University Times

Judith Lave has been named chair of the health policy and management department in the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH). The department houses the master’s of health administration and the J.D./master’s of public health programs.

Lave has been professor of health economics at GSPH since 1982 and served as vice chair of the Department of Health Services Administration.

Lave has secondary appointments as professor of economics, professor of business administration and professor of psychiatry.

“Dr. Lave is a national leader in the field of health economics. Under her direction, we anticipate that the new Department of Health Policy and Management will make a major impact in providing the information necessary for rationalizing health care, an increasingly urgent problem for our nation,” said Dean Bernard Goldstein.

Lave received her undergraduate training at Queen’s University, and her master’s and doctorate in economics from Harvard University.

Prior to joining the faculty at Pitt, she was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University; director of the division of economic and quantitative analysis, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and director of the HHS Office of Research in the Health Care Financing Administration. She was a charter member of the federal government’s Senior Executive Service.

Lave’s main research areas are the cost, utilization and financing of health care services. Her recent work has focused on issues related to managed care.

She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy for Social Insurance, as well as past president of the Association for Health Services Research (now Academy Health). She is currently on the steering committee for the National Academy of Social Insurance’s project on Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term and on the technical advisory group for the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. She also served as commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

Most recently she served as interim chair of the health policy and management department, which was formed in 2002 when the former health services administration department was divided into two. The other department is behavioral and community health sciences.

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The following School of Pharmacy awards were announced this month.

Deanne Hall, assistant professor and clinical pharmacist at the School of Pharmacy, was selected for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Foundation Diabetes Patient Care Traineeship Program for 2003. The program is a five-day, experience-based certificate program designed to train pharmacy practitioners to establish and maintain specialized services for the management of patients with diabetes mellitus.

The traineeship prepares participants to design patient-specific pharmacotherapy, solve drug therapy problems and work with patient care teams to develop protocols, policies and procedures for the treatment of patients who live with diabetes mellitus.

She will complete her traineeship at the University of Oklahoma. The program is funded by the ASHP Foundation.

Brian A. Potoski, assistant professor, Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, was awarded one of two 2003 mini-sabbaticals by the American College of Clinical Pharmacists (ACCP) Research Institute. Mini-sabbaticals provide ACCP members the opportunity to gain or expand their skills in practice or research under the guidance of experts in infectious diseases pharmacotherapy.

Potoski’s research will focus on using sophisticated mathematical modeling software to identify the appropriate dosage of medication in patients with infectious diseases. He will present his findings at ACCP’s annual meeting in Atlanta this fall.

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Jeffrey S. Sposato, assistant professor of music at Pitt’s Greensburg campus, has been awarded a $30,000 American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Junior Faculty. Sposato will use the grant to complete his book, “The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition.”

To be published by Oxford University Press, Sposato’s book is a new look at 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s relationship to his Jewish heritage. Excerpts of the book have been published in The Musical Quarterly.

A faculty member at UPG since 2001, Sposato earned his Ph.D. in musicology at Brandeis University, his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in music at New England Conservatory of Music and a bachelor’s degree in German Studies at Tufts University.

The American Council of Learned Societies is an umbrella organization of 66 scholarly societies. In conjunction with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the council awarded 22 research fellowships this year to junior faculty working in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

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Two directors of Pitt institutes and two Health Sciences administrators were honored April 30 by the Carnegie Science Center.

Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) and UPMC Cancer Centers, received the Carnegie Science Center Award for Excellence in the biomedical category for outstanding achievements that have led to significant business, economic and societal benefits in the biomedical industry throughout the region.

Herberman founded UPCI in 1985 after working for 19 years as an internationally recognized cancer immunologist at the National Cancer Institute. Under his leadership, UPCI was designated by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center, and has grown into an enterprise that treats more than 25,000 new cancer patients annually through a regional network of 40 community-based University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Cancer Centers.

Alan J. Russell, director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, received the Catalyst Award recognizing his contributions to gain public awareness and appreciation of science.

Russell is founding director of the McGowan Institute, which was established by Pitt’s School of Medicine and UPMC in July 2001. Since then, the McGowan Institute has grown to include some 50 members of the core faculty and more than 100 associated faculty representing a wide spectrum of disciplines.

Faculty and staff working both at the Institute and in McGowan Institute-affiliated laboratories located elsewhere on campus are working to devise innovative clinical protocols and pursue rapid commercial transfer of technologies developed there relating to regenerative medicine.

Also honored by the science center were Arthur Levine, senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of Pitt’s medical school, and Margaret C. McDonald, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, Health Sciences, who received honorable mention distinction for the Catalyst Award.

The Carnegie Science Center Awards for Excellence recognize and celebrate individual achievement in science- and technology-related fields in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The awards, presented by the Carnegie Science Center in cooperation with the Pittsburgh Technology Council, are intended to raise public awareness about science. They emphasize the vital links between schools, research laboratories, business development, quality of life and job creation in the region and society at large.

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Recipients of this year’s Excellence in Education Awards were announced at the School of Medicine’s 11th annual curriculum colloquium this month.

The Kenneth E. Schuit Award, recognizing the dean’s master educator, was presented to: Thomas A. Medsger, professor of Medicine, and John W. Kreit, associate professor of medicine.

This award recognizes clinical and basic science faculty for education-related contributions (teaching, planning and organization of courses or course sections) to the med school curriculum.

The Donald S. Fraley Award (School of Medicine, Class of ’68) was presented to Melissa A. McNeil, (School of Medicine, Class of ’80), professor of medicine.

Achievements of individuals receiving this award include extended service as a medical student mentor at the School of Medicine and significant mentoring contributions that extend beyond a single student or group of students.

The Sheldon Adler Award was presented to Gregory J. Naus, professor of pathology, for innovation in medical education.

Achievements of individuals receiving this award include the development of significant innovative contributions to medical education.

These honorees were selected by the curriculum committee executive subcommittee from a list of nominations received from the School of Medicine’s curriculum committee.

Awards also were presented at the colloquium by first- and second-year medical students to John B. Schumann, course director; Christy Parham-Vetter, course director; James R. Johnston, course director and lecturer; William C. de Groat, lecturer; Georgia K. Duker, small group facilitator; Melissa A. McNeil, small group facilitator; Evelyn C. Granieri, mentor, and Andrea R. Fox, mentor.

Winning faculty members were selected from first- and second-year student nominations to honor faculty and recognize their contributions and dedication to teaching in the basic sciences and organ systems courses in the School of Medicine.

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Vanesa Rawe, a postdoctoral fellow at the Pittsburgh Development Center of the Magee-Womens Research Institute, has been selected to receive the Americas Fellowship by the National Institutes of Health.

A multi-year award for new doctoral students from Latin America, the Americas Fellowship targets individuals with outstanding academic potential and promise for making a significant contribution to scholarship in Latin America.

A native of Argentina, Rawe also is on the faculty of the Training Center in Gynecology and Reproduction, which is affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires. Rawe will study at the Pittsburgh Development Center through 2004.