In January, National Public Radio broadcast a story nationally about the UNC PA program and how it will help to address the current and looming healthcare needs of North Carolina citizens, especially in underserved communities.  Click here for the NPR broadcast featuring Dr. Bruce Cairns, MD, the Director North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center and Professor of Surgery at UNC School of Medicine.

Also in January, the UNC University Gazette included a story on the program. Click here to read the feature.

As a student in UNC’s Rehabilitation Counseling and Psychology program, Timko has focused primarily on the holistic rehabilitation of persons with concurrent psychiatric and physical disabilities. She is a Graduate Assistant for Interpersonal Violence Prevention at Student Wellness, working with the One ACT bystander intervention training program. In June of 2012, Arianna began research and program development for a One ACT program focused on the prevention of identity-based and sexual harassment, Beyond Bullying, which debuted in March of this year. As a graduate student facilitator for the Buckley Public Service Scholars Program, Arianna wrote and facilitates an interactive workshop on disability awareness, inclusion, and advocacy for undergraduate students through the Carolina Center for Public Service.

Timko was a 2011-2012 recipient of a UNC Hospitals Volunteer Association’s Allied Health Sciences Fellowship, which are awarded to deserving allied health students who exhibit characteristics of emerging professional excellence.

Diversity and Multicultural Affairs and Vice Provost Taffye Benson Clayton honored Timko and other University Diversity Award recipients at a reception on April 16. Provost Bruce Carney spoke on behalf of the University. Click here to read more about the award and other recipients.

The SEP research symposium included presentations by Dr. Lauren Little (chair of symposium, SEP postdoc), Anne Kirby (doctoral student, Occupational Science), Dr. Sarah Schipul (CIDD postdoc), Dr. Karla Ausderau (Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, University of Wisconsin at Madison), and Dr. Carissa Cascio (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University).  Dr. Jim Bodfish (Professor, Vanderbilt University) acted as the symposium discussant.

Dr. Little and Dr. Schipul received Theodore Tjossem Postdoctoral Travel Awards and Anne Kirby received a David Zeaman Graduate Travel Award.

The group of papers addressed a diverse array of research related to sensory features of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, including behavioral coding measures, activity participation, and ERP responses during auditory processing.

The story goes on to cite several examples of McCulloch’s leadership during her 22 years of service to the section, including the formulation of the Neurology Section Home Study Course, her role as co-founder of the Brain Injury Special Interest Group, her position as the first Director of Education, and her service in planning and steering multiple courses and educational efforts within the section.  She served as Co-Chair of the TBI Edge Task Force–Outcome Measure Recommendations Committee, and is a Clinical Summary  Editor of PTNow.

Also in early 2013, McCulloch became co-chair of the Brain Injury Association of North Carolina and began serving on the Governor's Advisory Council for Brain Injury.

McCulloch is the primary investigator for a grant, titled Assessment of Military Multitasking Performance (AMMP), funded by the Department of Defense through Allina Health System. The AMMP is a battery of functional dual- and multitasks that simulate the combined sensorimotor, cognitive, and exertional demands of soldiering for use after concussion/mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).  Investigators anticipate that once validated, the AMMP will help discriminate between “duty-ready” and “non-duty ready” military service members with mTBI.

Collaborators on the AMMP project include Rich Goldberg in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, CAPT Henry McMillan, PT, DPT, at Fort Bragg, who is an alumnus of the BS PT program at UNC, and Amy Seal Cecchini, PT, MS, from Fayetteville, who is a graduate of the Human Movement Science master’s program. Roger Yu, a biomedical engineering PhD student and DPT graduate students are also involved in the project.

The AMMP project previously received support from a United States Army Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) grant and Dr. McCulloch received funding as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow through the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Division (R2D) of the Army Office of the Surgeon General.

BCBSNC has pledged $1.2 million over the next four years to help UNC establish the master’s curriculum and hire full-time program staff. A significant portion of the grant will provide scholarship funds through the Medical Foundation of North Carolina to assist Special Forces Medical Sergeants who have transitioned out of the military. The program will be based in the School of Medicine's Department of Allied Health Sciences.

