Drug Discovery for All
UIC researchers are partnering with community advocates to develop treatments to improve health outcomes for all populations.
Connecting Alumni and Friends to the University of Illinois Chicago
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I was motivated to contact so many prospective students because I wanted them to know how wonderful UIC had been to me when I was an undergrad.
— Karen Keesing BS ’96 Contacted more than 5,000 admitted students in 2023
Recipe for Health
How UIC physicians and professors are addressing health disparities one ingredient at a time.
BY STEVE HENDERSHOT
Drug Discovery for All
UIC researchers are partnering with community advocates to develop treatments to improve health outcomes for all populations.
BY CINDY KUZMA
From Addiction to Advocacy
UIC’s Community Outreach Intervention Projects employs local leaders for street outreach, health care services and more for people who use drugs.
BY ANTHONY JACKSON
2024 Alumni Awards
Every year the UICAA proudly recognizes a few
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CONNECTING ALUMNI AND FRIENDS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO
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Health Equity for a Better World
As I begin my second year as chancellor at University of Illinois Chicago, I find myself excited, energized and eager to continue the good work we have begun. Our mission to provide the broadest access to the highest levels of educational, research and clinical excellence is shared widely and deeply by the entire campus community. As a public R1 institution, UIC is uniquely positioned to address equity concerns and narrow health, educational and economic disparities in the communities we serve across Chicago, the state of Illinois and indeed the nation.
UIC is deeply rooted in a tradition of innovating for equity. While there is so much I could write about, in this letter I want to focus on health equity. With a research portfolio exceeding $500 million annually, UIC is a powerhouse of innovation and discovery, making profound contributions to society and significantly improving quality of life. This edition of UIC Magazine showcases many examples of how we are advancing health equity through cuttingedge research and the shared values that unite our campus community.
Our outstanding scientists have made significant contributions to the development and distribution of life-saving vaccines. UIC played a pivotal role in the development of the widely recognized shingles vaccine, Shingrix. We also opened Chicago’s first COVID-19 mass vaccination site on campus at the Credit Union 1 Arena. Additionally, in collaboration with the Chicago Department of Public Health and other city partners, UIC responded swiftly to a recent measles outbreak amongst new arrivals by mobilizing vaccines, conducting contact tracing and screening shelter residents. UIC consistently rises to the challenge.
Our approach to drug discovery provides an extraordinary example of our throughline emphasis on health equity. Academic medical centers like UIC can delve more deeply into areas that contribute to health disparities — areas that pharmaceutical companies aren’t incentivized to explore. We are singularly focused on the key molecular targets for diseases that exhibit health disparities. That’s why UIC is making investments in a Drug Discovery and Cancer Research Pavilion — a transdisciplinary setting that will propel our work to tackle health disparities and bring much needed therapies to those most vulnerable in our communities.
This issue also highlights how UIC faculty are uncovering systemic and underlying causes of poor health outcomes, particularly in underserved communities. Many academic institutions have become experts at describing health disparities; at UIC, we work to solve them.
Please spend some time exploring the many ways UIC students, faculty, staff and alumni are making significant contributions to the world around us at stories.uic.edu.
Thank you for the transformative work we are doing together.
— MARIE LYNN MIRANDA CHANCELLOR UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO
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JENNY
In February, University of Illinois Chicago Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda hosted Dr. Anthony Fauci in the inaugural edition of Chair Chats, a series connecting influential leaders and visionaries with the UIC community to discuss powerful ideas in public. Miranda, who has known Fauci for many years, presented Fauci with questions submitted by students, faculty, staff and others asking for his advice for young people to what he would have done differently regarding the nation’s COVID-19 response. Fauci was awarded the Paul H. Douglas Award for ethics in government in March by the University of Illinois System for his work and writings. — Justin Rosier
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Transformational Gift Names Pharmacy College
The UIC College of Pharmacy is now the Herbert M. and Carol H. Retzky College of Pharmacy, after Herbert BS ’46 and his wife Carol HON ’19 left $36 million to the college in their estate. This marks a new era for the college and honors the Retzkys’ longstanding dedication to the pharmacy profession.
This is the first donor-named college at UIC and only the fourth in the University of Illinois System. Where the endowment will be designated — merit-based scholarships and career development initiatives — simultaneously aligns with the Retzkys’ passions and UIC’s dedication to student success.
Retzky College of Pharmacy Dean Glenn Schumock characterized the late couple’s gift as “profoundly transformative” for the college, which is ranked the No. 1 pharmacy school in Illinois and 15th in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. Schumock said it promises to elevate the caliber of its pharmacy students, who will go on to lead in multiple settings.
