop more effective interventions?”

Part of what researchers look at is environment. Economic environment includes family income and financial stresses. Social environment includes neighborhood safety and discrimination. Then there’s the “built” environment.

“When we talk about obesity, you hear a lot about aspects of the built environment — access to greenspace and parks, access to fast food vs. healthy food. But that is generally talked about devoid of the individual’s psychological functioning,” Sutin said. “In this study, instead of just saying ‘It’s the environment’ or ‘It’s the individual,’ we can look at the interplay between how the individual’s interacting with the environment.”

Her research will address global questions about obesity but will also have a particular focus on Mexican Americans, especially first- and second-generation immigrant children.

“There’s one very consistent finding — and this seems to be true of all immigrant groups — that the more generations your family is in the U.S., the heavier you get,” Sutin said. “Are there any protective factors that we can identify from the home culture?”

It’s an important question. Mexican Americans are a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population. And, as Sutin notes, childhood obesity often leads to severe adult obesity. Obesity in adulthood costs the country an estimated total of $147 billion (in 2008 dollars) because it increases the risk of coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and other conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

“There’s such a great need for a better understanding, particularly in adolescence, which is a really critical period that sets the child’s weight trajectory for the rest of their life,” she said. “We know that just telling people ‘Eat less and exercise more’ doesn’t work. There are deeper factors, and that’s what this project will investigate.”

Sutin is the principal investigator. Two of her team members are faculty colleagues from the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine: Suzanne Johnson, an expert in childhood obesity, and Henry Carretta, an expert in geographic information systems. Teaming up with her from Immokalee is Clinical Assistant Professor Javier Rosado, who has worked for several years to reduce obesity among Immokalee children and their parents.

The project also has a training component.

“I will be teaching undergraduates and master’s students in our Bridge program how to evaluate the literature, how to do research,” Sutin said. “Even if they don’t go on to do research, they will have a much better understanding of the needs in our community.”

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

July 17, 2015

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE STRIVING TO ENHANCE WORKFORCE
TO CARE FOR AGING FLORIDIANS

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida is home to a larger percentage of older residents than any other state, and the number of those 65 and older is expected to more than double over the next 15 years to nearly 8 million.

To help address the challenges this poses for Florida’s health-care system, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration will give the Florida State University College of Medicine a three-year, $2.25 million grant as part of the national Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program.

“The ultimate goal is to enhance the workforce — nurses, social workers, primary-care physicians and the public,” said geriatrician Paul Katz, chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Geriatrics and past president of the American Medical Directors Association. “We’re not going to be adequately prepared to meet the needs of our older patients in Florida with anything less than a comprehensive approach.”

Florida State was one of 44 organizations in 29 states — including two in Florida — announced as grant recipients at the White House Conference on Aging in July.

“The workforce caring for this population is not only aging itself but also lacks many of the basic geriatric competencies to practice effectively,” Katz said. “This grant will assist us in developing a health-care workforce that maximizes patient and family engagement and improves health outcomes for older adults by integrating primary care and geriatrics.”

The College of Medicine will partner with Florida State’s colleges of Nursing and Social Work, along with regional affiliates involved with the medical school’s community-based medical education program and others. Together they will form the North and Central Florida Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Partnership.

“These partnerships will address health-care gaps through individual, system, community and population-level changes,” said Ken Brummel-Smith, professor of geriatrics at the College of Medicine and past president of the American Geriatrics Society. “We will be developing six innovative projects that will allow for the creation of new service delivery models in addition to novel opportunities for interprofessional and interdisciplinary training and patient and caregiver education.”

