This Week@WesternU, Oct. 24-28, 2022

Oct. 24-28, 2022

WesternU receives $4 million HRSA grant to address nursing shortage

Western University of Health Sciences' College of Graduate Nursing (CGN) received a $4 million Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant for nursing education preceptor development.

HRSA made the award under the Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention – Clinical Faculty and Preceptor Academies (NEPQR-CFPA) program. The purpose of the NEPQR-CFPA program is to increase the nursing workforce by recruiting, training, and producing skilled qualified clinical nursing faculty and nursing preceptors.

WU FAR9 is a partnership with the College of Graduate Nursing, HealthImpact, and San Antonio Regional Hospital.

WesternU Fall Festival features student performances

WesternU Fest on 2nd returned to Pomona Oct. 20, 2022, featuring the WesternU Talent Show. Students from COMP, CPM and CDM sang and played the keyboard.

The audience voted on their favorite performances, and College of Dental Medicine student Negin Salani (pictured, right) won the talent contest.

The Fall Festival also featured free food, raffle prizes, and the collection of Trunk or Treat donations. The event was sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Student Government Association.

College of Pharmacy news

Congratulations to Dr. Janice Hoffman for her accomplishments related to the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine (CALTCM) and their Annual Meeting Summit for Excellence in that took place on Oct. 6-7, 2022.

At this meeting, Dr. Hoffman started her term as the FIRST non-physician President of CALTCM. Furthermore, WesternU COP-affiliated posters took home two of the four awards for posters given at the conference.

Bugarin P (2022), Zatarain D (2021), Marco, N, Oganesyan A (WesternU alum 2013), Hoffman J. "Economic Impact of Deprescribing Interventions Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic for Geriatric Patients Living Within the Skilled Nursing Facility." This poster, which was Patricia Bugarin’s (PharmD 2022) Advanced Elective project, won the "People's Choice Award" as most interesting and liked poster at the conference.

Dominique Zatarain PharmD (2021), PGY1 resident at WesternU/Los Angeles Jewish Health (LAJH) also won for her research project. Zatarain D (2021), Oganesyan A (WesternU alum 2013), Marco N, Hoffman J. "Assessing the Impact of a Pharmacist-Led Medication Review on Reducing Anticholinergic Burden in Older Adults."

Dr. Cynthia Jackevicius is the senior author of a recent publication in collaboration with her VA colleagues, including Dr. Lingyun Lu, Dr. Jackevicius’ former research fellow.

Warner AL, Lu L, Ghaznavi Z, Jackevicius CA. Inpatient quality-of-care measures for heart failure: treatment gaps and opportunities in the contemporary era. Circulation Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 2022;e008936.

In their national study of nearly 300,000 Veteran admissions for heart failure for which they assessed inpatient quality of care measures using electronic health records, they found substantial treatment gaps and site-level variation in quality of care. Getting to ≥50% target doses of heart failure guideline directed medical therapy was low and overall use of ACEi/ARB/ARNI decreased over time.

See the journal’s tweet about the study which was chosen as the Editor’s pick.

COMP news

COMP student Rebecca Kuan, CVM student Sharona Sadighim, and COMP Department of Translational Research faculty Drs. Devendra Agrawal and Finosh Thankam authored an article that was published in a high-impact journal, Translational Research.

Thankam FG, Sedighim S, Kuan R, Agrawal DK: Ischemia challenged epicardial adipose tissue stem cells-derived extracellular vesicles alter the gene expression of cardiac fibroblasts to cardiomyocyte like phenotype. Transl Res. 2022 Oct 20; S1931-5244(22)00223-7. DOI: 10.1016/j.trsl.2022.10.004 ; PMID: 36273744.