We are saddened to report that a great friend to our school, Mr. Eugene “Gene” McMahan, has passed away. He was 92 years old.
Gene was an extraordinary, generous person. For 25 consecutive years, he donated a full, in-state tuition scholarship to a pharmacy student in memory of his daughter and CU Pharmacy alumna Teresa McMahan-Shulkin, beginning at a time when in-state tuition was approximately $4,000 and continuing through last year when in-state tuition was nearly $31,000.
The University of Colorado Center for Pharmaceutical Value (PValue) has been established with a Value Assessment Center of Excellence Award from the PhRMA Foundation.
The foundation grant of $500,000 was awarded to Jonathan Campbell, PhD, R. Brett McQueen, PhD, and Melanie Whittington, PhD, who have primary faculty appointments in the field of Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research with the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
PValue will be a center of excellence within the D2V initiative, a Transformational Research Funding project supported by the Dean's Office of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. D2V will support PValue through a matching award of $500,000. Additional D2V support will include peer review, shared professional research assistance, project management expertise, and institutional accountability. The total award will be allocated over three years to establish PValue initiatives.
Sheldon “Shelly” E. Steinhauser knows the value of pharmacy – it was instilled in him during his childhood. His father, an immigrant, was a Navy doctor and, later, a neighborhood physician who worked closely with a trusted community pharmacist.
“My father wouldn’t make a key decision about prescribing drugs for his patients without consulting the pharmacist,” said Shelly. “Today, people are just as likely to turn to pharmacists whenever they have questions about prescription drugs and other health aids. They’re critical to our health care system.”
Coloradans are concerned about prescription drug abuse and support increased state funding for initiatives to address the epidemic, according to a survey commissioned by the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention to measure the public’s awareness of the opioid crisis.
More than half of the survey’s 1,400 respondents (57 percent) thought there was a problem with people in their community misusing prescription medication such as opioids, and 57 percent said they had heard or seen a message about prescription drug abuse being a problem in Colorado. Many of those surveyed had a personal connection to the crisis, as 37 percent said they knew someone who was or had been addicted to prescription medication.
The ALSAM Foundation, a generous long-time donor to the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SSPPS), has provided $2M of funding for collaborative grants between the SSPPS and the BioFrontiers Institute. This donation supports the Therapeutic Innovation Grants Program that allows the SSPPS on the Anschutz Medical Campus to join forces with the BioFrontiers Institute on the Boulder Campus to encourage faculty collaboration in the development of innovative projects that will advance the health and wellness of people in our communities and around the globe.
The Colorado Sun
March 18, 2024
“Everybody always says, ‘This is so cool, it’s the future of medicine,’” said Dr. Christina Aquilante, the director of pharmacogenomics at the Center for Personalized Medicine. “It’s not the future. It’s the now. It’s happening.”
NBC News
March 18, 2024
Dr. Robert Page, PharmD, appears on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt to discuss cannabis use and heart problems.
AARP
February 22, 2024
What’s the best over-the-counter pain medication? It depends on what hurts — and why. “If you can target the pain with a medication that treats the underlying cause, the pain relief will be better,” says Sunny Linnebur, PharmD.
Medscape
February 13, 2024
Adults using medical cannabis for chronic pain, especially those with cancer or cardiometabolic disease, have a slightly elevated risk of developing arrhythmia, according to an editorial by Robert Page, PharmD.
Caren Henderson