The partnership will seek to address some of the significant health-care issues presented by an aging population:

• One-third of the nursing workforce and 40 percent of the physician workforce nationwide is over age 50. Geriatric-specific curricula for the vast majority of these health-care professionals were either sparse or non-existent during their training.
• Florida ranks 47th nationally in the number of geriatricians per capita.
• Fewer than 1 percent of registered nurses are certified in gerontology, and the vast majority of nursing schools have no faculty with expertise in it.
• In 2009, there were 2.8 million family members serving as caregivers to an older adult in Florida. They provided 2.7 million hours of unpaid care worth an estimated $29 billion. But the ratio of available caregivers to recipients with multiple chronic health problems is rapidly shrinking.
• In rural areas, access to health-care professionals with training in gerontology is even more severely limited.

The partnership extends to 22 counties and closely follows the footprint of the College of Medicine’s community-based medical education program. In Naples, the program will bring the care of older patients into focus at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), the Health Care Network of Southwest Florida.

“Most FQHCs don’t have a strong orientation toward geriatrics,” Brummel-Smith said. “With the Affordable Care Act, these centers are providing care for more older patients, and they need a model for how to do that well.”

In addition to providing dementia caregiver training to the public, the partnership will bring training in geriatrics to medical residents and to rural health-care providers in coordination with the Alzheimer’s Project of Tallahassee. At primary-care residency programs in Tallahassee, Orlando and Daytona Beach, young physicians in training will be taught the principles of geriatric-focused care as a basis for working with older patients throughout their medical career.

Westminster Communities of Florida will invest resources and provide settings at locations throughout the state for caregiver workshops to be directed by specially trained social workers and community members.

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 July 21, 2015

Contact: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255
Doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE TO RECEIVE FUNDING FOR FLORIDA HEALTH RESEARCH NETWORK

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. –Working with partners statewide, the Florida State University College of Medicine is preparing to significantly expand the body of knowledge physicians have available in caring for their patients, including more than a million residents of the Big Bend region and South Georgia.

The College of Medicine on Tuesday received notice of $1.5 million in funding to help establish a statewide research network of community-based health-care providers and their patients in order to conduct comparative effectiveness research. The funding represents a portion of $7.9 million awarded to the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), an independent non-profit, nongovernmental organization located in Washington, D.C.

“This type of research is designed to help health-care providers make better treatment and care decisions for their patients by providing scientific evidence on the effectiveness and benefits of various interventions,” said Myra Hurt, senior associate dean for research and graduate programs at the College of Medicine. “That includes things like medical tests, administration of pharmaceutical drugs, treatment devices and ways to deliver health care.”

The OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium includes grant authors the University of Florida Clinical Translational Science Institute and UF Health, University of Miami Health, Health Choice Network-Florida Regional Extension Centers, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and the Florida Department of Health.

The three-year grant will help the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium establish a network that will include 914 clinic/practice settings, 4,100 physicians, 22 hospitals and 13 million patients, or 68 percent of all Floridians.

The FSU College of Medicine’s partners include the FSU College of Communication and Information, Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, Capital Health Plan, Florida Hospital in Orlando and Orlando Health. In addition, the College of Medicine will be able to involve the majority of the 2,500 physicians statewide who teach FSU medical students.

“The relationships the College of Medicine has established through our community-based medical education program have created a foundation that will bring patients in those communities into this network,” Hurt said.

In Florida, a small and traditionally homogeneous portion of the 20 million residents is represented in research studies that occur in academic health centers. By developing a broad and inclusive network, the College of Medicine will be able to help physicians gain access to data more representative of the state’s population.

An example is the patient population served by Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare.

“TMH’s service area includes rural and urban communities, characterized by racial and ethnic diversity, wide variations in socioeconomic status and a range of health-care needs,” said TMH President and CEO Mark O’Bryant. “The diversity of TMH patient populations and their health-care needs is an excellent fit with research focusing on, for example, hypertension, obesity and rare diseases. Obesity and the co-occurring problems of diabetes and cardiovascular disease are particularly prevalent in our rural communities.”

The PCORI funding focuses on helping the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium harness patient data from a wide variety of locations. Collecting, de-identifying, organizing, storing and utilizing those data is an expensive and complicated process.