— Jessica Olive
Professor Ransby Elected to Prestigious Academy
Distinguished UIC historian and activist Barbara Ransby has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The honor recognizes her outstanding contributions to the field of history and her dedication to advancing academics and social justice.
Her scholarship focuses on centering the stories of Black women freedom fighters and “rescuing lesser-known historical figures from the margins of history,” she said.
In addition to being the John D. MacArthur Chair and Distinguished Professor in the departments of Black studies, gender and women’s studies and history at UIC, Ransby also directs the campuswide Social Justice Initiative, which promotes connections between faculty and community organizers working on social justice.
“Given war, genocide and gross income inequality around the world, creating and maintaining space to think together, debate and explore creative solutions to injustice are major challenges,” she said. “I am humbled by this and reminded of the fact that none of us have ‘the answers’ on our own. We are smarter together. There really are no isolated geniuses.”
— Rob Mitchum
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PHOTO: MARTIN HERNANDEZ BFA ’14
UIC Joins Regional Water Innovation Hub
A new multi-institutional partnership including several University of Illinois Chicago researchers will help build a “blue economy” around the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes ReNEW, funded by up to $160 million from the National Science Foundation, is a collaboration of more than 50 partners, including research institutions, industry, investors, government and nonprofit organizations.
More than 20 UIC researchers from across campus were involved in designing the effort, and faculty members Brian Chaplin from the College of Engineering and Ning Ai from the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs help lead its research and workforce development hubs.
Focus areas include repurposing wastewater as a source of valuable minerals and nutrients, and training residents of Chicago and the region for jobs in the new industries created by these emerging opportunities.
The project also connects UIC to a broad network of research collaborators, water technology testbeds and incubators, and partnerships with companies and community groups.
— Rob Mitchum
U.S. News Graduate School Rankings
UIC continues to earn high marks for its graduate programs in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best Graduate Schools rankings.
The rankings, released in April, evaluated graduate programs in various disciplines such as business, education, law and nursing. Several UIC programs were ranked among the top 20 in the country in their respective fields.
UIC programs among the nation’s top 20 include the College of Nursing’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program (14th), the nursing master’s degree program (19th) and graduate-level disciplines in the College of Pharmacy (tied for 15th) and the School of Public Health (tied for 18th).
The master’s degree program for social work in the Jane Addams College of Social Work tied for 28th among programs at 319 evaluated schools. Among public-affairs graduate programs, the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs programs tied for 34th nationally, up two spots from 2023.
Several specialty programs at UIC ranked among the top 50 nationally as well.
— Brian Flood
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UIC Names New Men’s Basketball Coach
Rob Ehsan, one of the nation’s top young coaches and an elite recruiter, will lead the Flames as the new men’s basketball head coach.
Ehsan brings 20 years of college basketball coaching experience to UIC, including four years as head coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he posted winning seasons each year. For the last three years, he was associate head coach and offensive coordinator at Stanford University in the Pac-12 Conference.
“Coach Ehsan brings both deep experience and strong leadership on and off the basketball court. He has demonstrated a fervent commitment to ensuring the success of student athletes in all the many dimensions of their lives,” said Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda.
During his career, Ehsan has led his teams to three conference titles and eight postseason appearances, including four NCAA tournaments.
“I could not be more excited to join the Flames family as the head coach of UIC men’s basketball,” Ehsan said. — Chris Masters
UIC Theatre Students Learn What Is Behind an Accent
Tanera Marshall, associate professor in the School of Theatre and Music, has taught UIC students voice and accents since 2004 while also coaching professional actors on how to sound like anyone from a native Chicagoan to an English aristocrat.
If you’ve seen the Chicago-based series “The Bear” or “Chicago Fire” or the Wes Anderson movie “Asteroid City,” you’ve heard Marshall’s work. Her many clients include Ebon Moss-Bachrach (“The Bear”), Eamonn Walker and Jesse Spencer (“Chicago Fire”), and Jason Schwartzman (“Asteroid City”).
At UIC, Marshall teaches theater students a required class that prepares them to speak in a far-flung accent at a moment’s notice and talk authentically enough to pass as a native. Marshall said her job is to help the actor tap into “the soul of the accent.”
As Marshall tells her students, the likelihood of landing a coveted role “triples and quadruples” if they can speak with an authentic accent. — Carlos Sadovi
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UIC’s first-ever Latin American Music Festival began with a full day of Mexican mariachi music performances and workshops. More than a hundred high school and elementary school students were invited by the UIC School of Theatre and Music to participate in workshops led by professional musicians and ensembles.
