LaJoie named Migrant Health Professional of the Year
Susan LaJoie has been named Migrant Health Professional of the Year by the Florida Department of Education's Bureau of Federal Educational Programs.
LaJoie, assistant professor in the College of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, is a nurse practitioner at the Gadsden County school-based clinics.
"Thanks to her efforts and passion to serve, migrant students have a community advocate that is changing the lives of students and families as she encourages young men and women alike to become the nurses, doctors, engineers, biologists and more they dream of becoming," the awards program stated.
The College of Medicine partners with the Gadsden Health Department to provide services to students in need. LaJoie has worked in Gadsden since 2007 providing primary-care services to students at George Munroe Elementary School and Shanks Middle School as well as in other schools by request. The school-based clinic program is funded by Dance Marathon at FSU.
SARASOTA, Fla. (Nov. 25, 2019) – The Florida State University College of Medicine and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System are partnering to offer the area’s first Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship.
It is one of 13 approved sites in Florida where board-certified physicians can acquire advanced training to address the many medical and pyscho-social issues that accompany serious illness or end-of-life care.
In addition to focusing on relief from the symptoms and stress of a chronic or progressive illness, hospice and palliative care physicians address the mental health and social needs of the patient and family, taking into account cultural, financial and environmental factors that impact their patients’ overall health and ability to cope with disease.
Joelle Vlahakis, MD
“We are excited to train and mentor the next generation of physicians in this vital aspect of health care,” said Joelle Vlahakis, MD, medical director of Sarasota Memorial’s Supportive Care Services team and the new fellowship program’s founding director. “The fellowship will help physicians develop the knowledge base necessary to manage the myriad issues and complications that can impact patients at any age and stage in a serious or prolonged illness.”
During the year-long program, two physician fellows will complete rotations in inpatient palliative care, community hospice care, and cancer care, training with Dr. Vlahakis, a board certified internal medicine and palliative care physician, as well as other medical directors and faculty from Sarasota Memorial and FSU’s Internal Medicine residency program. The physician fellows also will learn from medical directors in community-based centers providing home hospice, geriatric, pediatric palliative and outpatient oncology care.
Graduating medical students in the United States are required to complete residency training in a chosen specialty prior to entering into the independent practice of medicine. Many physicians choose to continue their graduate medical education with a fellowship upon the completion of residency training. Fellowships provide additional and intensive subspecialty training.
The new fellowship program received initial accreditation through the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in September, with the first two fellows slated to begin training in July 2020.
“The newly accredited fellowship program in hospice and palliative medicine will complement current graduate medical education and enhance overall medical practice at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and in the Sarasota medical community,” said Joan Meek, M.D., associate dean for graduate medical education at the FSU College of Medicine.
About Sarasota Memorial Health Care System
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System is a regional referral center offering Southwest Florida’s greatest breadth and depth of care, with more than 900,000 patient visits each year. Its flagship 829-bed, acute-care hospital has been consistently recognized as one of the nation’s largest and best, with superior patient outcomes and a complete continuum of outpatient services – from urgent care, trauma and emergency services to laboratory and diagnostic imaging, home health, skilled nursing and rehabilitation. SMH is the only hospital in Florida to have consistently earned the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid's Services highest five-star quality award since the rating system launched in 2016.
About Florida State University College of Medicine
The Florida State University College of Medicine was founded in 2000 with a mission to educate and develop exemplary physicians who practice patient-centered health care, discover and advance knowledge, and are responsive to community needs, especially through service to elder, rural, minority and underserved populations.
Murals brighten lab where students learn wonders of anatomy
On a formerly blank and boring concrete-block wall in the Florida State University College of Medicine’s anatomy lab, a soccer player perpetually poses in mid-kick. At first glance she appears to be wearing an elaborately patterned bodysuit. Then you see that her body IS the suit. She’s wearing nothing but muscle.