“But it’s also an invaluable process,” said Paula Fortunas, president and CEO of the TMH Foundation. “We are dedicated to contributing to research that improves the quality and outcomes of care for patients.”

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

Aug. 13, 2015

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE TO HOLD WHITE COAT CEREMONY

Members of the Florida State University College of Medicine Class of 2019 will receive white coats this week in a traditional ceremony symbolizing the importance of compassionate care for patients and the scientific proficiency expected of physicians.

The featured speaker will be Zita Magloire, M.D., a 2011 graduate of the FSU College of Medicine. She completed the Family Medicine Residency Program at the University of Kansas School of Medicine last year and now practices medicine with Cairo (Ga.) Primary Care Physicians.

The ceremony will be held:

FRIDAY, AUG. 14

6 P.M.

RUBY DIAMOND CONCERT HALL

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

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

Aug. 24, 2015

FSU RESEARCHER IDENTIFIES PROTEIN WITH PROMISE FOR CANCER THERAPY

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In the second part of his lab’s recent one-two punch, Florida State University researcher Daniel Kaplan said he has solved a cell division mystery in a way that will intrigue the makers of cancer-fighting drugs.

The key, said Kaplan, a Department of Biomedical Sciences researcher, is a protein called Treslin.

“It can target cancer cells,” he said. “Most chemotherapy also targets rapidly dividing normal cells, but this seems to have promise for not doing that. Drug companies are going to be excited.”

Before cells can divide, their DNA must be copied. In addition, the strands of the DNA’s famous double helix must be unwound, via a protein called helicase. One strand needs to be inside the helicase ring, the other outside. As Kaplan’s lab reported last year in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a kinase — that is, a protein that chemically modifies other proteins — called Cdc7 opens up the helicase ring to let one strand out.

But not until this summer, in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, did Kaplan and Research Faculty Irina Bruck figure out that Treslin was also a key ingredient — in two ways.

“We had tried to reconstitute the chemical modification step in our lab,” Kaplan said, “but we always had a weak reaction. Dozens of other labs published this kind of work, and it was always weak. Always in the back of my mind I was saying, ‘Maybe something’s missing.’ It occurred to me that there must be some kind of activator. So we started trying different proteins.”

Eventually they singled out Treslin. (It’s called Sld3 in budding yeast, which their lab and others often use because the cells are similar to humans’ but grow much faster.) Treslin not only stimulates the chemical modification of the helicase, thereby activating it, but also assembles the helicase in preparation for cell division. Since cancer is the unregulated division of cells, knowing how to stop the division process is crucial to halting cancer.

“We think this is really important,” Kaplan said, “because now we can take this purified Treslin and the helicase, put them in a tube and watch the chemical modification occur. Then we can add small molecule inhibitors to see if we can inhibit that. That should stop activation of the helicase. That should stop the cancer cells from dividing. You kill cancer cells but not normal cells.”

Florida State has filed a provisional patent. It has a year to find a drug company interested in partnering to develop a small molecule inhibitor.

“Dr. Kaplan continues to make important and innovative advances in our understanding of the mechanisms of DNA replication control,” said researcher Tim Megraw, also on the Biomedical Sciences faculty. “His new findings reveal the novel functions of Treslin to regulate the DNA helicase, a key macromolecular machine that controls DNA replication. This latest discovery is very exciting.”

Kaplan finds the work fascinating.

“Evolution has done such a good job of producing molecules to perform these exquisitely, highly regulated chemical reactions,” he said. “It’s just a big bucket of chemistry in a cell, and it’s very precisely regulated and orchestrated. We now know that Treslin is kind of a conductor.”

But how does that one DNA strand actually come outside the helicase ring before cell division? What stabilizes it once it’s out? What causes the ring to close again? For Kaplan and Bruck, seeking those answers is the next step.

