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Kristine Ria Hearld, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Health Services Administration, director of the doctoral program in Administration-Health Services and past chair of the UAB Faculty Senate, will receive the 2021 President's Award for Excellence in Support of UAB and Shared Governance.

University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Sue Feldman, R.N., Ph.D., is one of 11 people around the world named a recipient of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Changemaker in Health Award. The award is determined by a public vote, making it a unique representation of the voices of the health care industry.

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship of Alabama (ASF) announced Ibukun Afon, a student in the UAB School of Health Professions’ M.S. in Health Administration program (Class 56), as a member of its 2021-22 class of Alabama Schweitzer Fellows. Afon is one of 14 graduate students from UAB, the University of Montevallo, and Samford University chosen to spend the next 13 months immersed in community public health projects.

The UAB National Alumni Society has named six UAB School of Health Professions’ (SHP) alumni to the UAB Excellence in Business Top 25. The program was created to identify, recognize, and celebrate the success of the top 25 UAB alumni-owned or UAB alumni-managed businesses.

Lauren White, a student in the UAB School of Health Professions’ M.S. in Health Administration program, is one of eight UAB students selected as Hoover Fellows, an initiative enabling students to be a part of advancing education, economic development, technology, business and innovation in the state.

Four faculty and staff from the School of Health Professions have been selected to receive the inaugural President’s Award for Excellence in Shared Values. The award honors Blazers who demonstrated one or more of UAB’s shared values in the course of their work during the extraordinary times presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

UAB has honored 27 students in the M.S. in Health Administration (MSHA) program with the President’s Diversity Champion Award for student organizations. The students took the initiative to create the MSHA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Student Council whose purpose is to prioritize DEI as fundamental pillars of the MSHA program and bring heightened social awareness to the faculty, staff, alumni, and students of the program.

The UAB School of Health Professions has awarded inaugural faculty grants to Matt Ithurburn, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, and Haiyan Qu, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Health Services Administration.

Students in the UAB M.S. in Health Administration program (Class 56) had a “day on” rather than a “day off” on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The UAB School of Health Professions has 16 people, including Dean Andrew J. Butler, Ph.D., named to the Birmingham Business Journal’s 2020 Who’s Who in Health Care.

The UAB Department of Health Services Administration has named Jessica Williams, Ph.D., director of the B.S. in Health Care Management program and Ria Hearld, Ph.D., director of the PhD in Administration-Health Services program.

UAB Health System has donated $25,000 to establish the John Lewis Health Equity Program Support Fund. The gift, in honor of the Alabama native and civil rights hero, supports the UAB Academy for Addressing Health Disparities Through Health Care Leadership.

Hope Gray, MTS, BCC, a student in the UAB Doctor of Philosophy in Administration-Health Services program – Health Informatics track, has been awarded the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Leadership and Education Award (LEAD) Fund Scholarship. She is one of only two to earn the award.

Established in 2016, the AMIA LEAD Fund is focused on supporting membership diversity, trainee engagement and developing future AMIA leaders.

“I am honored to have been selected as an AMIA LEAD Fund Scholarship Awardee this year,” said Gray who is a Board-Certified Chaplain with training in ethics, empathy and diversity, equity and inclusion. “I presented my PhD work to AMIA members and gained meaningful feedback for which I am thankful.”

“We are grateful to AMIA for seeing the value in developing future Health Informatics leaders with the LEAD fund. Their mission in doing so is very much aligned with the mission of UAB’s Graduate Programs in Health Informatics and further develops our students to lead and innovate in the field,” said Sue Feldman, RN, MEd, Ph.D., director, Graduate Programs in Health Informatics.

Gray has participated in the AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference (CIC) as well as several JAMIA Journal Clubs. In addition, she is a member of many AMIA workgroups including:

• AMIA First Look
• Clinical Information Systems
• Clinical Research Informatics
• COVID-19 Community & Discussion Forum
• Natural Language Processing
• Student Working Group
• Women in AMIA Discussion Forum

The AMIA LEAD Fund promotes the value of informatics in transforming health and healthcare by awarding scholarships and research, highlighting innovation and discovery, recognizing professional achievement, and promoting leadership and advocacy.

Students in the UAB M.S. in Health Administration program helped UAB Hospital surpass its goal of collecting more than 268 bicycles for the annual Salvation Army Toy Drive.

