Amy Goss, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB School of Health Professions’ Department of Nutrition Sciences, has received a $3 million R01 grant to implement a family-based diet intervention to treat fatty liver disease and obesity in adolescents.

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship of Alabama (ASF) announced Ibukun Afon, a student in the UAB School of Health Professions’ M.S. in Health Administration program (Class 56), as a member of its 2021-22 class of Alabama Schweitzer Fellows. Afon is one of 14 graduate students from UAB, the University of Montevallo, and Samford University chosen to spend the next 13 months immersed in community public health projects.

Krystle W. Glasgow, MIS, CNMT, NMTCB(CT), NMAA, FSNMMI-TS, clinical coordinator in the UAB M.S. in Nuclear Medicine Technology program, has been elected as the 2021-2022 president-elect of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Technologist Section (SNMMI-TS). This is a three-year commitment as president-elect, president, and past-president of this national society.

For decades, Americans have fought a losing battle with obesity. Between 1960 and 2010, the prevalence of adult obesity in the United States nearly tripled, to 36% from 13%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It isn’t as if many Americans don’t recognize the problem. According to 2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, just under half of adults in the United States (49.1%) tried to lose weight in the prior 12 months. Nevertheless, according to CDC data, the obesity rate that year rose to a record 42.4%.

Lauren White, a student in the UAB School of Health Professions’ M.S. in Health Administration program, is one of eight UAB students selected as Hoover Fellows, an initiative enabling students to be a part of advancing education, economic development, technology, business and innovation in the state.

Valene Garr Barry and Angela Richardson, students in our Department of Nutrition Sciences, have been honored by the UAB Graduate School as recipients of the 2021 UAB Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies.

Drew Sayer, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Nutrition Sciences, has been named the inaugural Ronald L. and David B. Allison Endowed Scholar. This award was established to provide support for junior faculty within the department who do not yet have RO1 funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Four faculty and staff from the School of Health Professions have been selected to receive the inaugural President’s Award for Excellence in Shared Values. The award honors Blazers who demonstrated one or more of UAB’s shared values in the course of their work during the extraordinary times presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Allyson Ferguson, a senior in our B.S. in Biomedical Sciences program and a member of UAB Honors College, has been named a semifinalist in this year’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program competition.

The UAB School of Health Professions has awarded inaugural faculty grants to Matt Ithurburn, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, and Haiyan Qu, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Health Services Administration.

Students in the UAB M.S. in Health Administration program (Class 56) had a “day on” rather than a “day off” on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The School of Health Professions (SHP) Student Awards, for the fall 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.

Many members of the School of Health Professions made service and service-learning a priority at the end of 2020. The SHP Staff Council hosted an SHP-wide holiday drive and the freshman course HRP 101: Experiencing the University Transition for Health Professions saw 14 teams of students support 11 community partners.

Krystle Glasgow, CNMT, NMTCB(CT), NMAA, a teacher in the UAB School of Health Professions, has been recognized as a Fellow by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging – Technologist Section. She is one of only three in the state of Alabama to earn the prestigious honor.

Hope Gray, MTS, BCC, a student in the UAB Doctor of Philosophy in Administration-Health Services program – Health Informatics track, has been awarded the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Leadership and Education Award (LEAD) Fund Scholarship. She is one of only two to earn the award.

Established in 2016, the AMIA LEAD Fund is focused on supporting membership diversity, trainee engagement and developing future AMIA leaders.

“I am honored to have been selected as an AMIA LEAD Fund Scholarship Awardee this year,” said Gray who is a Board-Certified Chaplain with training in ethics, empathy and diversity, equity and inclusion. “I presented my PhD work to AMIA members and gained meaningful feedback for which I am thankful.”

“We are grateful to AMIA for seeing the value in developing future Health Informatics leaders with the LEAD fund. Their mission in doing so is very much aligned with the mission of UAB’s Graduate Programs in Health Informatics and further develops our students to lead and innovate in the field,” said Sue Feldman, RN, MEd, Ph.D., director, Graduate Programs in Health Informatics.

