April 2022
Welcome to the April issue of “The Scope,” the newsletter of the ECU’s Health Sciences.
Greetings,
This is an exciting moment in our history and in our future, as the rolling out of the ECU Health brand is upon us; we introduced the logo on April 14 and the official launch will begin May 9.
The new ECU Health logo is a symbol of growth, unity and our commitment to move forward as one team and become a national academic model for rural health care delivery. It stands for keeping a promise made at the creation of the medical school and throughout the history of Vidant Health — to continue preparing tomorrow’s physicians to serve our state and to improve the health and well-being of eastern North Carolina. And it signifies an opportunity to bring together our strengths to create solutions to some of the most complex health care challenges facing the East.
By approaching these challenges and celebrating the unity of our core strengths, ECU Health will be better positioned to recruit and retain talented students, faculty and staff. We will leverage our research, clinical experiences and educational opportunities for students as we contribute to the careers of our providers and educators.
Very soon, one of the first things people will see when they enter Greenville from the west is the ECU Health logo displayed proudly on a state-of-the-art medical center. And then as they travel on the Dr. Leo W. Jenkins Highway and over the Dr. Andrew A. Best Bridge – both of which were named after ECU icons – they will see the ECU logo atop the new Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building. These are indications that we are committed to our community, and we are determined to live up to the trust that our region has placed in us to improve health and wellness in eastern North Carolina.
We are on the horizon of a new brand that will bring new ideas and new innovations in health care across our region. You are each a vital part of the brand and the services we offer and provide.
I look forward to celebrating this new beginning with you.
With gratitude,
Mike Waldrum, MD, MSc, MBA
Dean, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University
Chief Executive Officer, Vidant Health
Visit this video on YouTube for the closed-captioned version.
Education
Events and innovative programs enhance the health sciences student experience while celebrating the value of collaboration.
Students from every college and school on East Carolina University’s Health Sciences Campus participated in the Truist Developing Future Interprofessional Healthcare Leaders workshop earlier this month at Eastern Area Health Education Center (AHEC).
The workshop was made possible through a $10,000 grant from the Truist Center for Leadership Development and is eligible to be renewed for future years. The event was a partnership between Eastern AHEC and ECU.
The two dozen students were placed in teams that included representation from the Brody School of Medicine, School of Dental Medicine, College of Allied Health Sciences and the College of Nursing. They were assigned two different patient cases, which the teams studied and discussed their individual roles in the patient’s care. The teams then provided simulated care to two standardized patients — members of the community who act as patients to provide students opportunities to learn without risk to actual patients through in-person simulations and interactions.
“During the past decade, clinical care has rapidly changed to be more team-based across professions,” said Dr. Stephen Charles, interim assistant vice chancellor for Interprofessional collaboration for health sciences and assistant dean of medical education outcomes and assessment. “In order to provide quality and cost-effective care, health professionals must be ready to lead and collaborate in interprofessional teams. This workshop provides opportunities for students a psychologically safe environment to learn multiple communication and teamwork strategies and apply these strategies in a simulated environment.”
Camille Bauer and Ross Masters react to finding out that they matched to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee. (Photo by Kristen Martin)
Surrounded by their family and friends during the Brody School of Medicine’s March 18 Match Day event in ECU’s Health Sciences Student Center, the students simultaneously opened envelopes containing the location and medical specialty they will practice.
In staying true to Brody’s mission to increase the number of primary care physicians who serve North Carolina, especially in rural and underserved areas, 61% of this year’s students matched into primary care residencies. And 35% of the class matched into residency programs in North Carolina.
Emmanuella Mensah’s journey from her hometown of Charlotte to the Brody School of Medicine has come full circle. After graduation, she will be returning to Charlotte for a family medicine residency with the Carolinas Medical Center Biddle Point Urban Track, where she will train to care for underserved populations.
Mensah earned her undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill and completed Brody’s Summer Program for Future Doctors, which helped her decide that ECU would be a good fit for medical school.
“For me, there is no separation between the community and medicine — to take care of a person, you have to understand who they are and what they face when they step out of the clinic,” she said. “I came into medical school with a strong interest in family medicine because I want to provide valuable health care to underserved populations in North Carolina and in Ghana.”
To better educate patients and the community in the management of diet-related chronic disease, Brody’s Department of Family Medicine recently launched a culinary medicine program that highlights the links between food and health, as well as how the foundations of nutritional science can be linked with traditional medical interventions in clinical care.
Family medicine residents from ECU and Vidant Health partnered with representatives from ECU’s College of Allied Health Science’s Department of Nutrition Science Dietetic Program and North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension Service to bring a culinary medicine event featuring the Mediterranean diet to South Central and J.H. Rose high schools in Pitt County.
