News

Congratulations to School of Pharmacy and Plein Center Research Associate Professor Melissa Barker-Haliski and Medicinal Chemistry post-doc Klarissa Jackson, ’13, who have both been named 2023 American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Award…

The Plein Center is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of the Baxter Student Scholarship: Amanda Bryan, Garbo Grossman, Brian Lee, and Nghi Nguyen. Each recipient will be awarded $500 to put towards their Plein…

Michelle Nguyen (PharmD Candidate 2023) and Shelly Gray presented a poster (co-authored by Abby Winter, Assistant Director for Outreach for the Plein Center) at the ASCP Annual Meeting entitled “Understanding Older Peoples’ Knowledge, Perceptions, and…

Ottersen’s pharmacy is a small, independent, closed-door, long-term care pharmacy on-site at Foss Home and Village, an assisted living and skilled nursing facility in the Bitter Lake neighborhood of Seattle. Precepted primarily by Sonya Kousoum,…

Four second-year pharmacy students have been selected to receive a Baxter Scholarship toward their fee for the Plein Certificate in Geriatric Pharmacy. The Plein Center Leadership Team was inspired by the motivation and vision of the scholarship recipients. Each scholarship winner shared compelling personal stories of experiences that inspired them to pursue a career in geriatric pharmacy. A link between all of them is a desire to strengthen relationships with – and uphold dignity and agency to – older adults.

For Louise Baxter, M.D., the roots of health care and a commitment to geriatrics truly run deep.

In 2011, Louise established the McPhee Geriatric Nursing Support Fund at the UW to honor her mother Sally, who, along with several relatives, devoted her life to a career in nursing. A few years later, Louise decided that a parallel fund to support geriatric pharmacy would be a perfect complement, so in tribute to her late father, UWSOP alum Dean Baxter ’58, she established the Dean Baxter Endowed Support Fund in Geriatric Pharmacy in 2017. The fund supports professional pharmacy students and practicing pharmacists seeking a Plein Certificate in Geriatric Pharmacy.

Congratulations to Professor and Plein Endowed Director of the Plein Center Shelly Gray, who was recently named winner of the 2021 George F. Archambault award by the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP). This is the Society’s highest…

A new video chronicles the Plein Center’s work and history.

Joy (Bickmore) Plein, ’51, ’57, a beloved UW School of Pharmacy colleague, mentor and true pioneer in the field of geriatrics, passed away peacefully at Virginia Mason Medical Center on February 19, 2021. She was…

The Pharmacy Leadership and Education Institute has named UWSOP’s Jennifer Bacci the 2021 recipient of the Albert B. Prescott Pharmacy Leadership Award. Dr. Bacci is recognized for her outstanding leadership example in the Academia-CPESN Transformation…

Plein Center Assistant Director, Zach Marcum, PharmD, PhD, served as co-first author on a paper published in Neurology, along with Plein Center Director, Shelly Gray, PharmD, MS, and Plein Center faculty member, Douglas Barthold, PhD,…

Plein Center postdoctoral fellow alumna, Laura Hart, PharmD, MS, along with Plein Center Director, Shelly Gray, Pharm D, MS, and Plein Center Assistant Director, Zach Marcum, PharmD, PhD, published a systematic review in the Journal of…

Plein Center faculty member, Melissa Barker-Haliski, PhD, was senior author on a paper published in Neurobiology of Disease studying the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease genes and seizures in a mouse model. In this paper, investigators…

Plein Center faculty member, Abhi Nath, PhD, was a corresponding author on a paper published in PNAS examining small heat shock proteins, which play a vital role in preventing protein aggregation that can otherwise lead to…

Lena Chaitesipaseut, a Plein Scholar and class of 2021 PharmD-MBA student, was recently awarded a $4,000 scholarship from the UWRA. In addition to this prestigious honor, Lena has been selected to complete an APPE rotation…

Tesfahun Eshetie, PhD, MScClinPharm, began a 2-year fellowship with the Plein Center as of July 1, 2020. He received his PhD from the University of South Australia, School of Medical Sciences and his dissertation topic…

For Abby Winter, the Plein Center’s new Assistant Director of Outreach, a passion for health care comes honestly. In addition to her mother being a retired registered nurse, the Chicago native has had a lifelong…

In an age of social distancing, ensuring our older adults have safe, convenient access to the medications they need is essential. In an effort to help educate seniors on best practices to consider when communicating…

Lena Chaitesipaseut, a Plein Scholar and class of 2021 PharmD-MBA student, was recently awarded a $4,000 scholarship from the UWRA. In addition to this prestigious honor, Lena has been selected to complete an APPE rotation…