Gray has participated in the AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference (CIC) as well as several JAMIA Journal Clubs. In addition, she is a member of many AMIA workgroups including:

• AMIA First Look
• Clinical Information Systems
• Clinical Research Informatics
• COVID-19 Community & Discussion Forum
• Natural Language Processing
• Student Working Group
• Women in AMIA Discussion Forum

The AMIA LEAD Fund promotes the value of informatics in transforming health and healthcare by awarding scholarships and research, highlighting innovation and discovery, recognizing professional achievement, and promoting leadership and advocacy.

Students in the UAB M.S. in Health Administration program helped UAB Hospital surpass its goal of collecting more than 268 bicycles for the annual Salvation Army Toy Drive.

On December 2, 2020, Dina V. Avery, DHSc, MA, MAEd, was elected chairperson of the Alabama Comprehensive Cancer Control Coalition. The ACCCC is a statewide network of physicians, organizations, medical groups, cancer patients, cancer survivors and more. They are dedicated to reducing the incidence, morbidity and mortality of cancer in Alabama.

UAB School of Health Professions’ Professor Sue Feldman, Ph.D. and Assistant Professor Mohanoj Thirumalai, Ph.D., along with the Department of Pathology’s Sixto M. Leal Jr., M.D., Ph.D., were awarded the Faculty Innovator of the Year honor during the fifth-annual UAB Innovation Awards.

New research on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that, in the complete absence of stay-at-home orders, the United States could have seen 220 percent higher rates of infection and a 22 percent higher fatality rate than if stay-at-home orders had been implemented nationwide. The study, which included researchers Sangeetha Padalabalanarayanan and Vidya Sagar Hanumanthu as co-first authors, was published today in JAMA Network Open.

The review of COVID-19 positive case rates and state-wide stay-at-home orders suggests that stay-at-home orders helped reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.New research on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that, in the complete absence of stay-at-home orders, the United States could have seen 220 percent higher rates of infection and a 22 percent higher fatality rate than if stay-at-home orders had been implemented nationwide.

The study, from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and published today in JAMA Network Open, analyzed daily state-level positive case rates against the presence or absence of statewide stay-at-home orders, or SAHOs. The team looked at the time period of March 1 to May 4, 2020, as SAHOs began to be implemented.

“During March and April, most states in the United States imposed shutdowns and enacted SAHOs in an effort to control the disease,” said senior author Bisakha Sen, Ph.D., Blue Cross Blue Shield Endowed Chair in Health Economics, Department of Health Care Organization and Policy in the School of Public Health. “However, mixed messages from political authorities on the usefulness of SAHOs, popular pressure and concerns about the economic fallout led some states to lift the restrictions before public health experts considered it advisable.” 

Sen’s team used data collected from the COVID Tracking Project, which was initiated by the magazine The Atlantic in partnership with Related Sciences. The project collates data from state health agencies and makes it publicly available. The sample included 3,023 data observations.  

“Our results indicate that a scenario of no SAHOs over this time period would have resulted in 220 percent higher cumulative case rates and 22 percent higher cumulative fatality rates compared to if there had been full imposition of SAHOs,” said Sangeetha Padalabalanarayanan, Department of Health Services Administration, School of Health Professions and co-first author of the study. 

For purposes of the study, SAHOs were considered to be in effect when a state’s governor issued an order for residents of the entire state to leave home only for essential activities, and when schools and nonessential businesses were closed. Seven states never imposed SAHOs, and 12 states lifted their SAHOs before the May 4 study cut off.   

Bisakha Sen, Ph.D.A second aim of the study was to see if the proportion of African Americans in a state was associated with the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in that state.

“Previous attempts to understand the extent of COVID-19 cases within the African American population had been done at a county level,” said co-first author Vidya Sagar Hanumanthu, Department of Health Services Administration. “Our state-level analysis showed that there was an association between the African American population and COVID-19 cases statewide. This finding adds to evidence from existing studies using county-level data on racial disparities in COVID-19 infection rates and underlines the urgency of better understanding and addressing these disparities.”  

The findings underscore the importance of stay-at-home orders in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to address racial disparities in rates of infection.  

“While the high economic cost makes SAHOs unsustainable as a long-term policy, our findings could help inform federal, state and local policymakers in weighing the costs and benefits of different short-term options to combat the pandemic,” Sen said. “Our findings also emphasize the importance of understanding and addressing the drivers of racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes as part of the overarching goal of improving health equity in the United States.”

Mohanraj Thirumalai, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions’ Department of Health Services Administration, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. The three-year grant is part of the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Projects funding program.