So she’s right at home in the anatomy lab, where students learn about the mysteries that lie beneath the skin. Typically they’re M.D. or PA students. But each semester for the past two years, a handful of art students have come to the lab to explore those same mysteries. Reverently, bundled up against the chill of the lab, they sit and sketch a model who never moves.
Some of these students may become medical illustrators. Whatever career path they follow, they’re grateful to the people who donated their bodies to science … and to art.
Likewise, they’re grateful to the FSU anatomists. Last semester, they began creating murals as thank-you gifts.
Melissa Gonzalez-Lopez borrowed a verse from a poem credited to Odette Zero.
“Their work is amazing,” said Eric Laywell, director of the anatomy lab. “Early on, as I was watching them draw, I started thinking about how great it would be to have some of these drawings on our walls down here, to make it a little less institutional.”
Austin Yorke, the Art Department adjunct instructor who proposed this collaboration, is delighted with the way it has turned out.
“It’s an incredible gift to be able to come down here,” said Yorke, who teaches Figure Drawing 1 and 2. “The entire anatomy-lab team has been giving their expertise to my students. The murals are just our way to try to give back a little bit.”
Yorke heard of a similar collaboration at another school and, feeling inspired, made a cold call to the College of Medicine.
“I was immediately interested,” Laywell said, though it took two years to get the necessary approvals. “I think our cadavers should be used as much as possible for education. That’s why these people donated their bodies. So the more opportunities for legitimate education, the better.”
The key word is “legitimate.” The anatomy lab is sacred space.
“I don’t want people to think that simple curiosity is enough to get you in here, because that is not why people donate their bodies,” Laywell said. “But when it’s a legitimate educational purpose, I love those collaborations – especially when it’s between colleges. For two years we’ve been hosting these art students. They come in each semester, maybe two or three times, and see the cadavers in various degrees of dissectedness” – thanks to the prep work of his colleagues Ewa Bienkiewicz and Chris Leadem.
Yorke said he has seen an evolution in the way his students draw the human body.
“They begin with something that’s got a nice sort of aesthetic quality to the figure, nice line work, the proportions are OK,” he said. “But after coming here, they have the angularity AND the smoothness of the body. They start to have an actual spatial position. They start to think about the gentle turning of bones and how they address them. From my perspective, it’s been an incredible benefit to my students. I don’t think it could be replicated any other way, honestly.”
Melissa Gonzalez-Lopez valued the experience so much that, even though she completed the class in the spring, she came back in the fall – on weekends, mostly – to create her mural.
“It’s a unique opportunity that not everyone has the chance to be part of – learning what’s beneath the skin that we draw,” she said. “In the classroom, all that you can draw or paint is what you can see. Here you learn about what actually makes that shape.”
For her mural, she found a poem that thanks the families of the donors.
Brandon Garcia’s mural depicting human hands was still a work in progress when this photo was taken.
Brandon Garcia, a Figure 1 student, was excited when he heard of the anatomy opportunity.
“This is an experience I only read about in the textbooks with the Renaissance masters,” said Garcia, whose mural depicts three versions of a human hand: skeletal, circulatory and nervous systems.
When asked to describe how drawing a human model differs from drawing a human cadaver, he used a car analogy: “It’s like drawing what a car would look like and then drawing the inside of the engine. The engine is so complex. How is this facial expression forming? How is this arm moving? How is this affecting the legs and lower back?”
Both Laywell and Yorke said they’d love to see this collaboration expand, someday, into a graduate program for medical illustrators. But that’s just in the idea phase, for the distant future. Meanwhile, there’s still plenty of room for new murals.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A discovery by a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher is expected to open the door for new and more potent treatment options for many of the more than 36 million people worldwide infected with the HIV virus and for others chronically ill with hepatitis B.
The work has established for the first time the mechanism responsible for how two widely used antiviral drugs inhibit viruses.
In a paper published by Communications Biology, an open-access journal from Nature Publishing Group, Professor Zucai Suo and colleagues also provide the key to understanding how a single HIV-1 mutation can inactivate the anti-HIV drugs emtricitabine and lamivudine. Those drugs are worth billions in annual sales for the companies that make them, and the frequency of patients who develop resistance creates serious and dangerous obstacles to controlling the disease.
