Catton wins Alumni Citizenship Award “The patients every day at The James inspire me,” said Kristen Catton (’92), winner of The Ohio State University Alumni Association's Robert M. Duncan Alumni Citizenship Award for 2017. “They are going through bone marrow transplants [or] have terminal illnesses and still have a smile on their face and still want to give back to the community. I want to do that. I want to help as many as I can for as long as I can.”
James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, where she helps cancer patients transition from hospital to home care. This year she also rode in her ninth Peletonia biking fundraiser to raise money for Ohio State cancer research.
Catton’s empathy for her patients is grounded in personal experience: she is a survivor of both cancer and multiple sclerosis (MS). “My main goal is to try to help others so that nobody feels alone like I did when I was first diagnosed,” she said. That diagnosis was breast cancer, 17 years ago. “I thought I was going to die. I had this 4 year old at home and a newborn infant on the way. I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’” Today, Catton considers each day a gift. She, her husband, Mark, and Katie, 16, live northeast of Columbus in Westerville, Ohio, and her son, Evan, 20, attends Ohio State. Catton had to give up being a shift nurse in 2012, when fatigue and other symptoms lead to a diagnosis of MS. In 2014, she found a way to keep giving back, as a patient care resource manager at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G.
“She has demonstrated how one person with humility, faith, love, sacrifice and perseverance can make the world a better place,” said Dr. Don Benson, Jr., a cancer researcher and physician at the James. Read more about Kristen Catton at go.osu.edu/KCatton.
Innovative PUP™ will help patients stay safe Patrick Baker (‘95) and his company Palarum have secured $3.4 million to develop and test PUP™, a healthcare innovation that could make a big impact in preventing patient falls. How it works: PUP™ will monitor patient movement through the use of a smart textile fabric enhanced with various internet technologies. “The research shows that between 700,000 and
one million people fall in a healthcare environment every year,” said Baker, who is president and CEO of Palarum, LLC. “We want to help healthcare staff with their capabilities to anticipate, detect, and more quickly respond when a “fall risk” patient may need assistance,” and gather patient data.
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