PHOTO: MARTIN HERNANDEZ
Transforming Dental Care
Delta Dental’s $2M Gift Creates a Haven for Patients with Disabilities.
The recently opened Inclusive Care Clinic at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry is not your typical dental clinic. Its focus is to care for patients with physical, developmental, sensory, behavioral, cognitive or emotional conditions.
The clinic, which opened in March, was seeded by a $2 million grant from Delta Dental of Illinois. More than 500 patients have been seen, said Dr. Leda Mugayar, the clinic’s director. Mugayar noted the clinic was created because only a few dental clinics exist in the Chicago area with dedicated support for patients with disabilities and complex health issues.
At the teaching clinic, dental students learn how to better serve this population once they graduate from the UIC College of Dentistry. The clinic was designed to make patients as comfortable as possible. That means specially designed chairs, calming wall colors, weighted blankets, noise-canceling headphones, personal tablets they can use during treatment and a sensory room. The clinic also has a wheelchair lift to treat patients in their wheelchairs.
“This was made for them, to make them comfortable and to create an environment that makes this clinic a home for them,” Mugayar said.
Fourth-year dental student Briena Vaughn is working in the clinic during her rotations. She believes the experience will make her a better dentist.
“Being in this clinic specifically has encouraged us to open our mindsets and be more welcoming of patients who may not be patients we’re used to treating,” Vaughn said. “We definitely feel more comfortable.”
Dr. Susan Rowan, dean of the College of Dentistry, said the clinic is staffed by faculty who oversee 12 fourth-year dental students and one third-year dental student during each clinical session as they help give preventative, comprehensive, and multidisciplinary emergency and rehabilitative oral health treatment and assessments to about 16 patients daily.
“The goal of the student clinical experience is to prepare our graduates to be confident and competent in caring for patients with disabilities and special health care needs,” said Rowan.
Lisa Lambros said the clinic is a godsend because it focuses on people like her 22-year-old son, Syed Hussain, who is autistic and nonspeaking.
“He gets happy when I tell him we are going to come to visit all his friends,” Lambros said. “I ask him if he wants to come, and he claps his hands. He’s happy when he comes here.”
— Carlos Sadovi
From left, Clinic Director Dr. Leda Mugayar; Assistant Director, Health Science Disability Resources Hugo Trevino; and Director of Clinical Operation Andres Giraldo demonstrate the ICC’s wheelchairaccessible equipment.
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
Dr. Natalie Reizine, right, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, discusses the work done at the Vander Griend Lab at UIC with members of her community advisory board, from left, Melvin Thompson, Elverage Allen and Charles Walton.
Drug Discovery for All
UIC researchers are partnering with community advocates to develop treatments to improve health outcomes for all populations.
By Cindy Kuzma
“ He’s right there,” says Natalie Reizine, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, when asked what inspired her to become a prostate cancer researcher. She’s pointing to a photo of her father on a shelf across from her desk.
“I’ve been interested in oncology personally for a long time,” Reizine says. “My father was diagnosed with cancer when I was a teenager. My father and my patients are what drive me.”
Like most Cancer Center patients, Reizine’s come primarily from underserved areas of Chicago and from racial and ethnic groups that have previously been excluded and mistreated by researchers. So for her upcoming study on the effectiveness of licorice root for treating prostate cancer, Reizine formed an advisory board of three Black business leaders and community organizers to collaborate on the study design and help build trust among the men most likely to benefit from treatment.
“I’ve been involved in efforts to help bridge the gap between the community and the Cancer Center and get researchers out into the community,” says Charles Walton, who holds a seat on both Reizine’s advisory board and the Cancer Center’s advisory board
and is the former executive director and current consultant to 100 Black Men of Chicago. “If you are willing to bring research into the community, you can do a lot of good in breaking the previous distrust by showing you’re willing to take on questions and doubt and build relationships.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by advisory board member Melvin Thompson, who previously served as executive director of the Endeleo Institute, a community-centered organization for underserved populations. “In this line of work, you have to listen,” he says. “Sometimes people will vent, and that’s necessary because they haven’t been heard.”
Reizine’s team has given presentations at community health fairs and plans to hold a lab mixer where community members are invited into the laboratory of Donald Vander Griend, associate professor in the department of pathology at UIC, where Reizine mentors PhD students and has samples from her studies tested.
