Dean's Report

Message from the Dean

Neil Mackinnon

At the James L Winkle College of Pharmacy, our aim is to do the remarkable each day as related to education, practice, research and service. In this year's annual report, you will see pictures and read stories about our activities and accomplishments. We strive to lead, care and transform and to do so in a remarkable fashion.

Over the past year, the leadership at the University of Cincinnati has developed a new strategic direction called Next Lives Here. There are three main platforms, or pillars, of Next Lives Here: (1) academic excellence, (2) urban impact, and (3) innovation agenda. We have structured this report to correspond to these three platforms. First, we are proud of our academic excellence at the college, and we have the goal of providing exceptional education. Second, we are an urban university, located in uptown Cincinnati, and our college is having an impact on arguably the largest public health crisis facing our community, the opioid crisis. Third, our cutting-edge research is contributing to the university's innovation agenda. Research funding held by our faculty has increased from $4.3 million in 2013-14 to $9.7 million in 2017-18.

Beyond the statistics, programs and initiatives are the people, our faculty, staff, students, alumni and other friends of the college. Over five years as dean, I've had the opportunity to interact with many of you, and I am continually impressed by your dedication to, and love for, the college. Leadership expert Tim Elmore says, "Jobs are about making a living. Work is about leaving a legacy". I have no doubt that we are leaving a rich legacy at the college, one that can be built upon by others in the future.

Enjoy, and go Bearcats!

Neil MacKinnon
BSC(Pharm), MSc(Pharm), PhD, Dean and Professor

LEAD

Pat Achoe

"It's a Small Word (After All)" is a magical melody about global unity and kindness -- a children's tune touted as hard to get out of your head, even for adults. Perhaps it sticks because it should, as a reminder that everyone benefits when we embody a singular culture of equity and inclusion.

"Diversity is about so much more than race," says Pat Achoe, RPh, CDP, who joined the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy in 2017 as director of equity and inclusion and chairs the council on diversity, made up of many voices: students, faculty, staff, health care administrators, community and corporate partners. Achoe's role at the college is a collaboration between the college and the Kroger Co., where she worked on Kroger's Health and Wellness team. Her position at the college is part outreach--speaking at Cincinnati's urban public schools about the pharmacy profession--and part training, teaching pharmacy faculty, staff and students how to model a culture where everyone has the same opportunity to succeed.

"We all have unconscious bias, but once you get here, we want you to experience an inclusive culture," says Achoe, adding that the goal of the college is to graduate the "culturally competent pharmacist."

Minority Enrollment

Minority enrollment has increased to 24.8% in 2017, up from 15.4 percent in 2012.
Of the 96 students accepted into Doctor of Pharmacy class of 2022, 36 students reported a race/ethnicity other than white.

Urban Impact

The college collaborates with:

100 pharmacy practice partners
190 individual practice sites
most within 30 miles of UCâs urban campus.

St. Vincent DePaul Charitable Pharmacy

Practice partners include retail, hospital and long-term care pharmacies, but we also have the privilege of working with the St. Vincent DePaul Charitable Pharmacy, a pharmacy of last resort for the underserved of Cincinnati.

Lydia Baily, Rusty Curington, Danielle Eaton

Rusty Curington, PharmD (center), was the first pharmacy graduate to complete a residency at St. Vincent DePaul and now serves as its assistant director of pharmacy and acts as a preceptor. Lydia Baily, PharmD (left), completed her residency here in 2016 and stayed on as a clinical pharmacist and preceptor. Danielle Eaton (right) is the fifth resident to go through the St. Vincent DePaul residency program.

CARE

Jill Boone

Jill Boone, PharmD, is a firm believer in getting as many experts in the room to tackle the complexities of 21st century health care.

To this end, Boone has poured her heart and mind into the team practice approach by coauthoring quality improvement research toward managing chronic pain in primary care settings. She has initiated collaborations with integrative medicine on pain management therapies, such as yoga and meditation, and co-leads a pain management telementoring program for primary care physicians. Boone also helped establish monthly group visits at the University of Cincinnati (UC) Medical Center, where the physician, pharmacist, a rotation of other experts, and patients, all meet to engage in learning best care practices from each other.Replace with your text

"The most impactful statement I've ever heard regarding the group visit model was from a patient who said, 'This is the first time I've felt like a partner in my care and not a patient,'" she says.

