News and Highlights - Health Outcomes

Dr. Anton Avanceña joined the Health Outcomes Division in August 2022

The Health Outcomes Division would like to welcome Anton L.V. Avanceña, Ph.D. 

Dr. Anton Avanceña (he, him) is a decision scientist and health policy researcher who studies how efficiency and equity in health can be improved. His main area of research involves understanding the health, economic, and social consequences of alcohol misuse and evaluating treatments, pharmacotherapies, and population-level interventions that reduce the burden of alcohol use. Dr. Avanceña has conducted and continues to do research in other clinical areas such as pediatrics, mental and behavioral health, and infectious diseases.

View Dr. Avanceña's full profile

Dr. Jamie Barner was named recipient of the AACP Social and Administrative Sciences Sustained Scholarship Award

Criteria for the award include demonstrated evidence of sustained contribution to the literature over at least a 15-year period in the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, and/or teaching and learning and having played a meaningful role in mentoring student pharmacists, post-graduate trainees, and/or practicing pharmacists to engage in scholarship within their field of study.

Lisette Peña received the UT-COP Staff Excellence Award

Only 4 individuals in the College receive this award annually.

Criteria for the award include: contributed to and demonstrated a commitment to the college’s core values and goals, significantly improved customer service or increased customer satisfaction, significantly improved a work process or system or has significantly increased the efficiency of an operation or unit, demonstrated an exceptional ability to foster collaboration, communication and cooperation among colleagues and university constituents, and has sustained performance record at a level above and beyond normal job expectations.

Dr. Leticia “Tish” Moczygemba will serve as the Chair of the AACP Social and Administrative Sciences Section

Dr. Moczygemba will uphold the mission to “advance social and administrative sciences in the education, research, practice, and service missions of pharmacy schools with the goal of improving the health of populations.” She will lead efforts to: “provide a forum for disciplinary and interprofessional dialogue and cooperative effort among section members and stakeholders; advance the teaching of social and administrative sciences in pharmacy schools across the world; examine social and administrative sciences curricula in member colleges and schools of the Association for the purpose of improving content; encourage research in pharmaceutical education and curricular innovations; and make recommendations to the Association in matters affecting social and administrative sciences in member colleges.” 

Dr. Chanhyun Park received the AIM-AHEAD Research Fellowship for a machine learning project

Dr. Park's project is titled "Developing prediction models for cardiovascular disease risk among women with breast cancer: focus on race/ethnicity.

The National Institutes of Health AIM-AHEAD (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity) program has established mutually beneficial, coordinated, and trusted partnerships to enhance the participation and representation of researchers and communities currently underrepresented in the development of AI/ML models and to improve the capabilities of this emerging technology, beginning with electronic health records (EHR) and extending to other diverse data to address health disparities and inequities.

Dr. Carolyn Brown Awarded grant for research to inform design of Texas Cares program

Dr. Brown was recently awarded a research grant from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to assess patient medication needs and the potential social and financial barriers to accessing those medications within a population of uninsured and underinsured Texans. Recently passed legislation directs the Texas HHSC to establish the Texas Cares prescription program to make medications more affordable for the uninsured and underinsured. Dr. Brown along with other TXCORE researchers (Dr. Johnsrud and Dr. Richards) are conducting this research to inform the design of the Texas Cares program. This qualitative research study will employ several focus groups with uninsured and underinsured patients, as well as healthcare providers who care for uninsured and underinsured patients, to explore patient experiences surrounding access to medications. Based on findings from our study, we will provide recommendations to the Texas Cares implementation team to support the design of the prescription drug savings program.