Community advisory boards are central to the Cancer Center’s research — especially when it comes to developing and testing drugs and treatments to cure diseases disproportionately impacting its diverse patient population. UIC has identified
Huiping Zhao, a research specialist in Dr. Tonetti’s laboratory in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, conducted basic research contributing to the development of TTC-352.
Hannah Maluvac, center left, shows prostate cancer cell cultures to members of the community advisory board during their visit to the Vander Griend Lab.
Jordan Vellky, a postdoctoral research associate, conducts cancer research at the Vander Griend Lab.
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these as cancer, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases, and women’s health. It focuses its research and engagement in these areas.
Educating patients about risks and detecting these diseases early is key to addressing health disparities and establishing equal health outcomes for all people. To do that, the Cancer Center’s Community Engagement and Health Equity Office fosters relationships with leaders who can open a two-way dialogue between communities and researchers who are addressing their needs.
“I liken it to being invited to a party by a stranger,” says Elverage Allen, an advisory board member, former advertising executive and co-host with his wife, Shay Allen, of “Prostate Cancer Real Talk,” a podcast with more than 1.4 million monthly listeners. “Are you more likely to go to a party a stranger invites you to or a friend?” As a Black man and a prostate cancer survivor, Allen is a credible messenger to engage Black communities in life-saving screening, trials and care.
The Future of Community-Engaged Drug Discovery
Health disparities occur due to a complex interplay between genetics and environment, says Jan Kitajewski, director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center and head of UIC’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Illinois Department of Public Health statistics suggest, for example, that a Black woman in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood is 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than a white woman living 10 miles north in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. People who are Black, as reported by the journal Health Affairs, and Hispanic, as reported by the National Library of Medicine, are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancers. And, according to the Centers for Disease Control, infectious diseases such as influenza send disproportionately more people of color to the hospital. There are also global health threats like tuberculosis and malaria, which, the World Health Organization reports, proliferate in lower-income countries.
“There is science that can be advanced if you understand community needs better,” says Kitajewski.
The Cancer Center’s deep connections to local communities allow for this listening and inclusion and pursuit of its mission to eliminate cancer health inequities. It is also one of the reasons the Cancer Center accepted an invitation to apply for National Cancer Institute designation. If the designation is awarded, it will come with even more resources for addressing the needs of underserved communities.
The Cancer Center’s community engagement also positions it to catalyze drug research across the entire university. It is one of four
partners in the Drug Discovery and Cancer Research Pavilion (DDCRP), an innovative building the university plans to construct to expedite new treatments for cancer, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases, and women’s health issues, all of which disproportionately affect underserved communities. Along with the Cancer Center, the DDCRP will house world-class researchers from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) department of chemistry, Herbert M. and Carol H. Retzky College of Pharmacy and UICentre, which supports drug discovery projects across UIC with seed grants, a dedicated staff of 10 PhD scientists and specialized equipment.
“Innovation, especially when it addresses medical disparities, usually comes from people like academics who explore different possibilities that aren’t tied to profit,” says LAS Science Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Biology Wonhwa Cho. “Pharmaceutical companies are very good at making the final product and optimizing the process. We don’t do research to make money. We want to do work that matters.”
Infectious Diseases
Infectious diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria are a threat to human health. Antibiotics have been successfully used for nearly 100 years to treat infectious diseases. The incredible adaptability of bacterial cells causes the currently used antibiotics to become inactive and/or ineffective, creating a growing demand for newly designed drugs. According to the World Health Organization, drug-resistant bacteria kill nearly 1.3 million people each year.
Yury Polikanov, professor of biological sciences in LAS, sees hope. He says these resistant bacterial strains develop quickly because some microbes in natural reservoirs already contain genes that make them resistant to antibacterials and it is only a question of time that these genes will get horizontally transferred. The moment a new antibiotic is offered, the clock begins ticking — and the more it’s used, the sooner it becomes less effective. The goal is to create new drugs that are powerful against drug-resistant pathogens.
That’s why Polikanov’s research — and that of his colleagues, research professor Nora Vázquez-Laslop and distinguished professor Alexander Mankin, both in the Center for Biomolecular Sciences in the Retzky College of Pharmacy — is crucial. Both work on ways to attack bacterial cells’ ribosomes, molecular machines
that work like 3D printers to produce proteins. “Because the synthesis of proteins is crucial to life, if you stop it, the bacteria cannot live,” Polikanov says.
Human cells have ribosomes too, but they’re different enough from their bacterial counterparts that compounds can be developed to target bacterial ribosomes. This is a novel approach to crafting new antimicrobials academic researchers like Polikanov are free to pursue because they don’t have to consider the bottom line.
