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Western University of Health Sciences
names Paula M. Crone, DO ’92, Provost
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The Western University of Health Sciences Board of Trustees and President Robin Farias-Eisner, MD, PhD, MBA, are pleased to announce Paula M. Crone, DO ’92, will serve as the University’s next Provost following a rigorous national search process. Dr. Crone served as Interim Provost since April 2022 and became Provost on Feb. 6, 2023.
“WesternU is so deeply fortunate to have Dr. Crone assuming the role of permanent Provost,” Dr. Farias-Eisner said. “Dr. Crone has an unmatched level of insight into the WesternU community that will serve us well as we continue to grow and transform. She is deeply committed to the values that make WesternU such a special place, and her dynamic nature will continue to support our work in new and exciting ways.”
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WesternU College of Pharmacy to begin innovative 3.5-year PharmD program in fall 2023 | |
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Western University of Health Sciences’ College of Pharmacy is implementing an innovative 3.5-year Doctor of Pharmacy program for its incoming PharmD class in fall 2023, the first of its kind in California.
This class, which will begin in August 2023, will complete the program in 3.5 years instead of the current four years, graduating in December 2026. This six-month head start will provide numerous advantages for this class and those that follow.
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COMP organized a New Spaces Open House Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, on the Pomona campus. The newly constructed spaces included the Sarkaria Family Patient Simulation Suite in the Health Professions Center, the Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine Lab in the Health Sciences Center, and the Clinical Medical Reasoning Lab in the Health Education Center.
View more photos on Instagram and Facebook.
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Fest on 2nd - Heart Health Festival | |
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The WesternU Office of the Provost and the Student Government Association held the Fest on 2nd Heart Health Festival Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, on the Pomona campus.
This Fest featured opportunities to make connections with new friends, and meet WesternU COMP alumnus Habib Sadeghi, DO ’00, and get a signed copy of his book, The Clarity Cleanse! Dr. Sadeghi (pictured below, top left) and his friend Chris Martin (pictured below, top right), lead singer of Coldplay, toured the campus. Martin was friendly and gracious with his time meeting many students, staff and faculty.
“I love osteopathy and WesternU and what COMP stands for,” Dr. Sadeghi said. “Anything I can do to give back is my absolute pleasure.”
The WesternU Pet Health Center encouraged donations of gently used towels and blankets and offered a special “Love” photo booth.
COMP Director of Outreach and Strategic Partnerships Tom A. Fox, MSHS ’19, and College of Podiatric Medicine student and Executive SGA President Donya Rabadi (bottom left) hosted a “Let’s Make a Deal” game.
WesternU also promoted its involvement in the American Heart Association Annual Heart and Stroke Walk on March 25.
View more photos on Facebook.
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College of Pharmacy Class of 2022 graduates had an outstanding showing in the National Pharmacy Licensure Exam (NAPLEX). COP is tied for the top spot in California with one other school, according to NAPLEX 2022 official results. For the first time in COP's history, the College is ranked No. 3 (tied) in the entire nation and No. 2 (tied) among all private pharmacy schools for NAPLEX first-time passing rates.
In a message to COP, Dean Sunil Prabhu, BPharm, PhD, wrote, "On this momentous occasion, we are extremely proud of our students, especially the Class of 2022, which you may recall topped the CPJE earlier in November! Thanks to each and every one of you for playing a part in the success of our students, I know that they appreciate this too!"
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Dr. Jignesh Patel attended the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) meeting in San Francisco in January for which he served as an abstract and case report reviewer, and moderated abstract and case report presentations, helping to facilitate discussion of all presentations within his session (Pharmacology/Research). Dr. Patel brought recognition to his critical care expertise and to WesternU at this important, multidisciplinary critical care conference.
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Dr. Preeti Kotha was awarded a successful grant to WesternU Pharmacy from the Test2Treat Equity Grant by Physicians for Health California (PHC) in the amount of $45,000.
This grant was established by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to assist COVID positive patients to receive treatment as soon as possible to reduce morbidity and mortality. It was opened to physician offices and some pharmacies. WesternU Pharmacy has been working closely with CDPH throughout the pandemic, and was among the pharmacies that were awarded this grant. Dr. Kotha has continually led efforts since the start of the pandemic to improve access to COVID therapeutics.
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Dr. Don Roosan has also been very busy recently, with three publications and two presentations:
Dr. Roosan and his team, which includes Dr. Law, published an article titled “Artificial Intelligent Context-Aware Machine-Learning Tool to Detect Adverse Drug Events from Social Media Platforms” that focused on utilizing Artificial Intelligent (AI) based software to detect adverse drug events automatically from social media platforms. The developed software (aTarantula) had a sensitivity of 84.2% and a specificity of 98%. The project creates future opportunities for improving pharmacovigilance, and such tools can be a powerful method in the future for government, industry, and consumers to detect adverse drug events information from social media platforms.
Dr. Roosan and his team published the article "Power of Heuristics to Improve Health Information Technology System Design." The article focuses on creating next-generation health IT system designs based on heuristics or short-cut mental models. Current health IT system design creates information overload for clinicians that may result in errors. This paper shows that clinicians use heuristics in their thought process and prefer an intuitive health IT system design that can reduce bias by providing AI and machine learning capabilities in the backend.
Dr. Roosan and his team, which includes Dr. Law, and her fellow. Dr. Kim, published the article “Development of a dashboard analytics platform for dementia caregivers to understand diagnostic test results." This study created an intuitive dashboard for caregivers to understand dementia test results. Currently, dementia caregivers lack resources to understand complex test results. The paper is in press in the Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.
Dr. Roosan presented to the prepharmacy club at the UCI School of Pharmacy about the future of informatics in October 2022. The club invited Dr. Roosan to present the future of AI and machine learning in the field of pharmacy. Several students showed interest in working in the field and this outreach to prepharmacy students may stimulate their interest in applying to our WesternU PharmD program.
Dr. Roosan presented his work at the International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics conference in November 2022 on developing an AI-based tool to score dementia test results automatically, which can be used in dementia and Alzheimer’s. The project was supported by a WesternU intramural grant that Dr. Roosan received in 2022.
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The science power couple behind 'Strange World' reveals its animated secrets : Short Wave | WesternU Associate Provost for Academic Development and COMP Professor of Anatomy Elizabeth Rega, PhD, and her husband, Cal State San Bernardino Professor Stuart Sumida, PhD, were interviewed for NPR's science podcast "Short Wave" about their consulting work on the Disney animated film "Strange World." They both served as consultants on the film, and both have provided their anatomy expertise to a number of major motion pictures. | | | |
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Please welcome the following recent hires to WesternU:
CGN: Chelsea Smith, Clinical Instructor
Matthew Allison, Clinical Instructor
Suk Dev Singh Khalsa, Clinical Advisor
Huyen Mai, Clinical Instructor
CDM: Shayam Brahmbhatt, Assistant/Associate Professor
CVM: Saima Ali, Research Associate
COMP: Ana Maria Blazquez Medela, Research Assistant Professor
CHS-Northwest: Mark Boutros, Clinical Assistant, DPT-Oregon
WesternU Health Oliver Station: Kristal Dodd, Medical Assistant
Clinical Education: Yesenia Lepe, Rotations Coordinator I
Harris Family CDHP: Kimberly O’Hara, Auxiliary Assistant
CO: Jacqueline Lazcano-Lobato, Lab Monitor
CPM: Melissa Shapiro, Learning Skills Specialist
WesternU Dental Center: Julia Brubaker, Registered Dental Assistant/Central Sterilization Clerk
COP: Crystal Lao, WesternU COP MTM Call Center Patient Advocate
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