LCOM & Department News

Impact on the Community: Class of '19 Launches Public Health Projects

September 8, 2016 by Carolyn Shapiro

When University of Vermont Class of 2019 medical student Jacob Reibel and the six other classmates in his group selected their public health project earlier this year, they wanted to get out of the classroom and into the field – literally – to talk to Vermonters about their health concerns.

Class of 2019 students (L to R) Maia Sakradse '19, Allison Greene '19, and Suven Cooper '19 visit the Burlington Lead Program table at the Public Health Projects "speed-dating" event in June 2016. (Photo: UVM COM Design & Photography)

When University of Vermont Class of 2019 medical student Jacob Reibel and the six other classmates in his group selected their public health project earlier this year, they wanted to get out of the classroom and into the field – literally – to talk to Vermonters about their health concerns.

He and his group will spend the next few months doing just that, meeting with Vermont farm workers to learn how their occupation influences the risk of developing or worsening asthma and other respiratory problems. The students’ project for the American Lung Association in Vermont will provide insight on the impact of farming on lung health.

“Our group was interested in getting out into the community and visiting some farmers and talking to some of these workers,” says Reibel. The students hope “to put a face to the patient population that we’re learning about.”

All UVM College of Medicine second-year students are required to undertake and complete a public health project. In the spring of their first year of medical school, each group of about seven or eight students reviews the project options at a “speed dating” type of event, at which 16 different agencies/organizations showcase their projects that seek to answer a question or solve a problem.

The student groups then rank their top project picks and college faculty “match” the student groups to the projects, attempting to give them their top choices.

“We get a pretty good distribution and a variety of interest among the students, so that the match works out,” says Jan Carney, M.D., M.P.H., UVM senior associate dean for public health and course director for the Public Health Projects. “Different projects resonate with different student groups.”

The Class of 2019’s topics include the Burlington Lead Program’s goal to raise public awareness about lead poisoning prevention; perceptions on health care among newly arriving Vermont refugees for the state’s Department of Health; and an evaluation of the effectiveness of Vermont CARES’ syringe exchange programs for preventing the spread of HIV.

Projects for the American Cancer Society of Vermont and the American Heart Association will focus on public policy advocacy, which is an increasing area of interest for UVM medical students, Carney says.

At her kickoff presentation in late August, Carney explained to the students that their projects are pivotal to the organizations, which use the results to make decisions and create programs that benefit not only communities in Vermont, but across the nation as well.

“The goal is to help you be better doctors,” she told members of the Class of 2019. “These are tough problems, and they need creative solutions.”

It’s a rigorous schedule. The groups have a total of four months to first choose the specific goal or question they will pursue, read literature on the topic, develop a plan of action – either a survey or other assessment tool – conduct that research and report on their findings in the form of a poster. Ten groups from the Class of 2018 will be presenting their posters at the American Public Health Association annual conference in Denver, Colo., October 29 to November 2, 2016.

Each group has a project mentor, a College of Medicine faculty member who guides the students and keeps them on track. Mark Fung, M.D., Ph.D., UVM professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, has overseen the College’s public health projects for the American Red Cross for a decade, helping students tackle many ambitious topics. In 2008, his group completed a randomized, controlled trial on the use of text messaging to remind donors to give blood. A 2010 project that looked at whether 16-year-olds should donate blood resulted in the Vermont legislature lowering the legal donation age from 17 to 16.

“So they walk away with a recipe of how to conduct a study in the future,” Fung says. “You hope they take away the need to ask the best question you can ask that you’re simultaneously interested in and capable of answering.”

Class of ’19 student Katherine Clifford’s group embraced the challenge brought by The Converse Home, an assisted living and memory care center doing its first UVM public health project, to find out whether poetry can stimulate cognition and brain activity for dementia patients the same way music can. The students will spend time with Converse Home residents as they read and write poetry and assess whether that activity improves overall wellbeing and health.

“We really liked the idea of the project in that it was a little more service-oriented,” Clifford says. “It actually involved us going to the site and working with patients.”

That interaction is a key objective of the public health projects, Carney says. “We want the students to learn by doing,” she says. “They have to get out of the building and go out into the community.”