When she joined the UAB Office of Interprofessional Simulation for Innovative Clinical Practice, Kelly Roszczynialski, M.D., as their simulation fellow, she was informed of UAB’s new M.S. in Healthcare Simulation program.

UAB School of Health Professions’ Professor Sue Feldman, Ph.D. and Assistant Professor Mohanoj Thirumalai, Ph.D., along with the Department of Pathology’s Sixto M. Leal Jr., M.D., Ph.D., were awarded the Faculty Innovator of the Year honor during the fifth-annual UAB Innovation Awards.

New research on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that, in the complete absence of stay-at-home orders, the United States could have seen 220 percent higher rates of infection and a 22 percent higher fatality rate than if stay-at-home orders had been implemented nationwide. The study, which included researchers Sangeetha Padalabalanarayanan and Vidya Sagar Hanumanthu as co-first authors, was published today in JAMA Network Open.

The review of COVID-19 positive case rates and state-wide stay-at-home orders suggests that stay-at-home orders helped reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.New research on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that, in the complete absence of stay-at-home orders, the United States could have seen 220 percent higher rates of infection and a 22 percent higher fatality rate than if stay-at-home orders had been implemented nationwide.

The study, from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and published today in JAMA Network Open, analyzed daily state-level positive case rates against the presence or absence of statewide stay-at-home orders, or SAHOs. The team looked at the time period of March 1 to May 4, 2020, as SAHOs began to be implemented.

“During March and April, most states in the United States imposed shutdowns and enacted SAHOs in an effort to control the disease,” said senior author Bisakha Sen, Ph.D., Blue Cross Blue Shield Endowed Chair in Health Economics, Department of Health Care Organization and Policy in the School of Public Health. “However, mixed messages from political authorities on the usefulness of SAHOs, popular pressure and concerns about the economic fallout led some states to lift the restrictions before public health experts considered it advisable.” 

Sen’s team used data collected from the COVID Tracking Project, which was initiated by the magazine The Atlantic in partnership with Related Sciences. The project collates data from state health agencies and makes it publicly available. The sample included 3,023 data observations.  

“Our results indicate that a scenario of no SAHOs over this time period would have resulted in 220 percent higher cumulative case rates and 22 percent higher cumulative fatality rates compared to if there had been full imposition of SAHOs,” said Sangeetha Padalabalanarayanan, Department of Health Services Administration, School of Health Professions and co-first author of the study. 

For purposes of the study, SAHOs were considered to be in effect when a state’s governor issued an order for residents of the entire state to leave home only for essential activities, and when schools and nonessential businesses were closed. Seven states never imposed SAHOs, and 12 states lifted their SAHOs before the May 4 study cut off.   

Bisakha Sen, Ph.D.A second aim of the study was to see if the proportion of African Americans in a state was associated with the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in that state.

“Previous attempts to understand the extent of COVID-19 cases within the African American population had been done at a county level,” said co-first author Vidya Sagar Hanumanthu, Department of Health Services Administration. “Our state-level analysis showed that there was an association between the African American population and COVID-19 cases statewide. This finding adds to evidence from existing studies using county-level data on racial disparities in COVID-19 infection rates and underlines the urgency of better understanding and addressing these disparities.”  

The findings underscore the importance of stay-at-home orders in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to address racial disparities in rates of infection.  

“While the high economic cost makes SAHOs unsustainable as a long-term policy, our findings could help inform federal, state and local policymakers in weighing the costs and benefits of different short-term options to combat the pandemic,” Sen said. “Our findings also emphasize the importance of understanding and addressing the drivers of racial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes as part of the overarching goal of improving health equity in the United States.”

Mohanraj Thirumalai, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions’Department of Health Services Administration, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. The three-year grant is part of the Disability and Rehabilitation Research Projects funding program.

Khayla Boykin, a Health Care Management student expected to graduate August 2021, has been awarded a UAB School of Health Professions Blazer Forever Scholarship. The award is given to five SHP students during Homecoming Week based on their answer to an essay question. This year, there were nearly 100 submissions to the question: What makes you most proud to be a UAB Blazer?

Mark Lainoff is not afraid. Doesn’t fear success – elected UAB MSHA Class 55 President. Willing to take risks – started a business that went under. No horror over pain – followed his college baseball dream through injury. No terror of the unknown – volunteered to serve at UAB’s COVID-19 testing site.