“Collaborating on creative approaches like this program will help us tackle the challenges our health care system is facing,” said Brad Wilson, BCBSNC president and CEO. “It’s a simple equation: we need more physician assistants in North Carolina, and our veterans want the jobs. When these medics return home, they’ll have the opportunity to take their experience in the field and use it to advance their careers and continue to care for patients.”

Thomas W. Ross, UNC President; Col. Peter J. Benson, Deputy Chief of Staff Surgeon, U.S. Army Special Operations Command; Brad Wilson, President and CEO, BCBSNC; Holden Thorp, UNC Chancellor; Bruce A. Cairns, MD, Director, NC Jaycee Burn Center; and William L. Roper, MD, MPH, Dean, UNC School of Medicine, at the announcement of the PA program collaboration on December 3, 2012, at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill.

The United States and North Carolina are facing a deepening shortage of doctors and primary care physicians. Some figures estimate that by 2020, there will be a national shortage of about 150,000 physicians and 65,000 primary care physicians. And in North Carolina, almost 1 million people live in areas that do not have enough health care professionals to effectively serve their communities. UNC will create a two-year curriculum with training rotations at UNC Hospitals and free clinics around the state. The program’s training will focus on primary care to meet the needs of underserved communities in North Carolina.

“We know that the majority of our Special Forces Medical Sergeants want to continue their careers in medicine to help improve the health and lives of our citizens, but many are unsure of what path to take when they transition out of the military,” said United States Army Special Operations Command Surgeon Colonel Peter J. Benson. “This program gives our veterans the education and opportunity to lend their unique health care and leadership skills to benefit citizens across North Carolina.”

Research has indicated there will be high interest and participation in the program. A 2010 national survey of Special Forces Medical Sergeants revealed that nine out of ten respondents wanted to pursue a career in health care outside of a military setting, and about half were interested in becoming PAs.

“This collaboration is evidence of our shared commitment to veterans, providing access to primary care and improving the health of all North Carolinians,” said Dr. William L. Roper, MD, MPH, UNC School of Medicine dean and UNC Health Care CEO. “Physician assistants play a vital role in the primary care setting, and our medically trained soldiers return to us well-equipped to meet the needs of underserved communities. North Carolina, in particular, provides many opportunities for our veterans who want to pursue a long-term career in medicine."

Since 2009, the UNC School of Medicine and the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center (JSOMTC) at Fort Bragg have collaborated to enhance medical training, care and innovation in underserved areas of North Carolina. Their existing collaboration will influence the development of the new master’s degree program with an executive advisory board seeking input from JSOMTC.

"I'm extremely proud that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is part of this initiative,” said Chancellor Holden Thorp, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It's one more example of how our campus has worked with the United States Armed Forces since World War I to train our soldiers and to help the people of North Carolina."

The UNC Master’s of Physician Assistant Studies degree program, pending approval by the Board of Governors, is in the early planning stages and plans to enroll its first class of student veterans in 2015.

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina:
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is a leader in delivering innovative health care products, services and information to more than 3.6 million members, including approximately 900,000 served on behalf of other Blue Plans. For 78 years, the company has served its customers by offering health insurance at a competitive price and has served the people of North Carolina through support of community organizations, programs and events that promote good health. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Access BCBSNC online at bcbsnc.com. ® Marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

About UNC School of Medicine:
The University of North Carolina School of Medicine is a nationally-ranked public medical school with campuses in Chapel Hill, Asheville, and Charlotte. The UNC School of Medicine is home to more than 1,500 students in various degree programs including those offered in the outstanding department of Allied Health Sciences, PhD programs in the biomedical sciences, and the MD program. Students may earn combined degrees, including the MD-PhD, MD-MPH, and MD-MBA degrees, in cooperation with the Gillings School of Public Health and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, respectively, at UNC.

Medical education began at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1879. A four-year MD-granting School of Medicine was established in 1952, in conjunction with the opening of the N.C. Memorial Hospital. The UNC School of Medicine is in the top tier of peer institutions for graduating students who practice medicine in underserved areas as well as bringing in federal grants and contracts, including NIH funding. The School is one of the few in the nation to excel at both teaching primary care skills and the fostering of research careers.