Emtricitabine also is approved for use in patients with hepatitis B, a disease which afflicts 270 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
The paper suggests new pathways for developing drugs able to avoid specific virus mutations that can render these two blockbuster L-nucleoside drug treatments ineffective for many patients.
It’s not unusual for patients undergoing treatment to develop a resistance to their prescribed anti-HIV medications, leaving physicians with three options: adjust the treatment regimen, temporarily interrupt therapy or continue with an only partially effective regimen.
For patients who have failed their first treatment regimen, or even a second, doctors typically try to salvage the current course of treatment by adjusting the combination of drugs. But for patients who have failed multiple treatment regimens, there are limited options to suppress the incurable virus.
And the number of drug choices available when one combination fails is limited. More than a million of those infected live in the U.S.
“In our paper, we suggest new chemical possibilities for more potent L-nucleoside analog drugs, which may possess different drug-resistance mutation profiles from the most widely used current anti-HIV drugs,” said Suo, the study’s co-lead author, and an Eminent Professor and the Dorian and John Blackmon Chair in Biomedical Science at the FSU College of Medicine. Eric Lansdon of Gilead Sciences is the co-lead author.
“Right now, there are a limited number of FDA-approved drugs available,” Suo said. “New drugs need to be developed if doctors are to have other options when treating so many patients who may have developed resistance to most of the FDA-approved anti-HIV drugs.”
The drugs remain highly effective in keeping the disease under control for most patients, but some patients develop a resistance due to mutations within the HIV virus.
Suo’s paper explains how the class of HIV drugs known as L-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (L-NRTIs) work. L-NRTIs block an enzyme that HIV needs to replicate, but they were discovered through blind trials. Important details about the underlying mechanism triggering L-NRTIs have remained a mystery, as well as a source of controversy among the scientists who study them.
“The enzyme has a unique pocket and supposedly recognizes NRTIs, but not their structural mirror images — L-NRTIs,” said Suo, who grew curious about the mechanism behind L-NRTI drugs as a graduate student. He’s been motivated since then to understand and explain the mechanism involved, which he does in his paper — one of six he has published involving L-NRTI research.
Suo’s current paper also explains how a mutation found in some patient populations leads to developing resistance to antiviral L-NRTI drugs.
“Patients, HIV scientists and medical doctors all will benefit from this,” Suo said. “HIV scientists and drug companies will now know how it works and will be able to design better drugs in the same class of medications. They will be able to build on the mechanism described in this paper to make slight adjustments for better and more powerful treatment options.”
This work was supported by Gilead Sciences Inc. and a grant from the National Science Foundation.
In case you missed them, here are some recent news items about the College of Medicine and its faculty and students.
FSU President John Thrasher presented his annual State of the University address in early December. He noted that faculty research is making a difference around the globe and close to home. As an example, Thrasher cited the opening of FSU PrimaryHealth, where faculty and students are providing needed care to an underserved community.
The university had quite a year in 2019, bolstered by academic and research excellence and student success. The opening of FSU PrimaryHealth also made the list of 2019’s notable achievements.
Each semester for the past two years, a handful of art students have visited the College of Medicine’s anatomy lab to create murals and artwork along its walls. "It’s a unique opportunity that not everyone has the chance to be part of — learning what’s beneath the skin that we draw,” said art student Melissa Gonzalez-Lopez.
Nearly 2,700 students graduated from FSU in December including the 37 members of the inaugural class in the College of Medicine’s School of Physician Assistant Practice.
Fifteen years after earning his medical degree, and eight years after coming to the U.S. from Egypt, Tamer Tadros graduated with the School of Physician Assistant Practice’s inaugural class.
Garret Morton, a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, was involved in a hit-and-run crash that left him with serious injuries. His wife, Emily Morton, launched a GoFundMe page to help pay for his medical expenses.