The culinary arts students from both high schools educated the medical residents on how to properly prepare the meals — based on a trio of recipes from three different income levels — so they can effectively explain these techniques to patients.
“They are giving us step by step instructions on how to cut the food, prepare the food and how to cook the food, and they’re doing a really good job,” said Dr. Rebecca Laurine, a family medicine resident physician. “So, they’re teaching us cooking skills and we’re teaching them about the Mediterranean diet and how a healthy diet can help to mitigate some chronic health problems.”
Visit this video on YouTube for the closed-captioned version.
Patient Care
Programs and events focused on improving access to health care and resources that contribute to overall patient health.
For COVID-19 survivors who were hospitalized, being released from the hospital represents only a small step toward making a full recovery.
Some who experienced severe symptoms and complications but recovered enough to be deemed safe to leave the hospital, left without the abilities to perform some of the simple, but important, tasks they were able to do before their diagnosis.
“We quickly saw that all those people in the ICU, they were going to need some therapy — they were going to need all kinds of therapy,” said Dr. Amy Gross McMillan, chair of the Department of Physical Therapy in ECU’s College of Allied Health Sciences. “They’re going to need help getting up and moving.”
Licensed physical therapist and East Carolina University faculty member Dr. Amy Wedge works with client Ginny Tripp.(Photo by Cliff Hollis)
Physical and occupational therapists work with these patients to regain mobility, strength and endurance, and to reduce dependence on things like supplemental oxygen, first so that they can take care of themselves, and building toward more advanced tasks like resuming work and hobbies.
Although each case is different, those recovering from COVID-19 can face difficulties with strength, balance and endurance. Because of the relative novelty of the disease, initially there was little information on how to treat it.
In addition to treating patients as part of the Department of Physical Therapy’s clinical practice, faculty are seeing to it that the next generation of physical therapists is better prepared to treat COVID-19 survivors.
“We teach them how to get someone on their stomach, in prone, when they have all the tubes aligned and they’re attached to the ventilator because we know that in prone increases profusion to the lungs and decreases the work of breathing,” said Dr. Amy Wedge, a faculty member in the Department of Physical Therapy, board certified clinical specialist in neurologic physical therapy and certified brain injury specialist who has worked with several clients recovering from COVID-19.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is awarding $1.54 million to ECU to provide telepsychiatry services over the next five years for students at Elizabeth City State University.
This partnership expands behavioral health care services at ECSU at a time when mental health concerns on college campuses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are surging. The challenges associated with attending college, such as academic pressure, can trigger symptoms or cause the first onset of behavioral health and substance use problems in students.
The investment from Blue Cross NC bolsters the ECU-led North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program (NC-STeP), which connects patients in hospital emergency departments and community-based settings with expert psychiatric care using telehealth technology. NC-STeP enhances access to behavioral health care, especially in North Carolina’s rural communities, such as Pasquotank County where ECSU is located. Telepsychiatry helps address the shortage of providers for patients who otherwise may not have access to services, all while reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and improving after-care and patient outcomes.
“With this investment from Blue Cross NC, ECU will embed a behavioral health provider, linked via telepsychiatry to a clinical psychiatrist, for case consultations and care planning at the Student Health Center at ECSU,” said Dr. Sy Saeed, director of the ECU Center for Telepsychiatry and founding executive director of NC-STeP. “This resource will benefit students by improving access to behavioral health care, reducing the need for trips to the emergency department and inpatient admissions and reducing delays in diagnosis.”
The School of Dental Medicine’s second Sonríe Clinic expanded its efforts to provide care to more migrant farmworkers through increased student, faculty and staff volunteers.
Close to 80 volunteers — dental school students, residents, faculty, staff and community members — lent their skills, expertise and compassion to the event, a partnership with the Association of Mexicans in North Carolina, Inc. (AMEXCAN).
The event was created by students in the dental school’s Hispanic Student Dental Association (HSDA) as part of a mission-driven effort to reach out to communities without direct access to care.
“Right now, I’m in clinic, and I have experienced a variety of patients,” said Raul Garcia, co-president of the HSDA and one of the Sonríe Clinic organizers. “Overall, my classmates have always been very open-minded and have open arms to help one another. The mission of ECU is to serve the underserved, no matter your color, your race or sexual orientation. Overall, that has been our main goal.”
Garcia said the clinic has been a learning experience that culminated in even more smiles than last year — a tangible reaction to what it’s all about, as well as a rewarding result of the work that HSDA, nearly 30 members strong this year, put into the event.