Boone's 35-year career started with practice in acute care and a focus on pain management, but for 15 years, she worked in both inpatient and ambulatory clinical pharmacy practice in transplantation and served as the director of transplant outcomes at UC Medical Center. Over the past five years, Boone's passion for pain management has re-emerged through engagement in a variety of practices, including the Adult Sickle Cell Center at UC, as well as becoming active in addressing the opioid crisis through prevention efforts and research evaluating the impact of state policies and guidelines. Boone's leadership and multidisciplinary collaborations in pain management represent her mindset: "To optimize care and minimize risk, we really need to change the way we offer care to our patients. We must offer broad treatment options, both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic, with interprofessional expertise in innovative practice models."

UC Total Enrollment

UC set new enrollment records for its fifth-straight year and is an exception to a nationwide trend of declining enrollment.

[insert image of graph for enrollment]

Academic Excellence

Opioid Task Force

With the Tristate being in the middle of an especially hard hit area of the opioid epidemic, in 2017 leaders across UC's campus and the UC Health system recognized the need to align efforts and build greater collaboration around fighting the opioid crisis.

Co-chairs Neil MacKinnon, PhD, dean of the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy, and Melissa DelBello, MD, Stanley and Mickey Kaplan Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the College of Medicine convened faculty, staff, researchers and clinicians alike, to form the Opioid Task Force.

In 2018, Boone and MacKinnon were inducted into National Academies of Practice, as distinguished practitioners and fellows in pharmacy, a subgroup of NAP.

TRANSFORM

Tim Phoenix

As part of an Academic Health Center, we believe in evidence-based medicine; where the results of research often produce an "ah ha" moment--when the facts come together to make perfect sense.

Naturally, with the college's mission statement aligning research around cancer and neuroscience, it also made perfect sense to partner with our neighbor, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, to recruit Timothy Phoenix, PhD, a pediatric brain tumor researcher.

"The strong neuroscience, developmental biology and cancer research programs at UC and Cincinnati Children's provide a great environment for junior faculty to thrive," says Phoenix, an assistant professor whose research is specific to malignant brain tumors, rare in children and adults, but almost always deadly.

Having trained under renowned scientists at Albany Medical College and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, as a postdoc Phoenix discovered a unique tumor-vascular interaction that may partially explain the exceptional clinical response identified in a subset of patients.

"The field has made significant progress over the past decade in understanding the genetics that drive brain tumor development and growth. This provides an exciting opportunity to attack these tumors with new targeted therapies, but unfortunately the vast majority of these drugs do not penetrate into the brain," says Phoenix.

Figuring out how tumors interact with this natural blood-brain barrier will greatly inform our choices of pharmacologics, he says, and learning how to potentially modulate it to allow drug entry is key to developing new, effective treatments and improving overall long-term survival.

Valued Partnership

We partner with Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, ranked #2 in the nation among Honor Roll hospitals in U.S.News and World Reports 2018-2019 Best Children's Hospitals ranking.

Innovation Agenda

Increased Research Funding

Research Funding

In August 2018, Phoenix received his first externally funded grant as a principal investigator to study this key drug barrier in a subset of deadly pediatric brain tumors known as Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). The 3-year, $577,200 Career Development Grant, sponsored by the Department of Defense, is titled: "Defining and Targeting the Blood-Brain Barrier in Pediatric Glioma Subgroups."

This is just one example of how our research funding continues to grow.