 

Past Department Highlights

Congratulations to Anne Stowman, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on accepting the position as Network Vice Chair for Anatomic Pathology. (3/2024)  

Congratulations to Ashley Volaric, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on receiving a Physician-Scientist Pilot Award through the Translational Global Infectious Disease Research (TGIR Group) for her research on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) epigenetics of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in sub-Saharan Africa. (3/2024)

Congratulations to Rebecca Wilcox, M.D., associate dean for faculty affairs, and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on receiving The Polaris Award for Outstanding Mentorship, and Dr. Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., on receiving the Gender Equity Outstanding Achievement in Medicine & Science Award at the 5th Annual Celebration of Gender Equity in Medicine and Science Awards. This award honors a Larner College of Medicine faculty or staff member who provides outstanding formal or informal mnetorship for women or gender diverse** college community members. Dr. Wilcox was nominated by Andrea Green, Julie Dumas, Alexandra Kalof, and LE Faricy. (2/2024) **Gender diverse refers to those who identify with a gender outside of the she/her, he/him binary   

Congratulations to Dr. Brian Cunniff, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, the team in the Cunniff Lab, and industry partner , RS Oncology, on having their novel therapy enter Phase 2 Clinical trials. Read more here Milestone for UVM-developed cancer drug. (2/2024)

During the annual Larner College of Medicine's Foundations Award Celebration, Amer Abu Alfa, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine received The Dean Warshaw Integration Award recognizing the faculty member whose teaching best captured the spirit of the Vermont Integrated Curriculum. Congratulations. Christina Wojewoda, M.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and vice chair for education pathology, presented the Ephraim Woll Award for Excellence in General Pathology to John Rustad. (2/2024) 

Congratulations Dr. Bei Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP)CM, on January 17, 2024, is to receive the Educational Scholarship Award from the Teaching Academy Awards for Teaching and Educational Excellence. This award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated a record of Quality, Quantity, and Engagement in medical education scholarship. Dr. Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP)CM, has been advanced to Distinguished Educator by the Teaching Academy at LCOM. Congratulations also to Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., for advancing to the level of Master Teacher and Agnes Balla, M.D., on being inducted as a Member. (1/2024)

Congratulations to University Scholar Mary Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine, on being ranked #90 in the U.S. and #144 in the world as one of the Best Female Scientists in the World, by Research.com. Also, Dr. Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., recently delivered the Robert Reneman Lecture at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM)'s 2023 symposium in The Netherlands. The tile of her talk was "Stroke and Cognitive Impairment in a Biracial U.S. Cohort: The REGARDS Study." (1/2024)

In a recent Nature Methods paper, Doug Taatjes, Ph.D., Director of the Microscopy Imaging Center, and the Center for Biomedical Shared Resources at the Larner College of Medicine, together with colleagues from the international consortium QUAREP-LiMi, proposed a set of standardized community-developed checklists to assist researchers, reviewers, and journal editors with the goal of increasing the clarity and reproducibility of image figures and their analyses. The hope is that many journals will adopt these guidelines as part of their “Instructions for Authors”—providing a succinct and easy to use checklist for authors when compiling images for reproduction and descriptions of image analyses performed. (11/2023) (from the LCOM Newsletter)

Congratulations to some of our residents and our fellowship student on having their abstracts accepted for the upcoming 2024 USCAP annual meeting in March. "Unexpected Cardiac Amyloidsis: Demographics, Histology, Distribution and Clinical Significance: A Review of 15 Autopsy Cases." (Jesse Mostoller, Neel Hedge, Nick Taylor). "GATA3 Positive Malignant Spindle Cell Neoplasm Involving the Liver Diagnosed as Metastatic Sarcomatoid Chromophobe Renal Cell Carcinoma at Autopsy." (Rae Nusapan). "Long Term Outcome in a Case of Tetralogy of Fallot Surgically Treated with Palliative Shunts: Findings from an Adult Autopsy." (Dore Guptil, Heather Giguere). (11/2023)

Mark_FungCongratulations to Dr. Mark Fung, M.D., PhD., Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on receiving the 2023 College of American Pathologists (CAP) Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Fung is a nationally recognized expert in transfusion medicine. (10/2023) 