“Even before dental school, my goal was to help my community,” he said. “We’re very happy to be able to have this event. It’s been a lot of hours of thinking, programming and planning.”
Research
Research across the Health Sciences Campus delves into the exploration of specific diseases as well as discoveries for tomorrow’s treatments.
College of Allied Health faculty members Dr. Kathrin Rothermich and Dr. Lauren Turbeville, along with cross-campus collaborator Dr. Jennifer Hodgson (Department of Human Development and Family Science), local individuals with Parkinson’s, and support from The Parkinson’s Foundation, recently conducted a survey for individuals in eastern North Carolina with Parkinson’s disease.
The researchers are hoping to understand which resources are available to those with Parkinson’s disease (PD) in eastern North Carolina, how they are being utilized, and what types of services are most needed. They hope that with more precise data on the challenges that eastern North Carolinians with Parkinson’s face, they’ll be better positioned to lobby for those resources.
“This is really about how we can help them now with resources,” said Rothermich, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. “To do that, we really need to know what’s needed, what’s a priority, and what the biggest concerns are.”
ast Carolina University College of Allied Health Sciences researchers Dr. Kathrine Rothermich and Dr. Lauren Turbeville are collaborating on a survey intended to help understand the resources most needed by those with Parkinson’s Disease in eastern North Carolina. (Photo by Cliff Hollis)
Rothermich and Turbeville hope that their survey — which they said should take about 10-15 minutes to complete — will lead to those answers and guide their next steps toward lobbying for the most needed resources.
“PD is certainly not the only disease where people struggle finding care in this region, just because it’s so spread out, and also there’s a lot of socioeconomic insecurities and health literacy issues. All of these things come into play,” Rothermich said. “I think there are some communities we’re just not reaching right now, especially marginalized minorities that are not currently connected to PD support groups.”
“Regional transformation is at the heart of ECU’s mission,” College of Allied Health Sciences Dean Dr. Robert Orlikoff said. “Our focus on diagnosis, treatment, care and rehabilitation for the underserved helps empower individuals, families, and communities in the East lead better lives with more options and opportunities. Access to quality interprofessional health care, such as needed by those with Parkinson’s, will be key to this important effort.”
Dr. Stefan Clemens, a professor in Brody’s Department of Physiology, credits his discovery of a potential treatment for restless legs syndrome (RLS) to “a bit of happenstance.”
Less than eight years later, however, that discovery has helped Clemens secure both a patent and a licensing agreement with the Illinois-based biopharmaceutical company Emalex Biosciences that could improve the quality of life for patients suffering from RLS and other nervous disorders.
The disorder is usually treated with dopaminergic drugs, which replace or prevent the loss of dopamine. However, these medications are highly effective initially but lose their effectiveness over time. Patients taking these dopaminergics eventually develop a side effect called augmentation that sees their symptoms get worse, Clemens said.
Clemens was investigating role of the dopamine receptor D3 in animal models with RLS — because that receptor has a suppressive effect in the nervous system — when he discovered that there was an increase in the different dopamine subtype, D1, in these models.
“We asked ourselves, ‘Is this perhaps — at the spinal cord level — an association that might underlie the mechanisms of those changes in the clinical treatments?’” Clemens said. “And then we thought, ‘If we have an upregulation of one receptor, can we selectively block it and see what happens? Can we restore normal behavior?’ And that is what we did.”
This work led to Clemens being awarded a grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to run a small clinical pilot study with a collaborator from the University of Houston using this new treatment method. His teams also began working to see if a medication used to treat Tourette syndrome — a nervous system disorder involving repetitive movements or unwanted sounds — could also have therapeutic advantages for patients with RLS.
“Until now, this medication was only used in clinical trials to treat a motor disorder. It was never considered, perhaps, to also be effective for a sensory disorder,” Clemens said.
Dr. Jason Hack, vice chair for research and chief of the Brody Division of Medical Toxicology in the Department of Emergency Medicine was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Medical Toxicology Research award by the American College of Medical Toxicology (ACMT).
The award is designated to individuals who demonstrate outstanding contributions to the areas of basic or clinical science research, research contributions that have changed the practice of medical toxicology, and research innovation.
As part of Brody’s faculty for 10 years as associate-chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology and then as associate professor, Hack earned awards for teaching, mentoring and scholarly productivity before leaving for Brown University, where he was promoted to full professor.
Hack returned to Brody in 2020 as vice chair for research and chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology in the Department of Emergency Medicine. His main research interests are developing clinical tools to improve patient care and assisting in decision-making, device invention and manufacturing and analysis and clarification of medical practices.
