Volume 2, Issue 1

• From the Chair
• New Faces and New Places
• Alumni Spotlight
• Faculty Spotlight
• Recent Publications and Presentations

From the Chair

Hi! The end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 have been a busy time for the division. Our wonderful executive assistant, Charlotte O’Brien, retired at the end of 2011. We miss her a lot and appreciate all she did for the division. She always went above and beyond the call of duty to keep the division running. In January, we welcomed John Kelley as our new executive assistant. He has learned fast and already has become a valuable part of our team. Susan Blalock, the vice chair of the division, was promoted to full professor in January. This was extremely well deserved. Our sincerest congratulations to Sue!

Betsy Sleath, PhD
George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor and Chair
Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy

New Faces and New Places

Kelley

O'Brien

In December, DPOP said farewell to Charlotte O’Brien after six years in the division. She has been missed, but we wish her all the best in her retirement.

DPOP would like to welcome John Kelley as the new executive assistant. He comes to us from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute.

Alumni Spotlight: Troy Trygstad, PhD

Before entering the School’s PhD program in pharmaceutical sciences in 2002, Troy Trygstad began working on a project to improve medication reviews by pharmacists for long-term-care residents. He brought that interest with him when he joined DPOP, and his enthusiasm for community care has not waned. In March, he celebrated his ten-year anniversary at Community Care of North Carolina, an incubator for workforce, process, and technological innovations related to interprofessional and patient-centered care delivery.

As director of the CCNC’s Network Pharmacist Program, Trygstad collaborates with nearly 1,600 members from primary-care practices and more than 100 hospitals, public-health departments, and other community-based partners. On any given day, you can find him attending a meeting about legislation to help foster well-coordinated medication management, coding SAS to support medication management applications, reviewing articles for a journal, or writing a paper to support findings from various CCNC programmatic efforts.

Trygstad says he was drawn to UNC for his PhD training by the combination of one of the best schools of pharmacy and the country’s largest school of public health. He is a strong advocate for evaluative cross-pollination, multidisciplinary evaluations, and understanding the entire health system. Trygstad says that many researchers focus on their own particular parts of the health system to answer the “tree-level” questions but do not take a step back to get the whole “forest” view of patient care. Therefore, he says, researchers need to find stronger methodological approaches to evaluate systems of care that are empirically based, quantitative in nature, and rooted in business fields such as marketing, finance, and organizational behavior.

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Faculty Spotlight:
Susan Blaock, MPH, PhD

Susan Blalock, MPH, PhD, a behavioral scientist who has focused primarily on the prevention and treatment of arthritis during her career, joined DPOP in 2002 and was promoted earlier this year to full professor by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

Blalock’s current work focuses on patient-provider communication concerning medication risks and the evaluation of community-pharmacy-based programs for illness prevention and disease management. Her ongoing projects include

• content analysis of patient-provider communication concerning the risks associated with medications used to treat rheumatoid arthritis,
• evaluation of a falls prevention program delivered via community pharmacy residents; and
• an osteoporosis prevention program targeting patients taking oral glucocorticoids, a class of medications known to increase the risk of developing osteoporosis.

Risk communication and the impact of pharmaceutical care, including patient education and counseling on patient health outcomes, is of particular interest to Blalock. Her past research has focused primarily on the prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and osteoporosis.

Blalock holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in pharmacy and public health from the University of Michigan. Her PhD is from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she serves as an adjunct instructor.  She is the author of seven book chapters and seventy peer-reviewed papers.

After receiving her pharmacy degree, Blalock practiced for several years as a community pharmacist before pursuing advanced degrees at Michigan and UNC-Chapel Hill. She held positions with UNC’s Thurston Arthritis Center and as a member of the faculty of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, before joining the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.