Along the way, they’re building a case for more investment in their approach. If they can provide ample evidence it works — and pinpoint specific compounds that will likely be effective — pharmaceutical companies will be more likely to step in and usher a new drug through FDA approval.
Cancer
The CDC reports people who are Black and Hispanic are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancers, making treatment more challenging and increasing the risk of death. In fact, Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women.
Enter Professor Debra Tonetti. By the time she joined the Retzky College of Pharmacy in 2001, she was already working to solve a major problem in cancer treatment. About three-fourths of women with breast cancer have a type that responds effectively to endocrine therapy, usually with the drugs tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors.
But for nearly half of these patients, these endocrine drugs eventually stop working. Their cancer becomes metastatic, meaning it spreads to other parts of their body. At that point, physicians have few choices outside of toxic chemotherapy.
Tonetti aimed to understand why this happens. She created mouse models of treatment-resistant breast cancer, exploring what made these tumors tick and how to shrink them. Once she had some basic ideas — including that, though estrogen fueled their growth, some forms of the hormone could also work against these cancers — she began exploring how to turn those ideas into new cancer drugs.
The next step was a crucial one. Tonetti walked down the hall to the lab of a colleague, Greg Thatcher, then a fellow member of the Cancer Center and the founding director of UICentre. “My expertise is cancer biology; his is in medicinal chemistry,” Tonetti says. “You don’t get a drug unless you have both pieces together.”
Based on Tonetti’s findings, Thatcher tweaked molecules to engineer a new compound, which they tested and ultimately submitted in an investigational new drug application to the
Food and Drug Administration, which granted them approval to conduct a Phase I clinical trial.
In Phase I trials, which are designed primarily to test drug safety, not efficacy, the results were more compelling than they could have hoped. In seven of the 15 patients enrolled, their compound halted disease progression; in two of them, this stabilization period lasted 10 months. “Hearing that their quality of life was turned around — that was very gratifying to see,” Tonetti says.
Meanwhile, in the chemistry department, Cho has spent a nearly 30-year career studying lipids. These fatty compounds, including cholesterol, were once thought to primarily form cell membranes. But thanks to the work of researchers like Cho, it’s now clear they serve a wide variety of functions, including mediating the way cells respond to each other and their environment.
While he was toiling away to determine exactly how lipids exert their effects, he and other cancer biologists recognized their crucial role in tumor development. So Cho found himself with an exciting and gratifying new direction for his work: developing life-saving treatments for cancer, a disease that will kill more than 600,000 Americans this year alone, with disproportionately more deaths among racial and ethnic minorities.
“Cancer uses many different tricks to survive and proliferate and metastasize, and many of these processes seem to critically depend on lipids,” he says. “If you block these lipid-mediated processes, you can suppress the growth of cancer cells, you can hinder their interaction with the immune system, you can block their way of developing resistance to drugs. You can basically eradicate cancer.”
Working with collaborators across UIC and beyond — including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — Cho and his lab have now identified several compounds that hold potential as cancer therapies, including potential drug candidates for colorectal cancer and inflammatory breast cancer.
The realization that his work could help dismantle health disparities — both inflammatory breast cancer and colorectal cancer are more common, and more deadly, among Black patients — has inspired Cho to continue forging ahead into brave new spaces.
Debra Tonetti, a professor of pharmacology in UIC’s Retzky College of Pharmacy, leads the Breast Cancer Working Group at UI
completion of a Phase I clinical trial, effectively treated some patients with metastatic breast cancer.
The process of developing a new drug is long and arduous, but he and Tonetti are moving full steam ahead, building on UIC’s strong history in the field. Previous success stories include Prezista, a 2016-approved HIV drug discovered by researchers in the LAS’ Department of Chemistry that has helped transform the treatment of the disease; Shingrix, a shingles vaccine on the market since 2017 that originated in the College of Medicine; Tice BCG, a weakened live bacterium used to treat bladder cancer developed in the Retzky College of Pharmacy; and Phexxi, a nonhormonal contraceptive gel developed by faculty in the Retzky College of Pharmacy that the FDA approved in 2020.
Providing the Tools
Big ideas don’t become the pills or injections that change lives without cutting-edge technology and the coordination of the many steps necessary in drug development. Fortunately, UIC offers support every step along the way, says Paul Carlier, Hans W. Vahlteich Chair in Medicinal Chemistry, professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemistry, and the director of UICentre since 2022.