Graduates

PharmD
Class of 2018
Rachelle Daun Ancona Nelson Awondo Alitta Jacqueline Barnett Savita S Bathija Christelle Iteke Biame Maggie Elizabeth Bischoff Kevin Donald Bisher Micaela Marie Bresler Zachary David Bryant Phillip R Carnes Timothy James Carter Jess T. Chadwell Darby Anne Cochran Cara R Coleman Andrew M Combs Jennifer Renee Damen Duy Thanh Dao Elizabeth Mildred Djukic Bianca Hyon Dodgen Keith Edward Dolby Theodore Joseph Dorow Samuel Dwomoh Amanda Katherine Fegley Brittany Ann Fischer Isaac John Galli Andrew Eugene Globke Kelsey Ann Goderwis Eric Thomas Goodwin Michelle Lynn Green Jonathan Corey Hampton Derek E Harper Quintin Avery Hauser Lucas Lee Hendrixson Abigail Lee Hoff Afnan Hoque Brandon Scott Houseman Dilpreet Kaur Jesse E Keller Steven James Kent Andrew Yacoub Kordahi Nicholas David Krabacher Amanda Marie Krebs Sarena Megan Lea Madison Paige Lempp Lauren Emily Lowery Elias Malange Philip Michael McClure	Brandon Christopher McCrea Emily Ann Metzker James Thomas Middendorf Juliet Pierce Milburn Bradley Joseph Miyagawa Shelby Elizabeth Moore Brooke Antonia Moorhead Jeremiah Vernon Moss Elizabeth N Mutters Nikita Sreeharshan Nambiar Kathryn Jane Neack Tri Huu Nguyen Charles Joseph Nuss Jordan Ashleigh Onopa Catlin Tewes Page Justin David Payne Lynette Marie Payne Betty Petrovich Mark Andrew Pierce Daniel S Prampero Cody Christian Rader Lyndsey Alyse Riddell Aaron Matthew Rolph Zachary Alan Schafer Daniel Edward Schinka lJulie Lynn Sears Courtney Tai Sheets Carolyn Lyden Shortman Nathan Siegel Eric Hollingshead Smith Logan Manning Stephens Gunner James Taylor Jessica A Thorburn Karlie Marie Torok Michael Jerome Treft Patrick Jay Turner Richard Charles Vogel Allison Marie Volski Boris Vorobeychik Kyle Rea White Isaac David Wiegman Zane Garrett Wilkerson Emily Rae Willard Olivia R Witt Callie Wood Marie Yasuda Sevara Zayitova

Master of Science
Spring 2018	Summer 2018
Shantala Gangatirkar Pamela Edmondson Eric RenneEric Twum Dmitriy Bikmayev Chandra Ade-Browne Bradley Henderson	Taylor Mathis

Cosmetic Science (MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences)
Fall 2017	Spring 2018
Chu Chia-Yeu Gina Guiliano Jillian Liguori Estibaliz Martin Aste Phylicia Patton Michelle Tippelt	Valdora Avery Shantaia Covin Alexandria Dinapoli Marzano Dariusz Dziekonski Shelsea Hurdle Kathleen Jillions Cynthia Johnson Jenny Morrissey Christine Tilghman
Summer 2018
Montalee Chavious Eunice Cofie Adam Delson Lynnette Greber Alexa Guest Michael Mastell Kia Montgomery Taylor Sabol Andrea Waggoner

Pharmacy Leadership
Spring 2018
Zack Dumont Travis Jacob Katelyn Johnson

PhD of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Spring 2018	Summer 2018
Salwa Ragab Kun Yang Jeffrey Thompson Gaurav Tolia Chris Atzinger	Amarsinh Desai

Looking Ahead

UC College of Medicine and Pharmacy Students Will Now Learn Together

View Full UC News Article

For the first time in the history of the University of Cincinnati's (UC) Academic Health Center, first-year students in UC's colleges of medicine and pharmacy will take a required course--together.

The two-course series (Principles in Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and Applications in Interprofessional Collaborative Practice) will begin in spring 2019 and are co-directed by Jill Boone, PharmD, and Tiffiny Diers, MD. The courses are designed to acquaint students with aspects of each other's professions early on in their education and provide students the skill set to engage effectively as interprofessional teams in the workplace.

"Health care has become so complex that educators and clinicians in the health care professions are recognizing we all have a role to play, and we have to do it in the most efficient manner possible," says Boone, professor and director of interprofessional education at UC's James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy.

"We want to be able to place students with highly functioning teams in the clinical environments where they themselves are going to be practicing."