WesternU’s College of Dental Medicine received a $1 million grant from the Delta Dental Community Care Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Delta Dental of California and affiliates, to launch the Delta Dental Endowed Scholarships for Opportunity program.

The College awarded four scholarships at its 2024 Honors Day ceremony to CDM students (pictured above left to right, with CDM Dean Elizabeth Andrews, DDS, MS, in the middle) Justin Lai (DMD Class of 2026), Layla Eltejaye (DMD Class of 2025), Jeong Hyun, DMD '24, and Katherine Vo (DMD Class of 2027).

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WesternU's College of Pharmacy has been selected as one of the inaugural Academia - Community Transformation (ACT) Community Pharmacy Centers of Excellence from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).

The award recognizes institutions that have demonstrated a significant commitment to community pharmacy advancement in teaching, service, scholarship, leadership and partnerships. This national honor has been awarded to only 18 out of 143 schools of pharmacy around the nation, and the only one in our state. The Centers of Excellence will serve as ambassadors for pharmacy academia through convenings with pharmacy and health care industry leaders, uniting to mobilize and amplify community pharmacy practice transformation efforts.

The achievement is a result of a collaborative team effort from Drs. Micah Hata (who will serve as our ACT champion), Anandi Law and Preeti Kotha! The AACP will formally recognize them during the annual meeting in Boston next month.  

Please follow the links below to access more information on this award:  

https://www.aacp.org/resource/act-pharmacy-collaborative-community-pharmacy-centers-excellence.

Meet the 2024 ACT Centers of Excellence (adobe.com)

CHS-Northwest Director of Research and Assessment and Assistant Professor Anu Räisänen, PhD, MHSC, CSCS, DiplBLM, presented a poster titled "Comparison of Two Assessments Of Exercise Technique: Visual Observations and Automated Feedback" at the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass. This work was a collaboration with recently graduated Doctors of Physical Therapy Chase Cole and Isabella Pando and CHS-Northwest Director of Clinical Education and Assistant Professor Christina Gomez, PT, DPT, PhD, OCS, SCS, FAAOMPT, CSCS. This study was funded by the Tonal Strength Institute Research Award.

Dr. Räisänen received the Provost’s Distinguished Scholar Award on the historical day of CHS-Northwest celebrating the inaugural cohort of Doctor of Physical Therapy graduates. Since joining WesternU in 2021, Dr. Räisänen has published 27 peer-reviewed articles, established the Research and Innovation in Sport and Exercise (RISE) lab, presented her research in national and international conferences, mentored several graduate and undergraduate students, secured both intramural and extramural funding and supported several colleagues in their research projects. 

WesternU College of Graduate Nursing Associate Dean and Professor Rodney Hicks, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, published an article on how authors can track the impact of their publications.

Hicks, R. W. (2024). Scholarly analytics for nurse practitioners. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 36(6), 307-309. DOI 10.1097/JXX.0000000000001027

This publication has also been selected as the feature article of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the JAANP Conference Brochure. The conference is June 2024 in Nashville.

COMP Assistant Professor Vikrant Rai, MBBS, MS, PhD, recently published the following with his collaborators:

Editorial: Reviews in bioresorbable scaffold, Front. Cardiovasc. Med., 05 June 2024: Volume 11 - 2024 in collaboration with various researchers in the U.S. and abroad including at Department of Cardiology, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland, Cardiology Division, Heart Center, Luzerner Kantonsspital, Luzern, Switzerland, School of Medicine, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, United States, Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, and 1st Department of Cardiology, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2024.1437555

Targeting Neoantigens in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma with COMP students Gurkaranjot Singh, Drew Kutcher, and Rajeshwar Lally.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/16/11/2101

EdTech Innovations, a pioneering division of the Western University of Health Sciences Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), has successfully leveraged generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and AI-Avatars to develop an engaging orientation video for the HealthImpact Benner Institute Mentoring Program, supporting the College of Graduate Nursing and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant focused on nursing education preceptor development.

The most-recent collaboration between the College of Graduate Nursing, HealthImpact, and EdTech Innovations resulted in the development of a cutting-edge orientation video, utilizing the latest in AI technology to revolutionize how new participants are introduced to the program.

“It’s professional, clean, digestible, and truly a work of art. We are blown away by your Team’s capabilities!” stated Owen Metzger, MBA, PMP, Manager of Strategic Initiatives at HealthImpact.

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