Once researchers like Tonetti or Cho identify a promising pathway, the next step is to determine if it’s possible to develop a drug that accomplishes what they hope. This stage is where tens or even hundreds of thousands
Cancer Center. Her drug, TTC-352, upon
of candidate molecules are tested to see if they might work. Then, medicinal chemists tinker with those molecules to enhance effectiveness, minimize side effects and create a new compound that can be patented.
From there, researchers might license the target drug to a pharmaceutical company, which UIC’s Office of Technology Management assists in. That company would then provide the significant resources required to advance the drug into clinical trials. While those trials aren’t necessarily done at UIC, they can be — and in fact, many drug companies will bring compounds developed at other institutions here for testing due to the unique patient population. (In trials done through the Cancer Center, for example, 79% percent of the patients enrolled are Black or Hispanic.)
“UICentre is unique within Chicago with respect to the absolute scope and depth of drug discovery capabilities,” Carlier says. “Other institutions may offer pieces, but they don’t have the whole menu.”
Representation Matters
To truly impact health disparities, drug discovery must not only listen to the needs of communities but also include diverse populations in trials.
Not doing this would mean some people are unnecessarily barred from potentially life-saving treatments, and trial results are skewed because they don’t include people who are more susceptible to aggressive forms of cancer, Kitajewski says.
Take, for example, the many Black people of subSaharan African descent who have a genetic variation that protects them from some types of malaria but also decreases levels of white blood cells called neutrophils. Because many cancer treatments also affect neutrophil levels, people with this variation, called the Duffy mutation, are often excluded from clinical trials.
Designing drugs that truly work for everyone is a moral imperative that demands an understanding of everything, from these genetic differences to how a person’s neighborhood influences their health.
“There are so many ways science can make better drugs by having diverse patients in clinical trials and an appreciation for all the features that make us different — our socioeconomic status, our nutrition, our genetics, our ability to get access to screenings and care,” says Kitajewski. “The science of the future will integrate all of those features to think about how patients should be best served.”
That’s where UIC truly shines. In addition to its underlying social justice mission and diverse faculty and student body, UIC’s community-to-bench model means input from patients and onthe-ground partnerships with community members shape both the direction of research and the implementation of its outcomes, says Lisa Freeman, dean of LAS.
The Retzky College of Pharmacy and College of Medicine house not only researchers working on the biological mechanisms of disease and the medicinal chemistry needed to develop drugs, but also clinicians working directly with patients.
“We have around 100 pharmacists who work in the clinics and the hospital, with physicians, helping treat patients with these medications,” says Glen Schumock, Herbert M. and Carol H. Retzky Dean of the College of Pharmacy. “They can see what’s not working with current drugs and give researchers basic ideas on how to better design the next generation of drugs. We can always provide feedback, in a kind of constant loop.”
Facilitating the Process
When Cho works with researchers from the College of Medicine or utilizes core facilities there, one of his lab members packs samples in dry ice and transports them across campus, about a mile trip. In the new DDCRP, with more collaborators under one roof, existing projects will move more quickly and smoothly.
Then, there are the serendipitous discoveries and partnerships that come from inhabiting the same space — that ability to do what Tonetti did years ago and stride down the hall to discuss a burning research question. “When you bring people together who have different and complementary sets of expertise, the fact that you’re in the same building will lead to conversations that turn into ideas, which turn into projects that would have never happened had we continued to operate in our own separate spaces,” Carlier says.
That cross-pollination will also extend to community partners. Community members are involved at many levels in the Cancer Center and other research areas — they sit on advisory boards, review grants, weigh in on the design of clinical trials and contribute to advocacy work by joining faculty and staff to talk to state and national lawmakers. “They do everything that we do short of putting on a lab coat and doing the experiments at the bench — and one day, maybe that will be part of what they do, too,” Kitajewski says.
Better Health for All
UIC’s mission is to provide the broadest access to the highest levels of educational, research and clinical excellence, an idea that resonates across the university, hospital and clinics.
For Reizine — and many others — treating patients and researching cures are not just a professional aspiration, they are deeply personal. “Oncology is a hard field. I take care of metastatic patients, who ultimately succumb to their disease once we’ve run out of the therapies,” she says. “But what helps me is thinking of how these patients live on in the research and altruistically help others.”
