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  • spac podium and poster presentation winners

    Students Ruchira Mahashabde, Olajumoke Olateju, Vaishnavi Tata and Nabin Poudel are congratulated for their presentation awards by SPAC Awards Committee members Douglas Thornton, Susan Abughosh and Hua Chen.

  • e-poster session presenters and attendees

    SPAC 2022 set a new record for the most submitted abstracts in the conference's history as well as the first time e-poster format was used for presentation sessions.

  • spac drug misuse panelists

    Pictured with UHCOP's Rajender Aparasu are Prescription Drug Misuse Panelists Bradley Martin from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Sujith Ramachandran from the University of Mississippi, Lindsey Hohmann from Auburn University and Douglas Thornton from UHCOP.

  • spac keynote speaker and committee members

    UHCOP Department of Pharmaceutical Health Outcomes and Policy faculty members are pictured with SPAC 2022 keynote speaker Elisabeth Uphoff Kato from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

  • phop students and faculty make uh cougars sign

    Pharmaceutical Health Outcomes and Policy faculty members and students give the "Shasta paw" sign at the SPAC 2022 dinner.

SPAC-tacular Showing 

4 Student Researchers Recognized for Podium, Poster Presentations at UHCOP-hosted Southern Pharmacy Administration Conference

July 1 — Four student researchers were recognized with poster and podium presentation awards for research excellence at the 2022 Southern Pharmacy Administration Conference (SPAC) June 24-26 on the UH campus.

Organized by southern/southeastern colleges and universities since 1985, SPAC meetings focus on sharing and discussing trends and challenges in the areas of social and administrative sciences (SAS) and health economics and outcomes research (HEOR).

Co-hosted by UHCOP's Department of Pharmaceutical Health Outcomes and Policy (PHOP) and the Prescription Drug Misuse Education and Research (PREMIER) Center, this year's event drew 95 faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers from 10 institutions across the southern U.S. Sponsors for SPAC 2022 included ISPOR, the Research in Social and Administration Pharmacy (RSAP) journal, and TriNetX.

"It was exciting to host the SPAC 2022 in-person after having to cancel our original plan of hosting the event here in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Rajender R. Aparasu, Ph.D., FAPhA, Mustafa and Sanober Lokhandwala Endowed Professor and PHOP department chair. "SPAC has always been a great opportunity to engage with longtime colleagues and peers as well as up-and-coming researchers, where we can share and learn from each other in so many ways that help us all become better researchers in the interest of improving health outcomes."

More than 40 abstracts were presented by students, residents and postdoctoral fellows, with the majority of the projects due to be published in an upcoming issue of RSAP. In addition to setting a new conference record for the number of submitted abstracts, SPAC 2022 also featured e-poster presentation sessions for the first time.

Among the presenters, four students were recognized for excellence in poster and podium presentations:

  • Best Poster – Nabin Poudel from Auburn University Harrison College of Pharmacy (UA HCOP) for "Impact of New Product Entry on the Price Trends of Existing Disease-Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs" and Vaishnavi Tata from UHCOP for "Physician Perspectives on Risk Mitigation Strategies for Prescribing Opioids: A Thematic Analysis of National Survey";
  • Best Podium – Ruchira Mahashabde from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Pharmacy for "First-line immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment in non-small cell lung cancer with brain metastases" and Olajumoke Olateju from UHCOP for "Patterns in Immunotherapy Utilization for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Pre- and Post-FDA Approval."

In addition to the poster and podium sessions, the event featured:

  • A keynote address on "Getting Evidence into Practice: Lessons from the Opioid Epidemic" by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Medical Officer Elisabeth Uphoff Kato, M.D., MRP;
  • A workshop on "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Health Outcomes Research" by the Institute for Analytics USA Founder/Managing Director Nethra Sambamoorthi, Ph.D., and the University of North Texas Professor and Associate Dean Usha Sambamoorthi, Ph.D.; and
  • An expert panel on "Prescription Drug Misuse" with UA HCOP Assistant Professor Lindsey Hohmann, Pharm.D., Ph.D., UAMS College of Pharmacy Professor Bradley C. Martin, Pharm.D., Ph.D., University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy Assistant Professor Sujith Ramachandran, Ph.D., and UHCOP Assistant Professor/The PREMIER Center Director J. Douglas Thornton, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
The event was co-chaired by PHOP faculty members Susan M. Abughosh, Ph.D., and Thornton.