Congratulations to Jessica Crothers, M.D., Assistant Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on achieving the Notice of Special Interest Team Science award from NIAID for: "Effects of the gut microbiota on oral vaccine response in adults and children." (10/2023)

Nicole BouffardCongratulations to Nicole Bouffard on being awarded the "Scientific Research Staff Award" for 2023. This was presented to Nicole at the September 21, 2023, LCOM Research Excellence Award Ceremony. This is a great honor for Nicole and the Department of Pathology and recognizes her contributions and importance to the department and MIC. (10/2023)

Congratulations to Brian Cunniff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on being awarded a $1.6 million R01 grant by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study the role of mitochondrial trafficking in regulating cell migration, a key feature of metastatic tumors. (9/2023)

Congratulations to Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on becoming a University of Vermont Cancer Center Program Co-Leader, Cancer Cell. (9/2023)

Congratulations to the following pathology members on receiving research support funds in April 2023. Recipients were: John Kennedy, M.D., $6520 for morphologic and immunohistochemical re-evaluation of renal cell carcinomas exhibiting papillary architecture, with emphasis on tumors demonstrating "type 2" morphology. Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., $15,000 for a joint initiative between RBP, UVM Cancer Center, and faculty in the Department of Chemistry. Megan Tarte $745 for Stem Cells, Cell Therapies, and Bioengineering in Lung Biology and Disease Conference. Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., $14,400 for Redox processes in macrophage activation in IPF. (9/2023)

Congratulations to the following faculty members on their promotions: Vikas Anathy, Ph.D., to Professor with tenure, Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., to Associate Professor, John DeWitt, M.D., Ph.D., to Associate Professor, Sarah Nowak Ph.D., to Associate Professor, and Christi Wojewoda, M.D., to Professor. (6/2023)

Bei Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP), associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, did an educational scholarship session titled "Activate Students Learning Outside Classroom." at the 8th International meeting of the Association of Biochemistry Educators. Dr. Zhang also conducted two additional workshops with other ABE members titled "Linking Clinical Presentations to Their Biochemistry: A novel ABE Clinical-Biochemistry Curricular Treat Mapping Educational Tool.", and "Getting to Clerkship and Beyond: Crafting Biochemistry Learning Objectives that Connect and Integrate Basic Science Concepts with Clinical Application." (5/2023)

Congratulations to Dr. Maureen Harmon, M.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Dr. Amer Abu Alfa, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine for being recognized by medical students for their professionalism. Dr. Harmon was recognized for social responsibility and Dr. Abu Alfa was recognized for compassion. (5/2023)

Congratulations to Mary Cushman, Ph.D., M.Sc., professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine, on being named a University Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology Division, and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. (5/2023)

View the story Mammograms of a study by Sarah Nowak, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and researchers at the UVM Cancer Center showing data that fewer women being screened for breast cancer. (4/2023)

vandervliet-habibovic420x280A new study by Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and a team of University of Vermont (UVM) researchers is honing in on why people with asthma often have worse symptoms if they are obese. This new research demonstrates that the gene DUOX1 likely contributes to the connection between obesity and asthma.  The research was published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology and was highlighted as an APSselect article for March 2023. Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., was the senior author on the paper, along with department of pathology and laboratory medicine coauthors Aida Habibovic, lab research technician;Litiele Cruz, Ph.D., visiting scholar; Vikas Anathy, Ph.D., associate professor; University Distinguished Professor Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D.; and additional team members and authors from UVM. Read the full LCOM News story LCOM News (4/2023)

Congratulations to Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, for having your proposal, Consequential Validity of Entrustable Professional Activities in Pathology Residency Training selected to receive a Frymoyer Scholars Program project of $48,000 to be funded July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2025. (4/2023)

Congratulations to Martin Chang, M.D., Ph.D., on accepting the new role as Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs. (4/2023)

Congratulations to Joanna Conant, M.D., on becoming the new Pathology Student Fellowship Director starting July 1, 2023. (4/2023)

Congratulations to The Cunniff Lab, on receiving funding to support research focused on malignant mesothelioma. The funding was from The Butler Family Foundation Fund for Cancer Research at the University of Vermont Cancer Center. The Butler Fund was established by the Butler family in memory of two loved ones lost to mesothelioma. (03/2023)