It’s something that Allen, one of Reizine’s community advisory board members noticed. “When you talk to someone at the Cancer Center, you don’t feel like you’re talking to a scientist or doctor,” he says. “You know you’re talking to a health care professional, but what you don’t expect is that personal commitment. You hear other people talking about doing things in the community, but here is an organization that’s actually doing it. That’s special.” •
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Dr. Natalie Reizine poses with Elverage Allen during his visit to the Vander Griend Lab at UIC. Reizine and Donald Vander Griend, associate professor in pathology and head of the prostate cancer laboratory, have both been guests on Allen’s podcast, “Prostate Cancer Real Talk.”
RECIPE HEALTH for
UIC researchers and health care providers partner with communities to address underlying causes of health disparities
By Steve Hendershot
“Who can tell me about egg grading?”
That might sound like a question for culinary students, but instead, it’s posed to a group of women with hypertension, or high blood pressure. The condition stems partly from a diet that’s too high in salt, and the women are gathered in the basement of a church in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood to learn new cooking methods from Chef Ken L. Polk.
Polk ticks through the differences between eggs rated AA, A and B, and the appropriate uses for each. (Grade AA eggs generally are reserved for restaurants because they’re best for presentation, while if you’re forced to use Grade B eggs, it’s best to scramble them rather than cook them over-easy.)
While the women are learning new knife skills, ingredients and flavor combinations, Polk’s intent isn’t to vault them onto the next season of “Top Chef.” Rather, it’s to share ways to cook healthier, low-sodium meals.
“They learn how to switch up spices to get more flavor, whereas salt is just one particular seasoning in the arsenal,” says Polk. In every recipe he presents, “Salt is the last ingredient, so they can ascertain whether they can add it.”
The class is the brainchild of Saria Lofton, assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Nursing, who studies the prevalence of hypertension among Black women. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are 50% more likely than white women to have high blood pressure, and Black people overall are 30% more likely than white people to die from heart disease — the leading cause of death in America.
Those hypertension disparities contribute to a broader, more concerning gap in health outcomes. The life expectancy for Black people is nearly five years shorter than for white people, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The divergence in outcomes points to a growing field of study around the cultural and environmental factors influencing people’s health. Lofton and other researchers at UIC and UI Health, the university’s academic health enterprise, want to better understand the correlations and to intervene with services that can bridge the divide.
Through the classes, Lofton, Polk and community health advocate Amena Karim aim to support participants who want to eat and live more healthfully. Flavor — for flavor’s sake, anyway — isn’t exactly the point. Instead, the class is first an act of health care.
One participant, Katrina Gatson, earned rave reviews from her family after introducing new ingredients and techniques, from cumin to asparagus to stir-fry. Salt, formerly a go-to source of seasoning, has all but disappeared from her family’s table.
The cooking class is one of many UIC initiatives to understand health disparities and improve outcomes for people in communities with high rates of disease and chronic health conditions.
Researchers are examining cultural and environmental factors ranging from access to healthy food to how people from different backgrounds engage with and experience the health care system.
Their findings lead to solutions that sometimes go beyond the traditional boundaries of health care. The cooking class is one example. Another is the Health in All Policies Workgroup, a partnership between UIC’s School of Public Health (SPH) and the Illinois Department of Public Health that examines proposed legislation related to topics such as housing and education through a public health lens.
The focus on the health implications of social factors is a relatively recent phenomenon, says Dr. Wayne Giles, dean of SPH and co-chair of the Health in All Policies Workgroup.
The initiatives speak to a growing recognition that bridging gaps in health outcomes will require innovation, collaboration and flexibility beyond the traditional scope of health care.
Improving health outcomes for people in high-risk groups requires a multipronged strategy, says Giles. Health providers can still “address proximal issues like access to care, immunizations or providing people with medication for conditions like hypertension. But as you’re providing those things, you also want to provide safe places to be physically active and opportunities to eat healthy foods, and make sure you’re focused on issues like housing and education.”
Chef Ken L. Polk before he mentors adults on how to improve the nutritional quality of their food while reducing sodium intake.
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
Outcome Influencers: Housing and Trauma
Last year, the Health in All Policies Workgroup looked at housing, recommending that the state appropriate funds to transition people experiencing homelessness into supportive housing, which is a crucial underlying issue for people’s health. “It’s hard for people to concentrate on being and staying healthy and taking their medication when they’re focused on finding a safe place to sleep at night,” Giles says.
That insight squares with the work of Stephen Brown, director of preventive emergency medicine within UI Health’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Brown studies the health care usage patterns of people experiencing homelessness, including use of emergency departments for regular or preventive care. That trend, combined with high rates of severe and persistent mental illness among people experiencing homelessness, is a recipe for bad outcomes.
