UAB Briefs: Hearts After Dark, a new supercomputer, big nursing grants
In this week's roundup of news and events on the campus of The University of Alabama at Birmingham, we have news of an important fundraiser, some large grants for the School of Nursing and the university’s purchase of a powerful computer that promises to bring huge benefits for researchers on campus.
Let us know if there are people, places and activities at UAB that deserve a mention in the Briefs.
Email Iron City Ink at sydney@starnespublishing.com and jchambers@starnespublishing.
Helping kids who need new hearts
If you’d like to support an important research effort at UAB that seeks to improve outcomes for children who receive heart transplants, you can attend the inaugural Hearts After Dark benefit at Iron City Birmingham on Thur., Sept. 29, at 6:30 p.m.
The event will feature beer and wine, food from Iron City Grill and live music by The Derek Sellers Band, as well as an auction.
Proceeds will benefit the PHTS Foundation and the Pediatric Heart Transplant Study. The Foundation supports the study, which is an international, multi-center registry that’s been collecting more than 20 years of data on children listed for a heart transplant and after they receive them.
“The database encourages and stimulates new research in the field of pediatric heart transplantation so that we can better manage this complex population and continue to improve their outcomes and quality of life,” PHTS Program Manager Brittney Wilk said.
The auction items will include some sports-related items, including a signed and framed Rob Gronkowski jersey and a UAB sports package with tickets and apparel. Other items include jewelry, local art, spa packages, yoga and fitness packages, a stay at Ross Bridge Resort and dinner for two at Hot & Hot Fish Club.
Since it started, the PHTS has generated 90 abstract presentations and 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts looking at such key factors as pre-transplant risk factors and post-transplant morbidities, according to Wilk.
“These data have significantly broadened our understanding of a child who has undergone a heart transplant and has allowed us to more optimally manage this complex population, thus maximizing their functional capacity providing a better quality of life,” Wilk said.
Because of the number of pediatric heart transplants each year in the United States is relatively small – 458 in 2015, out of a total of about 2,800 heart transplants – it is important for the medical community to share information, according to Wilk.
“It is essential that each center's experience and information is collected together, analyzed and the lessons learned passed on to everyone to advance the knowledge and improve the treatment of children's transplants,” Wilk said.
UAB and Children’s of Alabama did eight pediatric heart transplants in 2015. And the medical staff that cares for these children inevitably develop an emotional connection with them and their families, according to Dr. Wally Carlo, of UAB and Children’s.
”Because the transplant patients spend a long time in the hospital, we get to know them and their families quite well,” Carlo said.
Tickets are $60; tickets for couples are $105. Buy them online at www.phtsfoundation.org.
My computer’s bigger than yours
UAB now has the fastest supercomputer in Alabama, a new high-performance computing cluster made by Dell that school officials say will dramatically increase the ability of researchers on campus to crunch the huge amounts of data that are an inherent part of modern medical research.
In fact, tasks that took all day as recently as last year can be done in a couple of hours on the new equipment, according to a news release.
UAB officials were joined at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 14 at the Hill Student Center by Dell sales executive Bill Rodrigues, as well as faculty, staff and students.
The purchase of the Dell cluster creates an almost staggering increase in the school’s available computing power. The supercomputer takes UAB from .7 petabytes of research computing storage and memory to nearly 7 petabytes, the release states.
“This upgrade, along with others we are making, creates a real competitive advantage for our researchers, including students and faculty,” said Curt Carver, UAB vice-president for information technology.
The need for computing power is critical given the data-heavy nature of medical research. This includes personalized medicine, which uses a patient’s own genetic makeup to allow more specific treatment of a disease. Sequencing a single person’s genome in UAB’s Heflin Center for Genomic Science uses enough memory to nearly max out the school’s old computing capacity.
Nursing School draws big bucks
The UAB School of Nursing has received more than $5.15 million in external grant funding for 2016-17 to help support students in its graduate programs, according to a news release.
This includes two federal Health Resources and Services Administration grants totaling nearly $3 million that the school announced on Sept. 9.
The grants will fund the training of new nurse practitioners who will work in Alabama’s rural and underserved areas and provide behavioral health care for patients in the school’s Providing Access to Healthcare and Heart Failure clinics.
Assistant Professor D’Ann Somerall will direct a three-year, $1.98 million grant intended to help expand and increase training to prepare family nurse practitioners to address the needs of Alabama’s rural and underserved populations.
A two-year, $1 million grant – to be overseen by Professor Cynthia Selleck – will help add behavioral health services in two of the school’s existing nurse-led clinics that provide primary care and chronic disease management for uninsured patients in Birmingham.
“These grants will allow us to better serve our patients in our two clinics and better prepare our family nurse practitioner students to have even more impact on health care in areas of our state where they are vitally needed,” Selleck said in the release.
“The bottom line is we want to be able to train highly educated family nurse practitioners to go into rural communities and take care of patients at the highest level of medical care, as well as teaching the nurse practitioner students and the patients about the unusual situations that arise from living in a rural area, like lack of access to specialists for example,” Somerall said.
Programs to support the training of nurses are important because they are “the front line of care for patients today and often lead the care of patients with significant rates of chronic illness and disease,” said nursing professor Doreen C. Harper.
An award-winning “newcomer”
An assistant professor in the UAB School of Public Health will receive one the Vulcan Community Awards for 2016. Henna Budhwani will receive the Newcomer Award during an awards dinner at The Club on Nov. 3, according to a news release.
As deputy director of the UAB Sparkman Center for Global Health, Budhwani works with community partners in the United States and other countries who are interested in using public health practice to improve health outcomes.
The Vulcan Awards – chosen by an independent panel of diverse citizens – honors residents of the Birmingham metro area who exemplify civic pride, leadership and progress.
Budhwani’s research interests include health disparities – particularly in immigrant and minority health – as well as global health. She teaches undergraduate and graduate global health courses in the School of Public Health and has active projects across the Caribbean.
Prior to joining UAB in 2013, Budhwani worked in East Africa and the Middle East helping international nongovernmental organizations better serve vulnerable populations.