Associate Professor Tim Bugni, in the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy's Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, works on the frontline of antibiotic and anti-cancer drug discovery. Learn more about Bugni's reseach as this week's Friday faculty feature! https://bit.ly/2xaUG6N #FacesOfBadgerPharm

The final product of a project led by alumnus Laurel Legenza (PharmD '13) will allow physicians and other health care providers to quickly look up the patterns of resistance in the community where their patient lives—which will help them select the right antibiotic the first time.

Alzheimer's disease affects about 5 million Americans, but its development and progression are still poorly understood. With a new $2.4 million R01 grant from the National Institute on Aging - NIH, UW–Madison School of Pharmacy Professor Lingjun Li and collaborators at the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center are working to develop and deploy a suite of powerful tools to discover clinically relevant biomarkers to drive better early detection, diagnosis and, potentially, treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. http://bit.ly/2IrN8gP

The Centers for Disease Control reports that about 50% of U.S. patients stop taking their prescriptions within 1 year and, not surprisingly, poor adherence is linked to poor patient outcomes. Assistant Professor Olayinka Shiyanbola looks to improve medication adherence to boost patient outcomes in her award-winning paper. http://bit.ly/2KN8GFA

The UW–Madison School of Pharmacy is making sure that our student pharmacists are prepared to practice at the top of their license. Wisconsin pharmacists can now administer non-vaccine medication injections, and this medication administration training made sure that our incoming fourth-year PharmD class will be able to take this essential skill with them on their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience clerkships. The School's Division of Pharmacy Professional Development also offers similar training for pharmacists statewide: http://bit.ly/2GFZ2qZ

Science is stronger when it's diverse, says Professor Christine Sorkness, in the School's Pharmacy Practice Division. Leveraging researchers' disparate backgrounds, disciplines, and professions leads to more impactful results. That's why she and others collaborated with the NIH Diversity Program Consortium to create the National Research Mentoring Network -NRMN, a network of biomedical research mentors focused on enhancing diversity through mentorship. http://bit.ly/2GztsKA

Professor Betty Chewning, of the School's Social and Administrative Sciences Division, is fighting fall risk among older adults through a specially designed tai chi program, which just won funding and implementation support through the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research's new Community-Academic Partnerships Evidence to Implementation program! With this award, Chewning and her partners at the Wisconsin Institute for Healthy Aging and the Aging and Disability Resource Center will develop plans for expansion.

The UW-Madison CeO Program honored Associate Professor Denise Walbrandt Pigarelli with the 2018 Dr. Brenda Pfaehler Award of Excellence, which recognizes her devotion to equal opportunity and equity in education! She was nominated for this award by an undergraduate student she has been mentoring for years who has recently been accepted into the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy. Our faculty are devoted to making a difference in our students' lives. http://bit.ly/2IGf9lr

UW–Madison School of Pharmacy's PharmD students are making a difference abroad! This interprofessional internship in Belize is just one of many international opportunities available to our student pharmacists: https://bit.ly/2IhoQGU

"I love to help our student pharmacists and graduate students achieve their goals. It’s a very good day when I feel I’ve reinforced a student’s confidence and skills to accomplish uniquely what each set out to do," says Professor Betty Chewning, in the School's Social and Administrative Sciences Division. "They each in their own way are change agents for improving care, its delivery, and patients’ sense of control about their health." Chewning, this week's Friday faculty feature, says she can't imagine a better job for her than working with our PharmD and graduate students, solving puzzles about patient perspectives and communication, and creating communities within the School and beyond. http://bit.ly/2KxRHXL #FacesOfBadgerPharm

Have you gotten to tell your life story? Meg Wise, researcher in the School of Pharmacy's Sonderegger Research Center, explores resilience in advanced cancer—what she calls “mortal time.” In a study recently published with the Journal of Palliative Medicine, she found that delivering an edited life and cancer story elicited by a phone conversation measurably enhances the sense of peace in the face of looming death. http://bit.ly/2uKZ3EB

We've already shared a few behind-the-scenes looks at our upcoming video series about the different ways pharmacists are involved on the health care team. Our latest is an ambulatory pharmacist, Julie Bartell (PharmD '06), clinical pharmacotherapist and pharmacy residency program director at Monroe Clinic. What's pharmacotherapy? It's the treatment of disease or other illness through pharmaceutical medications—as distinct from physical therapy, surgery, or other therapies—which requires in-depth knowledge and close patient communication.