This Week@WesternU, Nov. 5-9, 2018
A Tribute to Caring
Western University of Health Sciences held its annual “A Tribute to Caring” gala Saturday, November 3, 2018 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California. Proceeds from the event go toward scholarships for incoming WesternU students.
Check out WesternU on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to see photos from the event and check the WesternU home page later this week for a story and slideshow.
FACE-ing Autism with Integrated and Innovative Approaches
9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, 2018 on the first floor of the Health Education Center.
Faculty for Autism Collaboration and Education (FACE) will hold a special holiday event featuring Special Santa, who is sensitive to children with special needs. This event will feature a renowned special education and integrative therapy expert, WesternU’s own Dr. Denise Schilling. Dr. Schilling is a highly skilled physical therapist with training in Sensory Integration, ABA, and Special Education. She creatively combines approaches to better meet the needs of individual patients. She will be joined by Dr. Yawen Peng, a special needs dental expert. They will describe fun games they are developing to encourage dental care. Resources will be shared, and WesternU dental students will provide oral hygiene instructions, dental desensitization, nutritional counseling, and free dental supplies. Additional information about FACE can be found at www.westernu.edu/face.
Click here to view a flier.
From the College of Veterinary Medicine:
Kudos on accomplishments
CVM Associate Professor Curtis Eng’s article, “Survey of U.S.-based zoo veterinarians’ attitudes on population management euthanasia,” was accepted for publication in Zoo Biology which can be found at https://rdcu.be/9UyZ. This project was especially exciting since co-author Joseph Lan is a 2017 CVM graduate. Dr. Lan did a substantial amount of the work as his summer project two years ago. This article is a follow-up to a similar survey conducted by another co-author, Dr. David Powell who worked with zoo keepers, curators and other zoo managers.
From the College of Optometry:
Kudos on accomplishments
College of Optometry Associate Professor Joshua Cameron, PhD, FAAO, worked with a team at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to examine the role two kinase proteins (GRK1 and GRK7) play in the vision phototransduction cascade. Because mice and rats don’t have the GRK7 protein, its in vivo role in human vision had not been elucidated. Working with Dr. Ellen Weiss, Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology and the senior investigator on the project, along with Dr. Jared Chrispell, a Research Associate at UNC and the lead author, both Grk1b and Grk7a were shown to contribute to the recovery of the cone photoresponse in zebrafish. Though the experiments were done in zebrafish, it is anticipated that the same or similar roles exist in the human phototransduction cascade due to the similarities between the respective proteins and their expression patterns in the retina. The article reporting the results of this work was published in the October issue of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science. “Grk1b and Grk7a Both Contribute to the Recovery of the Isolated Cone Photoresponse in Larval Zebrafish.” Chrispell JD, Dong E, Osawa S, Liu J, Cameron DJ, Weiss ER. Investigative Ophthalmology Visual Science. 2018 Oct 1;59(12):5116-5124. doi: 10.1167/iovs.18-24455. (https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2711340).
On November 3, Dr. John Tassinari was an invited speaker at the Vision Institute Annual Fall Conference in Ontario Canada. The topic of his two-hour presentation was “Optometric Management of Children with Learning Disorders.”
From the College of Dental Medicine:
Kudos on accomplishments
On October 11, the Virtual Dental Home training session was held with the University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry at WesternU, including live patient clinical examinations focusing on the placement of interim therapeutic restorations (ITRs). Veronica Lozano, RDAEF, and Nicole McBain, RDAEF2, successfully passed the ITR clinical examinations, and became the first Registered Dental Assistant with Extended Functions (RDAEFs) to be certified utilizing the Virtual Dental Home delivery system. Most importantly, Lozano and McBain are the only dental RDAEFs to be certified in California in ITRs, pioneering the way for future dental auxiliaries, and best of all, it started here at WesternU.
In collaboration with a UCLA-led Consortium funded by the California Department of Health Care Services through the California Medi-Cal 2020 Demonstration known as “more LA smiles,” WesternU CDM provided an advanced dental eight-hour CDE course titled “Pediatric Care: Pediatric Caries Prevention & Disease Management for Dental Providers.” More than 80 attendees learned about caries-risk assessment tool and clinical oral health assessment, differentiating carious lesions from non-carious lesions associated with health conditions, interpreting and treatment planning carious lesions in pediatric patients, pediatric patient education, caries management modalities, and pediatric behavior management. Presenters from WesternU were: T. Jamie Parado, DDS; Yawen Peng, DMD, MA; Krystle Rapisura, DMD, MS; and Marisa Watanabe, DDS, MS.
From the College of Pharmacy:
Kudos on accomplishments
Dr. Benjamin Malcolm published a case report in Elseviers’ online textbook Progress in Brain Research. The edition was titled ‘The Opioid System as the Interface Between the Brain’s Cognitive and Motivational Systems’. The citation is: Barsuglia JP, Polanco M, Palmer R, Malcolm BJ, Kelmendi B, Calvey T. A case report SPECT study and theoretical rationale for the sequential administration of ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in the treatment of alcohol use disorder. Progress in Brain Research, Available online 25 October 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.08.002
From Learning Enhancement and Academic Development (LEAD):
Dia de los Muertos celebration
In honor of Dia de los Muertos, Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA), in collaboration with LEAD, held a spectacular cultural celebration at LEAD on Nov. 1. This traditional event included an ofrenda (altar) to honor our deceased, a taco bar, and lots of fun activities including face painting and paper flower making. This event strengthened ties between WesternU and the Pomona community as the youth mariachi group from the dA Center for the Arts made their debut performance for a crowd of WesternU students, faculty, and staff. Visit LEAD’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/WesternULEAD, to view photos and videos of this important event. Learn more about the center at www.dacenter.org.
LEAD Halloween Celebration
LEAD hosted a Halloween celebration on Tuesday, October 30, which brought together 73 students from five colleges. In addition to enjoying fruit sundaes, students had the chance to meet other students as well as LEAD academic counselors, play trivia and win prizes. View photos on LEAD’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WesternULEAD.
From the Pumerantz Library:
At Home and Over There: American Women Physicians in World War I
The Harriet K. & Philip Pumerantz Library is hosting the AMWA – American Medical Women’s Association – traveling exhibit “At Home and Over there: American Women Physicians in World War I” through December 10, 2018. This exhibit honors the American women physicians who served in Europe during World War I despite being turned down by the United Sates Army Medical Corps based on the fact “it hadn’t been done.” For further information call Mary Helen Ellis at Ext. 5321.
