Climate Change and Health: What? So What? Now What?
An Interdisciplinary and Interactive Discussion to Celebrate National Public Health Week
 
Thursday, April 10th, 2008, 2:50-4:30 PM, 10 Behrakis

Featured panelists:
Sarah Zaphiris, Policy Advisor to Boston Mayor, Thomas Menino
Daniel Douglass, PhD, Glacial Geologist, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Daniel Faber, PhD, Environmental Justice Research Collaborative, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Shan Mohammed, MD, MPH, Director, Master of Public Health Program in Urban Health,
Department of Health Sciences

Refreshments provided

Sponsored by:
MPH Program in Urban Health
Health Science Society
Students for Environmental Action (SEA)
Husky Energy Action Team (HEAT)

Collaborating to Celebrate Nursing Research, Practice and Education
Saturday, April 26, 2008, 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM, Boston Harbor Hotel

The School of Nursing, NU Nursing Alumni Society and the Gamma Epsilon Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International are co-sponsoring a forum for the benefit of the local nursing research community, preceptors and clinical instructors. The keynote, "Building a Healthy Community Using Community-Based Participatory Research," will be given by Miyong Kim, PhD, RN, FAAN, of Johns Hopkins University. The program also includes breakout sessions, posters, and a networking luncheon. There is no charge for the program, but registration is limited. For more information, contact m.emerson@neu.edu. 

Bouve Researcher's Web-based Tools to Improve Patient Medication Adherence

One of the most prevalent challenges of delivering health services effectively is the patients’ non-adherence to the medications, which leads to gaps in service delivery and results in negative health outcomes. A cutting-edge way to improve this behavior is a patient-centered Web-based interactive tool that assesses, monitors, and intervenes specifically on medication adherence. Northeastern University’s Pharmacy Practice professor Nathaniel M. Rickles has received a grant from Innovation Group, a global solutions provider for the insurance industry, to develop adherence management tools for ensuing Web-based and call-center applications.

“Clinical experience and medical literature show that only about half of patients taking chronic medications adhere to their prescribed regimen,” said Rickles, Pharm.D., Ph.D., BCPP, Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences. “We believe that an effective way to combat this growing problem is developing effective, easy-to-use Web-based tools that help patients adhere to their medication regimen. This generous grant will enable us to create one such system and we are very excited about the opportunity.”

Rickles’ proposed project will eventually be accessible to the larger public and use a tailored, stepwise approach to actively intervene on patient medication non-adherence. The Web-based tools will be based on social, behavioral, and clinical principles shown to be effective in changing patient medication use behavior.

Following the development of an adherence screening tool, follow-up monitoring tools, and protocols for patient-centered, tailored adherence interventions, the project will continue with focus groups of consumers and health professionals who will help further shape the tools and protocols created so they are most ideal for various users of the system.  As part of the project, Rickles and his team also plan to develop instruments to assess patient satisfaction and other outcomes of using the web-based system.

Sean Teare, President of InnovationRx (a subgroup of Innovation Group), says he “expects the grant will lead to promising patient-centered tools that improve patient access to important strategies to improve their medication adherence and ultimately reduce the high healthcare costs associated with medication non-adherence.”