Surrey Walton, Assistant Director
at scientific conferences, and accepted invitations to speak at educational forums.
the program’s visibility and competitiveness brought a spotlight to our efforts and made others want to work with us.”
“There isn’t another college of pharmacy in the nation that has the DEcIDE Center grant or CERT, let alone both,” Bauman says.
The momentum accelerated in September 2005 when the CPR was awarded DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions about Effectiveness) Center status. Among 13 centers in the nation to receive the designation from the Agency for Health-care Research and Quality (AHRQ), including top-tier universities such as Harvard and Johns Hopkins, the CPR was the Midwest’s lone DEcIDE Network Center representative.
The following year, the UIC College of Pharmacy landed another AHRQ honor when it was awarded a CERT (Centers for Research and Education on Therapeutics) grant. Led by Bruce Lambert, professor of pharmacy administration, the CERT involved many of CPR’s faculty, and it intensified the College’s research and educational efforts on safe, effective drug use.
The CPR gained another key affiliation in 2006 when it joined the UIC Institute for Health Research and Policy (IHRP), a consortium of UIC’s best research centers. Aligning with the IHRP armed the CPR with access to important research infrastructure and jump started the center’s on-campus reputation.
“DEcIDE put us on the map,” says Schumock, who served as the grant’s principal investigator. “Not only did it position the center to do cutting-edge work, but
With the DEcIDE Center recognition, and with CERT now under its belt, the CPR and the College of Pharmacy rose to a class all their own.
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– Summer 2012 – Catalyst
“We quickly became recognized on campus as one of the places where the best health outcomes research takes place,” Schumock says.