UAB Briefs: Goldwater Scholars, All of Us, UAB makes Great Hospitals list
Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs.
In this weekly online feature, we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.
More UAB students have won a prestigious national scholarship.
The groundbreaking All of Us Research Program, administered in the Deep South by UAB, recently marked its first anniversary.
And UAB Hospital has been listed once again on a prestigious ranking of American hospitals.
Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention? Email jchambers@starnespublishing.com.
STUDENT HONORS
Three UAB students have been named Goldwater Scholars for 2019 by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.
They join a group of 29 students at the school who have been named Goldwater Scholars to date, according to a UAB news release.
- Baraa Hijaz, a neuroscience and philosophy major from Montgomery, wants to pursue a medical degree and a Ph.D and help develop new treatments for Parkinson’s disease.
- Garrett Sager, a neuroscience and physics major from Hoover, plans to earn a doctorate in biophysics and study the neurophysics of learning and memory.
- Holly Robinson, a neuroscience major with a minor in music from Cedartown, Ga., plans to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience and conduct research on the circuitry underlying social communication.
The Goldwater Scholarship program, which began in 1989, seeks to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in science, engineering and mathematics.
Each year, UAB may nominate up to four outstanding sophomore and junior students in the STEM fields for the scholarships.
The foundation grants each recipient a scholarship for the 2018-2019 academic year that covers the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to $7,500.
Hijaz, Sager and Robinson are all members of the UAB Honors College.
ALL OF US
UAB launched the Southern Network of the All of Us Research Program one year ago, in May 2018, and has enrolled more than 7,100 participants so far, according to a university news release.
All of Us — spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health — is a nationwide program designed to solicit health information from one million or more volunteers and use that data to accelerate health research and medical breakthroughs and to enable individualized prevention, treatment and care.
“Our enrollment efforts have gained major momentum over the past year, especially as more and more of our partner sites have come online,” said Dr. Bruce R. Korf, chief genomics officer at UAB.
The Southern Network is comprised of about a dozen sites in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
One aim of All of Us is to oversample communities that have been underrepresented in biomedical research. “We are helping to build one of the largest databases of its kind for health research, one that will reflect the diversity of our region and nation,” Korf said.
“This is a chance to directly affect research into diseases that disproportionately impact the South, especially in populations that are traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research,” said Dr. Mona Fouad, director of the UAB Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Center.
Participants are asked to share different types of health and lifestyle information, including through online surveys and electronic health records, which will continue to be collected over the course of the program. Some participants are asked to visit a local site to provide blood and urine samples and to have basic physical measurements taken.
“This could help identify risk factors for certain diseases, connect people to the right clinical studies, discover which treatments work best for different types of people and explore how technology can help people take better care of their health,” said Dr. Cora E. Lewis, chair of the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and co-principal investigator for the Southern Network.
UAB has several enrollment sites for All of Us on campus, including UAB Hospital and The Kirklin Clinic.
Alabamians age 19 or older, regardless of health status, are eligible to enroll by going to joinallofus.org/UAB.
GREAT HOSPITALS
UAB Hospital has been included for the seventh consecutive year on the list of 100 Great Hospitals in America compiled by Becker’s Hospital Review.
UAB has been included each year since 2013 and is the only hospital in Alabama to make the annual list published by Becker’s Healthcare, a leading source of business and legal information for the healthcare industry, according to a UAB news release.
According to Becker’s, the hospitals included on this list have been recognized for excellence in clinical care, patient outcomes, and staff and physician satisfaction.
Hospitals are included based on an analysis of rankings and awards given to hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, CareChex, Healthgrades, CMS star ratings, Leapfrog grades and IBM Watson Health top hospitals.
Becker’s also seeks nominations for this list. Organizations cannot pay to be included.