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Sept. 4, 2015
Contact: Matthew Reese, Senior Manager of Association Services
FMDA – The Florida Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine
(561) 689-6321; mattr@fmda.org
www.fmda.org

FMDA and FSU College of Medicine Sponsor High-Level
Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Forums

West Palm Beach, Fla. – With a focus on “Developing a Long-Term Care Education Network,” Florida State University’s College of Medicine, Department of Geriatrics, and FMDA – The Florida Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine sponsored this invitation-only event for LTC stakeholders on Thursday, Aug. 27 in Tallahassee, Fla.

Representation included the faculty and leadership of both sponsoring organizations, as well as those from Florida Health Care Association, LeadingAge Florida, Florida Pioneer Network, Florida Assisted Living Federation of America, Florida Association Directors of Nursing Administration, and the University of South Florida. Discussions resulted in some innovative ideas to promote communication and PA/LTC education in Florida.

The following day, FMDA and FSU’s College of Medicine, Department of Geriatrics sponsored three (3) hours of educational programming titled, “Advances in Post-Acute and Long-Term Care,” featuring lectures from Kenneth Brummel-Smith, MD, Charlotte Edwards Maguire Professor of Geriatrics at FSU; Paul R. Katz, MD, CMD, Chair, Department of Geriatrics, FSU College of Medicine; and Polly Weaver, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Agency for Health Care Administration.

With more than 65 physicians, nurses, and nursing home administrators in attendance, some traveling as far as Fort Lauderdale, the lectures were very well received. Nursing home administrator, Katrina Fillyaw from Dowling Park said, “Presenters were clear and knowledgeable. I have had the opportunity to these hear presenters before and they never disappoint.”

Alice Pomidor, MD, professor, FSU College of Medicine, stated, “Excellent selection of presenters. Very clear presentations by highly qualified and knowledgeable people. Those traits are not always found together.”

Maria Rosaida Gonzalez, MD, added, “I found this to be an outstanding program.” FMDA thanks Dr. Chris Mulrooney, Asst. Dean for Graduate Medical Education at FSU’s College of Medicine, for helping to plan these programs in Tallahassee.

“We are delighted to have been given this opportunity to collaborate with FSU’s College of Medicine, Department of Geriatrics on both of these very successful meetings in Tallahassee,” said Dr. Robert Kaplan, president, FMDA. “FMDA is committed to supporting the efforts of developing educational networks and we look forward to expanding our collaborative partnerships across the state,” he added.

“We welcome one of our own to Florida. Dr. Paul Katz, is a past president of AMDA, FMDA’s national affiliate,” Kaplan concluded.

By: Claire Baralt

The University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute has been awarded $17.5 million to continue to pave the way for a swifter and more collaborative journey from research to improved health in the nation’s third largest state.

Florida State University joins UF as a community research partner on the four-year award, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Award, or CTSA, program. Led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the program supports a nationwide network of approximately 60 CTSA hubs that develop, demonstrate and disseminate advances in translational science, a field devoted to turning research discoveries into new approaches that improve health.

“Renewed CTSA funding allows us to galvanize new teams and opportunities to accelerate the translation of research into improved patient care at UF Health and statewide,” said David R. Nelson, M.D., assistant vice president for research at UF and director of the UF CTSI. Nelson leads the institute with co-director Betsy A. Shenkman, Ph.D., chair of the department of health outcomes and policy in the UF College of Medicine and director of the Institute for Child Health Policy.

In 2009, UF became the state’s first recipient of a Clinical and Translational Science Award and remains one of only two awardees in the state, with the University of Miami receiving a CTSA in 2012.

The UF CTSI leads programs that develop new capabilities for research and translation to practice, offers education and training programs for research teams, and provides services and resources to facilitate research, such as pilot funding, data tools and specialized facilities. An economic impact analysis completed in 2013 found that every $1 of UF CTSI operating expenditures helped spur an additional $11 in external funding awards, with total spending on CTSI operations supporting an estimated $1.1 billion in economic activity in Florida.

