November 27, 2019
Dr. Alan Blum, professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in Family Medicine for the College of Community Health Sciences, authored “Amidst Treatment Breakthroughs, Also Strive to Prevent,” published in the October 2019 issue of Oncology. The perspective piece focuses on the importance of prevention in regard to cancer and the need for doctors to speak directly to patients about the high risk of cancer from cigarette smoking. Blum is also founding director of The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.
Dr. Pamela Payne-Foster, professor of community medicine and population health for the College of Community Health Sciences, is serving as a faculty mentor for the American Heart Association’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Scholars Program. Payne-Foster, who is also a preventive medicine and public health physician, is mentoring a student from Stillman College in Tuscaloosa who plans to attend medical school and who is interested in gynecology and anesthesiology. The scholars traveled to Philadelphia in November to attend an American Heart Association conference focused on cardiovascular disease and will prepare a poster presentation for a symposium in the spring.
Dr. Mercedes Morales-Aleman, assistant professor of community medicine and population health for the College of Community Health Sciences and the Institute for Rural Health Research, presented her study, “Expanding Barriers to Healthcare Service Access among Latinos/as/x in Alabama with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analyses,” at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in early November. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, found that a significant portion of Latinos in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, face barriers to health care access due to distance from providers and a lack of public transportation.
Dr. Raheem Paxton, associate professor of community medicine and population health the the College of Community Health Sciences, co-authored: “Item-Level Psychometrics of a Brief Self-Reported Memory Problem Screening Measure in Breast Cancer Survivors,” accepted for publication in Aca Oncologica; “Spiritual Health Locus of Control and Life Satisfaction among African American Breast Cancer Survivors,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology; and “The Effects of Exercise on Insulin, Glucose, IGF-axis and CRP in Cancer Survivors: Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression of Randomized Controlled Trials,” accepted for publication in European Journal of Cancer Care.
Dr. Cecil Robinson, associate professor and director of Learning Resources and Evaluation for the College of Community Health Sciences, was invited by the Society for Teachers of Family Medicine to present a national webinar December 3 titled “Teach Effective Learning Strategies to Your Students: A Best-of-the-Conference Webinar.” The presentation will explain effective learning strategies and demonstrate how faculty can employ the science of learning in their teaching. In addition, Robinson will serve in 2020 as a facilitator for Faculty Learning Communities at The University of Alabama. The communities will provide opportunities for faculty and staff to engage in projects that increase student success. The three communities for 2020 are: Improve Student Learning – The S13 Project; Communicating about Race and Diversity; and Engineering Education Research – Improving STEM Education and Engineering Formation.
Dr. Jimmy Robinson, professor of family medicine and endowed chair of Sports Medicine for the College of Community Health Sciences, was selected as a Team Physician for the USA team competing in January 2020 at the Youth Olympic Games in Lausanne, Switzerland. In addition, Robinson completed the International Olympic Committee’s Drugs in Sports, a six-month course certifying him to manage Olympic and international athletes and to serve as a resource for the IOC and athletes on issues of drug use and drug testing. Robinson, a practicing sports medicine physician at University Medical Center, which CCHS operates, also directs the College’s sports medicine fellowship.
