Michelle Brown, Ph.D., program director, M.S. in Healthcare Simulation, is one of ten UAB faculty honored with the UAB Graduate Dean’s Excellence in Mentorship Award. She participated in a virtual reception September 9, 2020, where she received the award for exceptional work with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Sue Feldman, Ph.D., professor and director of Graduate Programs in Health Informatics, is leading UAB's GuideSafe™ platform along with Mohanraj Thirumalai, Ph.D., assistant professor of health informatics in the Department of Health Services Administration.

Christopher Eidson, assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, is one of twelve UAB faculty selected to receive the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. The honor is given to those who have demonstrated exceptional accomplishments in teaching.

Tamara Traber is the first graduate of our Clinical Doctorate in Occupational Therapy program, a degree designed to prepare experienced occupational therapists for important leadership roles in health care, academia and advocacy for professional and community organizations.

The School of Health Professions (SHP) Student Awards, for the summer semester of 2020, were managed by the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) with endorsement from the Program Directors. Due to COVID-19, we were not able to recognize our exceptional students with an award ceremony. Nonetheless, it does not diminish their excellence or their accomplishments.

Eddie Groom and Bayan Karassi, first-year students in the M.S. in Health Informatics program, were awarded merit scholarships by the Alabama Chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (Alabama HIMSS).

Cathleen Erwin, Ph.D., alumna of our PhD in Administration-Health Services program, and Christy Harris Lemak, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Health Services Administration, are named winners of awards from the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Amber Lucky, student in the UAB M.S. in Health Administration program (MSHA Class 55), has been named a recipient of the 2020 Albert W. Dent Graduate Student Scholarship. The award is given by the Foundation of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) in honor of Dent who was the first African-American Fellow of ACHE.

The Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama System recognized two professors in the School of Health Professions’ Department of Health Services Administration with university-wide appointments: Eta Berner, Ed.D., was named UAB University Professor, Nancy Borkowski, DBA, was named UAB Distinguished Professor.

How do you get a reliable count of people who often are stigmatized, distrust local authorities —including researchers — and are afraid to be identified? That was the problem facing a team of researchers that included Ria Hearld, associate professor, Department of Health Services Administration in the School of Health Professions.

The School of Health Professions (SHP) Student Awards will be managed by the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) with endorsement from the Program Directors. Due to COVID-19, we were not able to recognize our exceptional students with an award ceremony. Nonetheless, it does not diminish their excellence or their accomplishments.

Paula Chandler-Laney, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences and Katherine Meese, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Administration are named 2020-21 UAB Honors Faculty Fellows by the UAB Honors College.

Shannon H. Houser, Ph.D., MPH, RHIA, FAHIMA, professor in the UAB Department of Health Services Administration, will receive the 2020 AAHIM Distinguished Member Award from the Alabama Association of Health Information Management. The award is given annually to an active member with at least 10 years’ experience “marked by distinction, excellence of service and contribution to the profession.”

In an AcademyHealth blog post in honor of Mother's Day, Christy Harris Lemak, Ph.D., chair of the UAB Department of Health Services Administration, reflects on the disproportionate effect working from home is having on colleagues with young children and offers ideas for how to help. "As one of my colleagues noted, rather than pitting ourselves against each other in a dystopian version of 'academic hunger games,' the goal should be to support one another, recognizing that we all face different barriers and we should put our collective brainpower on how to fix a flawed system."

The UAB Graduate School recognized School of Health Professions' students Katie Cederberg and Kory Dees as recipients of the 2020 UAB Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies. Overall they recognized five doctoral students and five master’s students across the university.

Alabama has been particularly affected by the opioid epidemic, say health care providers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Armed with a grant from the Alabama Department of Mental Health, UAB is launching a pilot program aimed at getting more opioid users into treatment.

Lynne Shelton, a student in the UAB School of Health Professions’ M.S. in Healthcare Simulation program, has been named Teacher Educator of the Year in the Health Science Division by the Alabama Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE).

School of Health Professions' Dean Andrew Butler joined Amanda Dorsey, faculty member in the Department of Health Services Administration, for their "Quarantine Conversations" recently. This is a series of candid conversations posted on the department's LinkedIn page that captures people in their "natural habitat" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Deep South sees a surge in cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, experts from the University of Alabama at Birmingham have created a symptom checker to identify hot spots where the virus is spreading. The new website, HelpBeatCOVID19.org, will provide public health officials insight into underserved areas based on the symptomatic data collected from the region and could help inform and enhance public health observation.  

A new study from researchers with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Nutrition Sciences suggests consumption of a moderately carbohydrate-restricted diet may result in decreased fatty liver tissue, as well as improvements in body composition and insulin resistance, in adolescents with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.