Recent Publications and Presentations

Publications

• Jeffrey Peppercorn, Iuliana Shapira, Teressa Deshields, Deanna Kroetz,Paula Friedman, Patty Spears, Deborah Collyar, Lawrence N. Shulman, Lynn Dressler, Monica M. Bertagnolli. (2012). "Ethical Aspects of Participation in the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP) of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI):  The CALGB experience." Cancer (in press, 2012).
• Esserman LJ, Berry DA, Cheang MC, Yau C, Perou CM, Carey L, Demichele A, Gray JW, Conway-Dorsey K, Lenburg ME, Buxton MB, Davis SE, Van’t Veer LJ, Olopade OI, Rugo HS, Carpenter JT, Livasy C, Dressler L, Chhieng D, Singh B, Mies C, Rabban J, Chen YY, Giri D, Au A, Hylton N; The I-Spy 1 Trial Investigators. Chemotherapy Response and Recurrence-Free Survival In Inneoadjuvant Breast Cancer Depends on Biomarker Profiles: Results From The I-Spy 1 Trial (CALGB 150007/150012; ACRIN 6657.) Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2011 Dec 25.
• Lynn G. Dressler, DrPH, Sondra Smolk, PhD, Roselle Ponsaran, MA, Janell M. Markey, MS, Helene Starks, PhD, MPH, Nancy Gerson, BS, Susan Lewis, MSSA, Nancy Press, PhD,Eric Juengst, PhD, Georgia L. Wiesner, MD, for the GRRIP Consortium. IRB Perspectives on the Return of Individual Results from Genomic Research. Genetics in Medicine (in press, 2012).
• Fang G, Brooks J, Chrischilles E. Comparison of Instrumental Variable Analysis Using a New Instrument With Risk Adjustment Methods to Reduce Confounding by Indication. American Journal of Epidemiology 2012.
• Fang G, Brooks J, and Chrischilles E. Comparison of Instrumental Variable Analysis Using A New
• Instrument with Risk Adjustment Methods to Reduce Confounding by Indication. American Journal ofEpidemiology. 2011.
• Fang G, Brooks J, and Chrischilles E. Apples and Oranges? Interpretations of Risk Adjustment and Instrumental Variable Estimates of Treatment Effects Using Observational Data. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2011; doi: 10.1093/aje/kwr283
• Oramasionwu CU, Brown CM, Lawson KA, Ryan L, Frei CR. Differences in National Antiretroviral Prescribing Patterns between Black and White HIV/AIDS Patients from 1996-2006: A Cohort Study. South Med J 2011; 104:794-800.
• Farley JF, Hansen RA, Yu-Isenberg KS, Maciejewski ML. (2012) “Antipsychotic Adherence and Its Correlation to Health Outcomes for Chronic Comorbid Conditions” The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders. (In press)
• Farley JF, Wansink D, Lindquist JH, Parker JC, Maciejewski ML. (2012) “Medication Adherence Changes following Value Based Insurance Design (VBID)” American Journal of Managed Care. (In press)
• Gaynes B, Dusetzina SB, Ellis A, Hansen RA, Farley JF, Sturmer T. (2012) “Treating Depression after Initial Treatment Failure:  Directly Comparing Switch and Augmenting Strategies in STAR*D.” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. 32(1):114-119
• Butler MG, Farley JF, Murray MD, Sleath BL, Maciejewski ML. (2011) “Medicare Part D Information-Seeking: The Role of Recognition of Need and Patient Activation.” Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy.
• Dorn S, Wei D, Farley JF, Shah ND, Shaheen NJ, Sandler RS, Kappelman MD. (2011) “Impact of the 2008-2009 Economic Recession on Screening Colonoscopy Utilization among the Insured” Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
• Hansen RA, Dusetzina SB, Ellis AR, Sturmer T, Farley JF, Gaynes BN. (2011) “Risk of Adverse Events in Treatment Resistant Depression: Propensity-Score-Matched Comparison of Antidepressant Augment and Switch Strategies.” General Hospital Psychiatry.
• Katz AJ, Dusetzina SB, Farley JF, Ellis AR, Gaynes BN, Castillo WC, Sturmer T, Hansen RA. (2011) “Adverse Events following Antidepressant Switch in STAR*D: The Influence of Patient Experiences during Initial Treatment with Citalopram.” Pharmacotherapy.
• Dusetzina SB, Farley JF, Weinberger M, Sleath BL, Gaynes BN, Hansen RA. (2011)  “Receipt of Guideline Concordant Pharmacotherapy among Children with New Bipolar Diagnoses.” Psychiatric Services .
• Gaynes B, Dusetzina SB, Ellis A, Hansen RA, Farley JF, Sturmer T. (2011) “Does the Presence of Accompanying Symptom Clusters Differentiate the Comparative Effectiveness of Second-Line Medication Strategies for Treating Depression?” Depression and Anxiety.
• Crisp G, Ivey JL, Esserman D, Weinberger M, Roth MT. Development and Testing of A Tool for Assessing and Resolving Medication-Related Problems in Older Adults in An Ambulatory Care Setting: The Individualized Medication Assessment and Planning (iMAP) Tool. Am J Geriatr Pharmacother 2011 (Accepted October 4, 2011)
• Casteel C, Blalock SJ, Ferreri S, Roth MT, Demby KB. Implementation of a Community Pharmacy-Based Falls Prevention Program. Am J Geriatr Pharmacother. 2011 Sep 16.
• Butler MG, Farley JF, Sleath BL, Murray MD, Maciejewski ML. Medicare Part D Information Seeking: The Role of Recognition of Need and Patient Activation. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy. 2012 Jan 31.

Grants

• Carpenter D, Sleath B. Testing the Feasibility of Using ENLace to Enroll Latino Children with Asthma into a RCT Using MEDUCATION to Improve Asthma Medication Device Technique. $48,300 funded by NC TraCS.
• Farley J. A Programmatic Description of the UNC Charity Care Pharmacy Assistance Program.  $35,891 funded by NC TraCS.

Presentations

• Dressler J, Markey J, Deal A,   Knoppers B, on behalf of the Ethics and Policy Working Group of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). Return of Individual Results from Cancer Genomic Research: ICGC Researcher Experiences and Institutional Practices. 6th Annual Meeting of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). March, 2012. Cannes, France.
• Dressler, LG. Integrating Cancer Pharmacogenomics into Clinical Practice. University of North Carolina Institute of Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy Seminar Series. January, 2012.
• Fang G. The Comparative Treatment Effectiveness and Safety of Tissue vs. Non-tissue ACE Inhibitors among the Elderly after Acute Myocardial Infarction. Department of Epidemiology Seminar, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, December 2011.