The Texas A&M Health Science Center (HSC) School of Rural Public Health has received a five-year award of nearly $5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish one of 14 nationwide Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Centers (PERLC).
Barbara Quiram, Ph.D., professor at the HSC-School of Rural Public Health and director of the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness, is principal investigator and will lead the project. First-year funding is $937,657.
The three Texas schools of public health – HSC-School of Rural Public Health, The University of Texas School of Public Health, and the University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health – have formed a collaborative called the Training and Education Collaborative System-Preparedness Emergency Response Learning Center (TECS-PERLC) to execute project activities.
Key partners at the schools are James Langabeer, II, Ph.D., Ed.D., M.B.A., associate professor at The University of Texas School of Public Health and director of the Center for Emergency Preparedness at the School and Nuha Lackan, Ph.D., assistant professor of Health Management and Policy at The University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health.
Other TECS-PERLC partners include the Texas Department of State Health Services, South Dakota Department of Health, South Dakota Office of Emergency Management and the New Hampshire Division of Public Health Services. The learning centers will serve in a national capacity for preparedness and response training and education needs of the U.S. public health work force.
“By establishing a collaborative that involves Texas, South Dakota and New Hampshire and all the populations within each respective state, we will be able to reach both urban and rural populations as well as tribal, Spanish-speaking, community health workers and other unique populations,” Dr. Quiram said. “Further, we will be able to bring our specialty experience and expertise to the national PERLC network.”
On October 1st, 2010 the NSF-supported Center for Health Organization Transformation (CHOT) hosted the second annual CHOT mid-year meeting at the School of Rural Public Health. The meeting supports the CHOT mission of advancing transformation in health systems (especially in hospitals, clinics, and physician groups) through cooperative, applied research. The Texas A&M CHOT team connected via video conference to its current university partners at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and (soon to be partner) Pennsylvania State University. Representatives from over a dozen of CHOT’s health system members joined with faculty and graduate students at these sites to discuss current projects. Many of these representatives are referred to as CHOT site investigators who participate in the research design, publications, the funding of new grant proposals, and additional research at those member sites, thus creating very stimulating research environments.
On October 5th, several Health Policy and Management (HPM) alumni returned to campus for an hour long discussion panel with current students. The panel shared their experiences since graduation, lessons learned while on the job, their career path and current position, the daily duties of their positions, and how the HPM program helped them achieve their goals. First and second year students had an opportunity at the end to ask questions and meet the alumni. Nina Williams-Brink (’09), Michael Kogan (’09), Jorge Leal (’08), J. Warren Robicheaux (’05), Kelli Cook (’09), Lily Ricketts (’10), Jessica Howe (’10), and Brett Kirkman (’09) were the alumni in attendance.
On October 19th, the HPM department team of Ritu Patel (2nd year MHA student, team captain), Keela Jackson (2nd year MHA student) and Perry Heard (1st year MHA student) competed in the 15th Annual Everett V. Fox Case Competition in Orlando, Florida, sponsored by the National Association of Health Services Executives Conference (NAHSE) in Memphis, TN.