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 97.

“For 48 years, Joy was the heart of the UW School of Pharmacy,” said SOP Professor and Dean Sean Sullivan. “Everyone who... Read more...

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, which compared different antihypertensive sub-classes in their association with incidence of dementia using data fr... Read more...

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 the American Geriatrics Society to summarize literature on whether fall risk-increasing drug use is reduced follo... Read more...

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 from the University of Washington’s Departments of Pharmacy and Neurology adapted a model of chronic s... Read more...

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 Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. In this paper, investigators from the University of Washington’s Departments of... Read more...

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 in August at the ASCP national office in Alexandria, VA. Her focus will be on professional association leadership and education... Read more...

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 was on Medication Related Problems in People Living with Dementia. He has hit the ground running and has started several research p... Read more...

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 love of chemistry, which ultimately steered her into the pharmacy field. (READ MORE)

“My love of the profession has grown exponenti... Read more...

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 with their providers and pharmacies, the Plein Center for Geriatric Pharmacy Research, Education and Outreach is developing a new ... Read more...

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 in August at the ASCP national office in Alexandria, VA. Her focus will be on professional association leadership and education... Read more...

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 get your personalized diet plan. But when you get there, you discover that the nutritionists are all busy filling customers’ carts with ... Read more...

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 pharmacist to receive the grant, which is typically awarded to physician-investigators. This initiative is focused on clinic... Read more...

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 team and in the community. Thanks to our work, in addition to improved care at hospitals and clinics, busy people can just pop ... Read more...

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 risk.

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are medicines commonly prescribed to treat acid-related digestive problems... Read more...

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 a half years, he has been a Geriatrics Pharmacy Preceptor for our Plein Geriatric Certificate students. Jason works in Skilled Nursing Facilit... Read more...

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 chose to specialize in geriatrics because of the aging population and, “my awesome relationship with my grandparents. I like old people!... Read more...

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 with epilepsy and those with comorbid seizures associated with a... Read more...

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 early in her career during her practice as a registered pharmacist in New Zealand. “I felt overwhel... Read more...

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 Futures Grants program. Her research focused on the impact central nervous system (CNS)-active medications ... Read more...

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 work!

Emily Archer

Kyle Bigham

Mackenzie Bredereck

Alex Chang

Jennifer Durand

Justin Fernando

Michael Fish... Read more...

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 from laboratory findings to treatment of disease and maintenance of health and well-being of communi... Read more...

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 providers about marijuana use: Is it safe? How much to use? Where to buy?

Now, a group of University of Washington professors has go... Read more...

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 of Washington, received more than $230,000 from the National Institutes of Health to measure the current and future costs of care for people w... Read more...

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 and related dementias (ADRD).
At press time, there are no known drugs that can prevent or delay the onset or progression of ... Read more...

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 ill or have suppressed immune systems.

As alarming reports about how virulent last year’s virus was, Era Living, a top-rated group of local s... Read more...

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 and have been a preceptor in all my roles as a pharmacist, specifically as a Geriatric Pharmacy Preceptor for 4 years,"... Read more...

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 of the UW School of Pharmacy, Cara said she chose to pursue the Plein Certificate in Geriatric Pharmacy in 2011 ... Read more...

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 for Education, Plein Center for Geriatric Pharmacy Research, Education and Outreach at the UW School of ... Read more...

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 the research of the Plein Center for Geriatric Pharmacy has some answers.
Experts know there are healthy habits that will make a diffe... Read more...

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, “Definition of fall risk-increasing drugs in the literature: Challenges and implications.” We know falls in olde... Read more...

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 risk.

Despite the risks, little is known about how genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease may affect a per... Read more...

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 Older Adults (STOP-FALLS),” will identify medication safety improvements to reduce fall-related injuries an... Read more...