During the initial award, CTSI programs developed new methods and technologies in areas including biostatistics, epidemiology, community engagement and health outcomes research. CTSI-supported research teams made significant advances along the full continuum of translational research — from preclinical to clinical to population health sciences.

At the molecular level, for example, the CTSI helped unite expertise and resources to form UF’s Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics, one of six such NIH-funded centers in the country. In the clinical arena, the CTSI-led UF Health Personalized Medicine Program successfully implemented a process for genetic testing that helps cardiologists identify which patients may not respond to traditional anticlotting medications, with improved outcomes for patients who are treated with an alternative medication. At the population level, the CTSI is working with FSU, the University of Miami, community stakeholders and clinical collaborators to develop the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium. The OneFlorida vision first began to take shape in 2010, when FSU’s College of Medicine teamed up with the UF CTSI to develop new capabilities for community-based clinical research.

“We look forward to deepening our work with the UF CTSI and our 2,500 faculty physicians to aid in discovery and translation of the best scientific evidence into everyday clinical practice in communities throughout the state, and to give our medical students early exposure to research experiences,” said Myra Hurt, Ph.D., senior associate dean for research and graduate programs at the FSU College of Medicine.

Over the next four years, the UF CTSI will lead further development of the OneFlorida consortium and a research agenda that emphasizes the health priorities and diversity of Florida’s 20 million people. The institute will chart new pathways for translational workforce development, embed translational science in health systems and physician practices, and accelerate the collective impact of the national CTSA network and the research studies it supports.

To meet the growing demand for a workforce with the skills to lead and contribute to translational team science in a variety of environments, the CTSI will reshape how it supports development of careers in science. The CTSI will provide students and scholars an opportunity to explore career tracks not just in academic medicine, but also in community engagement and clinical research navigation, industrial biotechnology, technology transfer and entrepreneurship, research education and outreach, and regulatory science and government. The CTSI will offer a CTSA KL2 career development program for junior faculty and a CTSA TL1 training program for Ph.D. students. The KL2 and TL1 program awards are led, respectively, by principal investigators Thomas A. Pearson, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., executive vice president for research and education at UF Health, and Wayne T. McCormack, Ph.D., a professor in the UF College of Medicine.

Within UF Health, the CTSI will expand its work at the intersection of research and patient care. The CTSI’s 14,000-square-foot Clinical Research Center will serve UF’s growing portfolio of clinical trials involving participants across the lifespan. In tandem, the CTSI will partner with UF’s health system and FSU to integrate evidence-based health interventions into clinical practice.

The CTSI also will expand UF Health’s Consent2Share program, which offers patients an opportunity to allow UF researchers to contact them about research studies for which they might be eligible based on information in their electronic health record. To date, more than 21,500 patients have agreed to participate in Consent2Share, which was recognized by the Association of American Medical Colleges with a 2014 Learning Health System Champion Award.

“By bridging the clinical, research, education and community engagement missions of our academic health center, the CTSI increases the exchange of ideas and knowledge to create a learning health system environment,” said David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health. “The CTSI and its work over the next four years will play a central role in realizing the vision set forth in UF Health’s new strategic plan, the Power of Together.”

Institutional support more than doubles the resources available for the CTSI’s efforts, reflecting its role as a research hub that mobilizes teams and engages participants across the university, state and nation. CTSI programs spurred multidisciplinary preeminence initiatives in metabolomics, genomic medicine, biomedical informatics, translational communication research and social network analysis.

“With its mission to accelerate translational science across all disciplines, disease areas and populations, the CTSI has created an environment that breeds collaboration not only at UF but across the state and country. This culture of collaboration will continue to fuel scientific progress over the next four years,” said David P. Norton, Ph.D., vice president for research at UF.

