OhioPACE Awards Benefit Continuing Medical Education; UC College of Pharmacy Stands Out

CINCINNATI—The Ohio Partnership for Adherence through Collaborative Education (OhioPACE) distributed a total of $340,000 in grants to 13 research and education projects across Ohio in 2012.

OhioPACE is a coalition of continuing medical education offices from the seven Ohio colleges of medicine, including the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine, which oversees the program.

"The mandate was that there had to be a health care provider education aspect to every grant awarded,” said UC’s Barbara Speer, associate director at the UC College of Medicine’s Center for Continuous Professional Development within the medical college’s continuing medical education department.

OhioPACE, Speer says, was established in 2010 with the financial support of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and has awarded $615,000 in grants to date: in 2011, nine grants up to $75,000 each, and 13 grants with a cap of $50,000 each in 2012.

How the grant process works, she says, is that OhioPACE invites organizations that provide education for health care professionals to submit applications for grants to address patient adherence within Ohio. Projects should focus on integrating adherence education into continuing professional development education. Interprofessional education is encouraged, but not mandatory.

While there were no awards to UC projects in 2011, faculty from UC’s James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy received three out of 13 of the grants in 2012 and the Cincinnati Foundation for Biomedical Research and Education (conducted at the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center), was also a 2012 recipient.

UC’s Department of Continuing Medical Education was recognized for its participation in OhioPACE at the 2012 annual conference of the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEHP), held Jan. 21–24 in Orlando, Fla.

The department received the Alliance’s Award for Innovation in Continuing Professional Development. Accepting the award for UC were Speer and associate dean for continuous professional development and professor emeritus Jack Kues, PhD, as well as continuing medical education director Susan Tyler, MEd.

Separately, Kues received a President’s Award at the conference. Kues is an ACEHP fellow, serves on the alliance’s Board of Directors and is president-elect of the organization. Tyler was named an ACEHP Fellow and also received a President’s Award.