Senior Associate Dean Daniel Van Durme spoke to WCTV about the severity of this year’s flu season. With the peak of the season fast approaching, Van Durme elaborated on the importance and effectiveness of the flu shot.
A recent series of articles in the Fort Myers News-Press documents a 17-year-old girl's struggle with mental health. Elena Reyes, director of the Center of Child Stress & Health in Immokalee, discussed the lifelong harm that can be caused by childhood trauma.
Michael Blaber, a professor of biomedical sciences, has been named to the National Academy of Inventors. The academy highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating work that has made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and welfare of society.
FSU’s growing Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences program is helping students find their niche in health care. The program graduated 25 more future health professionals in December.
Christie Alexander, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, was elected the 73rd president of the Florida Academy of Family Physicians. Her installation took place Dec. 7.
Alexander also recently appeared on WCTV to discuss the dangers of vaping and strategies for parents to use when talking with their children about vaping.
Lee Health has partnered with the College of Medicine to expand behavioral health integration to some of its clinical sites to better help patients struggling with anxiety and depression.
An ordinance that would let Leon County start a needle exchange program to help prevent hepatitis and HIV infections among drug users was adopted by the Leon County Commission. Les Beitsch, chair of the College of Medicine’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, commented on the lack of evidence supporting the belief that syringe exchange programs lead to a cycle of addiction.
A Gainesville Sun article discussed a state licensing board’s struggle with how best to address mental health and substance abuse among medical students and physicians in Florida. Joan Meek, dean of the College of Medicine’s Orlando Regional Campus, commented on fears, stress and anxiety that medical students may have when they need mental health treatment.
In late October, the FSU College of Medicine Family Medicine Residency Program at BayCare Health System (Winter Haven) received accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
The FSU College of Medicine and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System are partnering to offer the area’s first hospice and palliative medicine fellowship. It’s one of 13 approved sites in Florida where board-certified physicians can acquire advanced training to address medical and psychological issues that accompany serious illness or end-of-life care.
Irene Alexandraki, Jonathan Appelbaum, Stephen Sandroni, Claudia Kroker-Bode and Ingrid Jones-Ince were mentioned in Florida State’s November 2019 edition of the Faculty and Staff Briefs highlighting honors, awards, publications and more.
A team of researchers in the lab of Professor Mohamed Kabbaj made national headlines for their study on ketamine’s effect on alcohol consumption. The study showed that ketamine can decrease alcohol consumption in male rats that previously had consumed high amounts of alcohol when given unrestricted access several times a week.
The FSU College of Medicine received the 2019 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT into Diversity magazine. The college is one of 43 U.S. health-profession programs honored and is receiving the award for the third consecutive year.
In an essay for the Tallahassee Democrat and Jackson County Floridian, Tomeka Norton-Brown, project coordinator for ACTS 2, wrote: “Caregivers are some of the strongest people I know. They’re dedicated, reliable and selfless. In my line of work, we also know that selflessness – though admirable – can be harmful to your health.” Her essay was written in recognition of National Family Caregivers Month in November.
An article in TheNew York Times discussed scientists’ findings that people who feel younger than their chronological age are typically healthier and more psychologically resilient than those who feel older. College of Medicine Professor Antonio Terracciano commented on the powerful question of “How old do you feel?”
Having a vigorous, calm and mature personality during adolescence has been associated with a lower risk for dementia in later life, new research suggests. Terracciano was not involved in the study but commented on its findings.
More than 35 percent of U.S. adults ages 45 and older are lonely, based on the UCLA loneliness scale and reported by AARP in 2018. Florida Weekly took a look at how society got so lonely and included comments from College of Medicine Professor Angelina Sutin on her 2018 study linking loneliness and dementia.
Second-year med student Shanquell Dixon was honored as a Tampa Bay Lightning Community Hero of Tomorrow during an October game against the Nashville Predators.