The UF CTSI is supported by NIH awards UL1TR001427, KL2TR001429 and TL1TR001428.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-1255; (850) 694-3735; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

Oct. 2, 2015

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AUDITORIUM BEING NAMED FOR PEADEN

The Florida State University College of Medicine is naming its auditorium for the late Florida Sen. Durell Peaden, a Crestview physician who sponsored the legislation creating the medical school in 2000.

FSU President John Thrasher, who was Florida’s House speaker at the time, will be present, as will numerous other current and former legislators. The College of Medicine’s main administration building is named for Thrasher.

Also being named for Peaden is the college’s Rural Medical Education Program.

Peaden had been concerned for years that not enough new physicians were available to replace the aging doctors in the rural towns of Florida’s Panhandle. In the late 1990s, he began conversations with FSU administrators that ultimately led to the College of Medicine’s establishment. Previously, in FSU’s Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS), students completed their first year of medical school and then transferred to the University of Florida to complete their studies.

Like PIMS, the College of Medicine targets a diverse array of students, including those from traditionally underserved communities, and stresses primary care, patient-centered medicine and hands-on learning directly from community physicians.

The College of Medicine’s first class graduated in 2005. Nearly 270 current and former students have come to the medical school from Panhandle towns, and more than 50 alumni are now practicing in the Panhandle.

The naming ceremony will take place:

MONDAY, OCT. 5

4:30 P.M.

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AUDITORIUM

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown, travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Stadium Drive. Parking is available in the parking garage at Stadium Drive and Spirit Way.

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

Oct. 15, 2015

FSU RESEARCHERS FIND WEIGHT DISCRIMINATION
IS LINKED TO INCREASED RISK OF MORTALITY

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In recent years, Florida State University College of Medicine researchers Angelina R. Sutin and Antonio Terracciano have found that people who experience weight discrimination are more likely to become or remain obese, to develop chronic health problems and to have a lower satisfaction with life.

Now they’ve found that people who report being subjected to weight discrimination also have a greater risk of dying. Not because they may be overweight, but because of the apparent effects of the discrimination. Their findings have been published in Psychological Science.

Sutin and colleagues examined data involving more than 18,000 people from separate longitudinal studies, comparing those who reported experiencing weight discrimination with those who did not. Accounting for other factors that might explain a greater risk for mortality, the researchers found that individuals reporting weight discrimination had a 60 percent greater chance of dying over the follow-up period.

“What we found is that this isn’t a case of people with a higher body-mass index (BMI) being at an increased risk of mortality — and they happen to also report being subjected to weight discrimination,” said Sutin, assistant professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine at the medical school. “Independent of what their BMI actually is, weight discrimination is associated with increased risk of mortality.”

Data came from two long-term and ongoing studies. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which began in 1992 at the University of Michigan with support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), involved more than 13,000 men and women with an average age of 68 for the time period Sutin and Terracciano examined.

Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) is a study begun in 1995 by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development with support from the NIA. Sutin and Terracciano examined MIDUS data involving about 5,000 men and women with an average age of 48.

Results were consistent across both groups of study subjects. In both samples, the researchers accounted for BMI, subjective health, disease burden, depressive symptoms, smoking history, and physical activity as indicators of mortality risk, but the association with weight discrimination remained.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time that this has been shown — that weight discrimination is associated with an increased risk of mortality,” said Terracciano, associate professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Geriatrics.

Sutin points to a series of studies involving both experimental and epidemiological approaches examining links between weight discrimination and health. “Ours and other groups’ epidemiological work converge with evidence from experimental research,” Sutin said. “The experimental work shows the immediate effects of weightism and our work shows the consequence over the lifespan.”

Weight discrimination is not always meant to be mean-spirited, but a body of evidence demonstrates that it has harmful effects nonetheless. Previous studies indicate that teasing a person to lose weight has the opposite effect over the long-term, including a study by Sutin and Terracciano that was published in PLoS One in 2013. Indeed, people who are stigmatized because of their weight are more likely to engage in the kind of behavior that contributes to obesity, including unhealthy eating and avoiding physical activity.

