URI researchers in the fields of biomedicine, bioterrorism, pharmacy, and nursing collaborate to ensure the health of Rhode Islanders.
By Dave Lavallee ’79, M.P.A. ’87Photo by Nora Lewis
When the federal government looked to stimulate biomedical research in Rhode Island, it awarded URI’s College of Pharmacy close to $25 million because the college had managed to establish a collaborative relationship with nearly all of the state’s public and private four-year colleges.
When the Rhode Island Department of Health sought to plan a large-scale medical response to a bioterrorism attack using anthrax, it found the College of the Environment and Life Sciences ready for action. Through that college’s work with the Colleges of Nursing and Pharmacy, URI staged the largest simulated clinic in the state—and one of the largest in the region—last spring.
Whether providing the state with most of its pharmacists; educating nurses at both the undergraduate and graduate level; offering the only graduate programs in physical therapy and communicative disorders; protecting its citizens from insect-borne illnesses like Lyme disease or West Nile virus; or researching issues relating to aging, URI is involved in almost every facet of keeping Rhode Islanders healthy.
With $61.9 million in external funding for behavior change research awarded to the Cancer Prevention Research Center since 1990 and the University’s groundbreaking work on alcohol abuse prevention, URI has emerged as a global research leader.
During a recent roundtable, three URI deans discussed the University’s prominence in the health care and health sciences fields.
“About the only thing we don’t do in terms of health sciences and health care delivery is directly train new doctors,” said Environment and Life Sciences Dean Jeffrey R. Seemann. “But if you think across the spectrum of what health care delivery means, we do just about everything else. And in that sense, I would say we are a nice complement to Brown. We are positioning ourselves very, very well to deliver the entire spectrum of need to the residents of the state.”
Nursing Dean Dayle F. Joseph said what stands out at URI is the collaboration among its colleges in tackling some of health care’s most pressing problems. As an example, she pointed to last spring’s bioterrorism exercise at Keaney Gym that was headed by Thomas Mather, director of the Center for Vector Borne Disease in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences.
“The College of the Environment and Life Sciences received money for the exercise from the Rhode Island Department of Health, but it was clear that they needed people from pharmacy and from nursing to sign on,” Joseph commented. “And together we made a very strong effort that involved 1,500 people going through a bioterrorism exercise that had never been done before. We were the first school to take a stab at it. We had people from Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina, and Brown—everybody was looking to see what we were doing. Our nursing students realized how important it is to work with the pharmacy people, and it was certainly important to work with people in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences who really have an appreciation for what the whole infectious disease process can be.”
Pharmacy Dean Donald E. Letendre agreed, saying that the way to address health care issues successfully in the future is through teamwork. As an example, he cited the nearly $25 million awarded to the college in the last three years from the National Institutes of Health to stimulate biomedical research in the state. URI was awarded the grant in large part because Professor Zahir Shaikh and his colleagues brought many of the four-year colleges in the state together to conduct research in such critical areas as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the effects of toxins on reproduction.
The federal funding has spurred statewide cooperation among scientists in the fields of toxicology, pharmacology, chemistry, biology, and pathology. Letendre said that historically research efforts, education, and health care in the state have been fragmented, but now “we are all expressly committed to collaboration.”
Letendre also stressed the importance of health sciences to Rhode Island’s economic development: “I don’t think that people clearly understand how closely our success is linked to the state’s economic success. When you think about attracting certain kinds of businesses to the state, they need to have a well-educated corps of personnel. Whether it’s research, education, or health care, there is a host of needs that we serve that is lost on the general population.”
Joseph said the state also benefits from scores of URI students from the Colleges of the Environment and Life Sciences, Nursing, and Pharmacy who complete their clinical and field requirements in hospitals, health care agencies, pharmacies, and biotechnical firms. “All of us have students out in the field, and they are very visible. In Dean Seemann’s field they are out in the environment, so you will see them looking at problems relating to ticks, mosquitoes, and various other things like wastewater. Pharmacy students are out in the hospitals in a variety of settings, working in pharmacies, working in real-life situations. Nursing students are in hospitals, in the community, in nursing homes, working with patients, really doing hands on care.”
Seemann added, “It all falls under the heading of work force development, which is one critical component of what URI does to help develop the economy of Rhode Island. We help meet the demand for highly trained professionals in a variety of areas.
“Clearly the state is becoming competitive in the area of biotechnology and biomanufacturing. Companies like Amgen require highly trained people and are willing to pay for them. Right now, to a large degree, you have to go out of state to find the people to fill these very well paid jobs. One of our jobs at the University is to create programs that train people to take jobs in places like Amgen.”
Indeed, the establishment of the Biotechnology Manufacturing Training Laboratory at URI’s Feinstein Providence Campus shows how the state and private industry are supporting URI’s leadership in biomedical, biotechnical, and health sciences research. The state Human Investment Council and Amgen each provided financial support to the project, which is now up and running.
For Letendre and his colleagues, it all comes back to the importance of collaboration: “What we are trying to do is introduce at a very early level in students’ education the importance of collaboration. Taking care of a patient is a team responsibility, not any one individual’s responsibility. We all have to work together because we each bring an important dimension to the patient’s care.”
Dave Lavallee is the assistant director of URI’s Department of Communications.
