News @ VCU School of Pharmacy

Recent SOP kudos and congrats

• Donald Brophy, associate professor of pharmacy, has been appointed to the editorial board of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. (Also representing VCU School of Pharmacy on the board are Jeffrey Delafuente, professor and associate dean for professional education; William Garnett, professor of pharmacy; and Denise Kockler, clinical assistant professor of pharmacy.)
• Gretchen Brophy, associate professor of pharmacy, received a 2009 Presidential Citation from the Society of Critical Care Medicine at its 38^th Annual Congress in February in Nashville, Tenn. The award recognizes SCCM members “who have made extraordinary contributions of time, energy, and resources” to the organization. Brophy also received Presidential Citations in 2005 and 2007.

• As holder of the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professorship in Pharmacy, Peter Byron received an engraved medallion – “a symbol of the university’s most prestigious academic positions” -- following VCU’s first Investiture Dinner to honor faculty members in endowed chairs and professorships. Byron, chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutics, has held the Robins professorship since 1999.
• Kai “Annie” I. Cheang, assistant professor of pharmacy, received the 2009 Elizabeth Fries Young Investigator Award at the fifth annual VCU Women’s Health Research Day in April. The award, given to a young researcher who shows promise for improving women’s health, was given Cheang’s poster on the study of the effect of combined oral contraceptives on metabolic risk factors in lean vs. obese normal women. Cheang also has been selected to participate in the fifth annual Summer Institute in Maternal-Fetal Pharmacology July 8-12 in Quebec. The institute is hosted by NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
• Jean-Venable “Kelly” Goode, associate professor of pharmacy, was selected as first-place recipient of the 2009 NACDS Foundation Community Pharmacy Faculty Award. She will receive the award during the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation Pharmacy & Technology Conference Aug. 8-11 in Boston.
• James X. Zhang, associate professor of pharmacy, has been named to the Scientific Committee for the International Health Economics Association’s 7^th World Congress. The congress takes place July 12-15 in Beijing, China.
• James X. Zhang is also pleased to announce that one of his students, Arpamas Seetasith -- the recipient of the school’s first Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy graduate fellowship – will receive the 2009 AcademyHealth Disparities Interest Group Emerging Scholar Award. The award will be presented at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting June 28-30 in Chicago. Seetasith, who concentrates on pharmaceonomics and health outcomes, was recognized for her work on racial disparities and barriers to drug use in diabetes patients in the United States. She also was awarded the Best Student Podium Presentation Award at the International Society for Pharmacoenomics and Outcomes Research’s 14^th Annual International Meeting in Orlando, Fla., in May.
  
  “This is terrific,” Zhang says, “as it showcases the value of education of VCU and recognition of our young emerging scholar in the field.” To see Seetasith receiving the ISPOR award, click here. To view her project, click here.

Submitted By:
Cynthia McMullen
6/12/2009