Hack said the award from the ACMT is a career highlight because it represents a nod from other experts in his field.
“To be recognized for this by a group of medical toxicologists who have reviewed my body of work and feel that it’s worthy of national recognition? I’m thrilled,” he said. “Honestly, I can’t believe it that I joined the ranks of a list of people in my mind who are exceptional researchers. I’m over the moon.”
Excellence in Social Mission
The School of Dental Medicine has received a national award for its advances in social mission — from addressing the oral health care gap in rural North Carolina communities to providing access to a dental education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The school was presented a Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation Award for Excellence in Social Mission in Health Professions Education on March 28 during the 2022 Beyond Flexner Conference in Phoenix. The award was one of four Macy Awards presented, and the only honor given in the Institutional Excellence category.
Social mission encompasses initiatives that teach or improve quality of life in areas including community engagement, diversity, health disparities reduction, value-based care and impact on the social determinants of health.
ECU’s School of Dental Medicine has received a national award for its advances in social mission — from addressing the oral health care gap in rural North Carolina communities to providing access to a dental education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.(ECU Photo by Cliff Hollis)
“We are inspired by ECU’s vision of creating leaders with a passion to care for the underserved and by their innovative community-based, service-learning model for educating oral health providers,” said Dr. Claire Pomeroy, chair of the award selection committee.
The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, which advances health care through education, created the awards program in 2016 to recognize excellence for social mission in health professions education. The program was developed in collaboration with the Beyond Flexner Alliance, a national movement focused on health equity and training health professionals as catalysts of more equitable health care.
“We are humbled by this recognition; it is one of the most significant honors our school has received since opening our doors to students and residents just over a decade ago,” said Dr. Greg Chadwick, dean of the School of Dental Medicine, as he accepted the award alongside Dr. Margaret Wilson, vice dean. “This award is a beacon — a standard — by which we set our goals for the school’s next decade.”
To second-year dental student Kayla Kinard, the award signals that the school is doing something right — and she is excited to be a part of it.
“As a student with a disadvantaged background, I constantly told myself I would become the change I desired to see growing up,” said Kinard, who was born and raised in Durham. “ECU’s School of Dental Medicine believed in me and believed in what I could contribute to North Carolina as a whole. What I love most about the school are the ample opportunities offered to students to serve and expand our knowledge and skills outside of our traditional training. The SoDM continuously illustrates their devotion to bettering the health and quality of life of all North Carolinians.”
Philanthropy
This year’s Pirate Nation Gives — ECU’s annual day of giving — brought more than $8.4 million to the university from 1,532 unique donors.
Chancellor Dr. Philip Rogers said the generosity of Pirate Nation is just one example of ECU’s importance throughout eastern North Carolina.
“These gifts show the impact ECU has had on those who have studied here and taught here, and so many others who support the university, that they would give so generously to pay that forward,” Rogers said. “They enable us to create and continue important programs aimed at transforming and uplifting the region we call home.”
Totals received through Pirate Nation Gives include:
College of Allied Health Sciences: 62 donors, $5,122
Brody School of Medicine: 44 donors, $26,472
School of Dental Medicine: 55 donors, $3,080
College of Nursing: 51 donors, $29,611
The Health Sciences Campus saw several significant gifts, including:
- Eileen Shokler, a longtime resident of Greenville who served as a guardian ad litem in Pitt County for eight years, contributed a $100,000 gift to fund an annual training program for staff and volunteers at the TEDI BEAR Child Advocacy Center, which provides critically important services to children who have been victims of child abuse or neglect.
- Ms. Kathleen Adams ’92, ’97; Dr. Mary Chatman ’90, ’96, ’12; Mr. Jim ’63 and Mrs. Selba ’64 Harris; and Dr. Mary Raab for nursing scholarships
- The Wooten Family for the Wooten Family Initiative for Brain Health Research Endowment
Deans issued challenges to increase participation in Pirate Nation Gives across campus and beyond. In the College of Allied Health Sciences, Dr. Robert Orlikoff issued a challenge to award prize money to the department with the most donors; occupational therapy won that challenge. He also awarded prize money to health services and information management for raising the highest dollar amount.
In the School of Dental Medicine, Dr. Greg Chadwick challenged participants with an award going to the fund that saw the most gifts during Pirate Nation Gives. First place went to ECU Smiles for Veterans Patient Care Fund, 2nd place went to the Brunswick County CSLC Patient Care Fund and 3rd place went to the School of Dental Medicine Patient Care Fund.
Learn more about how you can support the mission of ECU’s Division of Health Sciences through the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation, Inc.