The Department of Geriatrics at the FSU College of Medicine and the USF School of Aging Studies launched a campaign focused on education surrounding pain awareness, pain management, and safe use, storage and disposal of pain medicines.
Sara Jones, a doctoral student in the College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, shared top honors at FSU’s Three Minute Thesis competition. Jones earned a $1,000 prize and advanced to a regional competition.
FSU News: Physics student and Biomedical Sciences student share top honors at FSU’s Three Minute Thesis competition - Print | Video | Audio
College of Medicine alumnus James E. Pilkington (M.D. ’14) returned to his hometown of Lake Wales to practice urology. His return is important to the community, wrote The Ledger. Recruiting urologists has been a frequent need in Polk County, and urology is one of four surgical specialties in which a 2016 workforce analysis predicts the greatest shortages in 2025.
College of Medicine alumna Rachel Cartechine (M.D. ’11) was featured in Florida Today’sKnow Your Health Pro series and discussed her passion for the OB-GYN field.
As a child, FSU College of Medicine alumna Alrick Drummond (M.D. ’14) struggled with asthma. Visits to her doctor, Elizabeth Yakubu, inspired Drummond to affect lives in the same way Dr. Yakubu did for her. Today, she’s realizing that goal and is a pediatrician at Children’s Health Center.
The Tallahassee Democrat published a story about Sabal Palm Elementary School and its “wrap-around services.” It’s home to Tallahassee’s first Community Partnership School. As part of the partnership, FSU PrimaryHealth is providing Sabal Palm students access to primary care.
Choogon Lee, an associate professor at the College of Medicine, has embarked on a four-year project to uncover molecular secrets about human circadian sleep disorders. He has received a $1.2 million grant from the NIH to aid his research.
FSU News: With NIH support, FSU sleep detective taking closer look at human clock genes – Print | Audio
The Naples Daily News published an article about the language barrier in Southwest Florida’s growing Mayan community and its impact on a sexual assault case. Javier Rosado, director of clinical research at the FSU College of Medicine’s Center for Child Stress & Health in Immokalee, commented on the often crowded migrant housing in the area that can put children at risk for sexual abuse.
Florida’s state universities, nonprofit labs and for-profit startups netted $693 million from the National Institutes of Health during the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. That mark eclipsed the previous record of $650 million, set in 2017, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of NIH data. The article highlights UF and FSU’s partnership on the $29 million CTSA award.
AAA projects that approximately 20% of all drivers will be 65 or older by 2030. During a presentation at the American College of Physicians’ annual meeting, College of Medicine Professor Alice Pomidor discussed the difficulty in knowing when patients should hand over their car keys.
Community Health Centers Inc. announced that Debra Andree will become the health system’s next president/CEO in January. Andree is also the pediatric education director at the College of Medicine.
In an article on WhatToExpect.com, experts including Joan Meek, Orlando Regional Campus dean, weighed in on the issue of caffeine consumption while breastfeeding.
In October, the Capital Medical Society Foundation awarded 10 scholarships to students in their first or second year of medical school at the College of Medicine, and third- and fourth-year medical students at the Tallahassee Regional Campus.
The Class of 2021 from the College of Medicine’s Fort Pierce Regional Campus visited the A.E. Backus Museum as part of a special Dean’s Rounds program.
The Fort Pierce Regional Campus also gathered its faculty members, staff and students for a night of appreciation and academic updates in October. Select students and faculty members received scholarships and awards.
Senior Associate Dean Daniel Van Durme spoke to WCTV about the severity of this year's flu season. With the peak of the flu season fast approaching, Durme discussed the importance and effectiveness of the flu shot.
After earning his M.D. in 2004 and navigating a rocky road for nearly 15 years, Tamer Tadros graduated with the inaugural class of students in the College of Medicine's School of Physician Assistant Practice on Dec. 14.
The College of Medicine and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System are partnering to offer the Sarasota area's first hospice and palliative medicine fellowship. It is one of 13 approved sites in Florida where board-certified physicians can acquire advanced training to address issues that accompany serious illness or end-of-life care.