BCBSNC Contact: Darcie Dearth • 919-765-3005 • darcie.dearth@bcbsnc.com
BCBSNC Online Newsroom: http://mediacenter.bcbsnc.com

UNC Health Care Contact: Jennifer James • 919-966-7622 • JJames@unch.unc.edu
UNC Health Care Online Newsroom: http://news.unchealthcare.org/

The Excellence in Management Award is presented annually to two University employees in recognition of meritorious and distinguished accomplishments in management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Click here to read more about Christene Tashjian in a AHS Staff Spotlight.

Partners of the Americas, an organization that links people in the United States with people in Latin American and Caribbean countries based on common interests, had identified a need for autism assistance in Bolivia. They contacted Patsy Pierce, a former UNC faculty member in speech and hearing sciences who had worked with the group concerning other childhood disabilities. Pierce led them to Watson and Crais.

Click here to read the full story in the University Gazette.

Crais’ research focuses on addressing the gap between parental concern and action on the part of professionals to identify, diagnose, and intervene with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). She works closely with a team of interdisciplinary researchers including Drs. Grace Baranek, Linda Watson, Steve Reznick, and Lauren Turner-Brown. Crais’ research through the Faculty Engaged Scholars program focused on working closely with primary care providers to identify children with or at-risk for ASD.

Click here to read more about Crais and other members of the Faculty Engaged Scholars Class III.

Visit www.med.unc.edu/ahs/ndss for more information about admissions, faculty, and the curriculum.

Media contact: Tom Hughes, 919-966-6047, tahughes@unch.unc.edu

In many adults who survive stroke, damage to speech regions of the brain results in a distorted, effortful, and halting pattern of speech, a condition called apraxia of speech. Although they know what they want to say and have intact muscle strength, they have difficulty programming the movements for speech. They are able to hear their speech errors, and the typical treatment program focuses on identifying these errors and correcting them. For most people, focusing on these mistakes results in little improvement in their speech.

In contrast to conventional treatment approaches, Dr. Jacks and his colleagues (Katarina Haley, PhD, DAHS, DSHS; Heidi Roth, MD, Department of Neurology) are studying the effects of preventing the person with apraxia of speech from hearing the errors in their speech, by playing loud noise through earphones. This approach is based on the premise that people with this speech disorder are overly-attuned to speech errors, which prevents them from speaking fluently. The same phenomenon has been known for decades to help people who stutter to speak fluently, as demonstrated in the popular film The King's Speech.

In the proposed research, Dr. Jacks and his colleagues seek to identify stroke survivors who respond positively to listening to noise by increasing speech rate and decreasing the occurrence of speech disfluencies (pauses, filler words, repetitions). Since not all people are expected to show a change in speech while listening to noise, the team also will study individual characteristics to determine what differentiates those who improve from those who do not. In particular, behavioral profiles (type of speech and language impairment) and location and size of brain lesion will be compared between positive responders and non-responders to determine whether a positive response can be predicted from routine clinical data.

In preliminary work, over half of the participants tested spoke more quickly and with fewer disfluencies while listening to noise. Although this is a temporary effect and does not persist after the noise is turned off, the moments of speech fluency experienced may cause the person's brain to activate in a different way than it does when he or she is speaking disfluently. If the preliminary results are borne out in the completed study, Dr. Jacks and his team believe that the procedure may be further developed into a useful therapeutic technique that can result in lasting speech changes.

Visit www.med.unc.edu/ahs/ndss for more information about admissions, faculty, and the curriculum.

The FAOTA designation is awarded to occupational therapist members of AOTA who have used their knowledge and expertise to make significant contributions to the continuing education and professional development of members of the Association.  Jennifer (Jenny) Womack, MS, MA, OTR/L, SCDCM, is an associate professor in the OS/OT division and the MSOT Admissions Coordinator.

UNC Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy faculty, alumni, and students at the 2012 American Occupational Therapy Association Conference in April. From left, Lillian Parrish, Katherine Cox, Tim Holmes (UNC Hospital), Lauren DeMoss, Wendy Healy, Sue Coppola, Jenny Womack, Grace Baranek, Virginia Dickie, Allison Calhoun, Ruth Humphry, David Benthall, Jenny Thompson, Bridgette McDougal, and Kacie Brewer.