Imagine that your local grocery store announced they would start employing several nutritionists, each of whom had years of training to help people improve their diets and health. Excited, you go to the store to…

Zachary Marcum, PhD, PharmD was recently awarded the Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award (K76) from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and The John A. Hartford Foundation. Notably, Zach is the first…

Never doubt the profound impact that our faculty and alumni have had on health care nationwide through decades of advocacy for increased access to patient care. “Pharmacists are the medication experts on the health care…

Congratulations to Plein Center for Geriatric Pharmacy Director Shelly Gray who received the The American Geriatrics Society Editor’s Choice Award for her paper that showed Protein Pump Inhibitors (PPI) are not linked to higher dementia…

Jason Rusk, PharmD, BCGP, has been a UWSOP Preceptor for many years. Earlier in his career (2010-2013), he precepted UW students while working in community pharmacy at Bartell Drugs. And for the past two and…

Grant Walker, PharmD, ’10, is a pharmacist at Mercury Pharmacy Services where he staffs the pharmacy and works as a consultant. He earned his Plein Certificate in Geriatric Pharmacy in 2010 Grant told us he…

Melissa is a Research Assistant Professor specializing in translational epilepsy research. She develops and implements preclinical models to support the early evaluation of novel investigational pharmacotherapies for epilepsy in discrete patient populations, including elderly patients…

Nagham earned her BSPharm, Postgraduate Certificate in Research Pharmacy, and PhD at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Her dissertation focused on deprescribing in older New Zealanders. Nagham began geriatric pharmacy as a specialty…

While competing  the postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric pharmacy here at the UWSOP, alumna Laura Hart, PharmD, MS, BCPS, BCGP,’14, ’17, was awarded a research grant by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Research Institute…

We are so proud to celebrate this year’s class of Plein Geriatric Pharmacy Certificate graduates! Everyone was recognized at a special ceremony on Friday, July 14, 2019. Congratulations to the graduates on all their hard…

The goal of the Plein Student Scholarship is to foster student interest in geriatrics-related research.  Research areas may include but are not limited to, translational research projects that move evidence-based, aging research along the continuum…

Marijuana use among older adults has soared in recent years despite little being known about the effectiveness and safety of the drug in people 65 and older. That’s resulted in more seniors asking health care…

Team seeks to improve the projections of the future burden of the disease. Anirban Basu, director of the CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, and professor in the schools of Pharmacy and Public Health at the University…

The newest researcher in The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, Doug Barthold is taking a couple of approaches that use data and economic modeling to find potential treatments and trends in care of people with Alzheimer’s disease…

Last year’s flu season was one of the worst in nearly a decade. The people most susceptible to the flu are our most vulnerable people: infants and children, older adults, and people who are chronically…

Neris M. Palunas, PharmD, BCGP, is a Consultant Pharmacist with Consonus Pharmacy, serving people in the Seattle area. Neris consults as a clinical pharmacist to senior living communities at all levels of care.  “I love teaching…

Alumna Cara McDermott, PharmD, PhD, MSc, ’11, ’12, 16, is a K12 Scholar in the UW Implementation Sciences Training Program and Acting Instructor, Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence, UW School of Medicine. A three-time alumna…

Learn the latest about the deprescribing education and outreach UWSOP faculty member Leigh Ann Mike provides to older adults and providers. Leigh Ann Mike, PharmD, is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy and Assistant Director…

The prospect of developing dementia is terrifying for most people, particularly for those with family members who have had the disease. Many wonder what they can do to prevent the onset of dementia—which is where…

Our School’s faculty and students presented two posters at the ASCP Annual Meeting, and the abstracts are in the October issue of The Consultant Pharmacist. Julia Yunkyung, Laura Hart, and Shelly Gray presented a poster titled,…

People with Alzheimer’s disease can have up to an 87-fold increased risk of seizures. Patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s have the highest risk for seizures, but even patients with  late onset Alzheimer’s disease  are at high…

UW Pharmacy’s Shelly Gray and UW Medicine’s Elizabeth Phelan are teaming up to identify ways to prevent falls in older adults. Their study, “Reducing Central Nervous System (CNS)-active Medications to Prevent Falls and Injuries in…

After all their hard work, we wanted to learn more about our Plein Geriatric Pharmacy Certificate alumni and to learn: Where are you now? Plein Geriatric Pharmacy Certificate alumna Laura Hart, PharmD, BCPS, is the Geriatric…