Some people think, ‘Oh, well, you’re just hurting somebody’s feelings when you say something bad about their weight, but it will motivate them to lose weight, which will save their life,’” Sutin said.

Sutin points out that contrary to such beliefs, in addition to the psychological effects, weightism increases the risk of weight gain and premature mortality. “Our research has shown that very clearly this type of approach does not work and there are really serious consequences to it,” Sutin said.

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CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu
or
Ron Hartung, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

Dec. 16, 2015

NEW PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT PROGRAM NAMES FOUNDING DIRECTOR

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida State University College of Medicine has hired a founding director for its proposed Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies program after a national search.

James Zedaker will join the program in January, focusing on helping the program through its initial and lengthy accreditation process.

The program at the FSU College of Medicine is new, but Zedaker has done this before. Twice.

He was the founding director of a new physician assistant studies program at Ohio University, where he also served as a clinical assistant professor. Prior to that, he was a founding faculty member and academic coordinator for a new physician assistant studies program at Indiana University. Zedaker earned a master’s degree in physician assistant studies from the University of Nebraska.

“We are very pleased with the result of our search, and I am excited to have Jim accept our offer and begin this new role soon at Florida State,” said College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty. “He was attracted to our mission and our program, and this is a great fit for him. He has all of the requisite skills that we were looking for in a director.”

FSU is hoping to admit its first class in 2017 and intends to grow to 60 students a year at full enrollment.

The FSU College of Medicine was created in 2000 to address the need for more physicians in Florida, especially those who will serve in primary-care specialties and work with elder, rural, minority and underserved populations.

The medical school has been successful in producing physicians consistent with its mission, but it’s not enough. Physician assistants, also known as PAs, provide another layer of primary-care providers capable of further strengthening the College of Medicine’s commitment to improving access to care in Florida and beyond.

Physician assistants work as part of a health-care team under a physician’s supervision. Students in the new PA program at Florida State will spend two years learning within the same network of faculty physicians who teach FSU medical students.

“We have an ideal model here at FSU with our distributed regional campuses to train future physician assistants in office settings providing patient-centered care,” Fogarty said. “Learning to work in the same settings as our medical students will provide early experience in team-based care, a critical model to address the primary-care shortages in our state.”

Physician assistants are in high demand as Florida and the United States look for ways to address a physician shortage that also has been the impetus for a wave of new medical schools in this country. The FSU College of Medicine was the first new M.D. program to open in the U.S. in 20 years. Since 2008, more than a dozen new medical schools have been established nationwide.

Physician assistants are expected to play a critical role in meeting rising needs in primary care as millions of formerly uninsured citizens gain access to health care as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Forbes magazine ranked physician assistant first on its list of “The 10 Most Promising Jobs of 2015” due to increased demand for PAs, high pay and short completion period. The median pay for a PA is $98,387, according to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants. More than 75 percent of recently certified PAs reported receiving more than one job offer.

“The commitment that the College of Medicine has made to embrace, support and integrate our students into the already proven community-based clinical education setting will not only provide a unique model for our students, but may also prove to be a benchmark in PA education,” Zedaker said. “This is a great team that is student- and patient-centered, and I am honored to be part of it.
PA students at Florida State will spend one year at the main campus in Tallahassee and one year at one of the medical school’s regional campuses, which are located in Daytona Beach, Fort Pierce, Orlando, Pensacola, Sarasota and Tallahassee. Students will learn basic and behavioral sciences at the main campus and will focus on clinical education in the second year at a regional campus.

A similar approach is the basis for the College of Medicine’s successful four-year M.D. program. In fact, clinical subjects for the PA program will follow the medical school’s curriculum to include family medicine, geriatrics, internal medicine, psychiatry, emergency medicine, pediatrics, general surgery and elective rotations.

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