In response, Brown helps run a UI Health-funded program that offers housing as part of its care plan. More than 120 individuals and families have gained housing through the program since its inception in 2017, and Brown says it’s the longest-running program in the country. Often there are irrevocable health effects on people who have lived without housing for an extended period, and the focus of care providers “is on getting them stable,” says Brown, who is also director of business development within the Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design.
Similarly, people who have experienced substantial emotional trauma also are at greater risk of health problems.
Trauma-related disorders arise “when we have too many bad experiences, and not enough good experiences, and our brain and body’s usual regulation mechanisms get disrupted,” says Dr. Audrey Stillerman, a clinical associate professor within UIC’s Department of Family and Community Medicine in the College of Medicine. “If we don’t have time to recover, we get stuck on high alert.” Repeated exposure to traumatic events can disrupt the body’s physiologic systems and contribute to the onset of multiple physical and mental health conditions such as diabetes, depression and substance use, adds Stillerman, who is also medical director for Mile Square’s school health center program, which includes four of the 11 clinics in the UI Health Mile Square enterprise, which provides high-quality health services to underserved communities.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that one of the women attending the cooking classes at the South Shore church brings along two kids who were recently exposed to gun violence. The program’s organizers, Lofton and Karim, both subscribe to the mantra “food is medicine,” and hope that the warm community assembled in the church kitchen will bring emotional healing and nutritional wisdom.
Bringing the System to the People — and Vice Versa
UIC’s medical campus and the surrounding Illinois Medical District offer a powerful concentration of health care resources. Yet for some people, the campus — and the health system more broadly — feel intimidating and unapproachable.
“It’s scary to go to the big campus” for some people unfamiliar with the health system, says Silvia Lara, family nurse practitioner at Davis Health and Wellness Center, a school-based health center that’s part of UI Health Mile Square Health Center.
For large health systems across the country, capacity often outpaces connection. That contributes to a gap in access to care. One scoring system from Commonwealth Fund, a New York Citybased foundation, rates access to care for white Illinois residents at 82 out of 100, compared to 42 for Hispanic residents and 17 for Black residents.
A lack of confidence in navigating the health system is one contributing factor; others are a relative dearth of communitybased health care options in economically disadvantaged areas, as well as transportation costs connected to getting to and from health care hubs.
While health disparities often are framed through a race- or gender-based lens, “a lot of these health-related social needs are really rooted in income,” notes Rani Williams, chief diversity and community health equity officer at UI Health.
It’s one reason the community-based Mile Square Health Center clinics are essential to UI Health’s mission. But UI Health
Violin Hughes, flexible housing pool case manager at The Boulevard, has helped UI Health patients experiencing homelessness secure housing.
leaders also are working to make every element of the system more accessible.
In some cases, the challenges stem from the complicated structure of the American health system. In other instances, the roadblocks are cultural, such as when Spanish-speaking patients struggle to communicate with English-speaking care providers; or logistical, when job- or transportation-related issues make it difficult for people to see providers.
Identifying and addressing those pain points is part of the impetus behind UIC’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design (IHDD), which attempts to analyze the health care system using a consumer experience-focused methodology similar to that used in product and service design. Its goal is to design improvements that better serve patients while accommodating the many constraints of care delivery in a highly regulated industry with complex insurance requirements and expansive data privacy laws.
“These are very complex problems, and design is frequently brought in to address what are described as wicked problems — things that don’t lend themselves to easy solutions,” says Hugh Musick, assistant vice chancellor of population health sciences at UIC and co-director of IHDD.
IHDD began in 2017 and quickly partnered with Illinois state government leaders to investigate ways to improve the care delivered through the state’s Medicaid system. The insights gleaned through interviews with Medicaid patients helped inform a 2021 state law that allocated new funding to support health care transformation collaboratives — creative partnerships between health systems and community partners. Theresa Eagleson, then-director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, describes the approach as “venture capital for Medicaid providers — because that’s not an opportunity that providers serving poor people often get, to try to figure out a better way to serve people in their communities.” (Eagleson left state government last year after a three-decade career and joined IHDD.)
The 2021 act led to the creation of more than a dozen collaboratives across the state, including a specialtycare clinic in Chicago’s Gage Park that includes contributions from UIC and UI Health and community partners such as Alivio Medical Center and Friend Family Health Center.
The Institute’s research showed that having to travel more than a couple miles to a health care facility is a meaningful barrier to care. By bringing specialty care to where people live enables the clinic “to be viewed as a part of the community,” Musick says.
Health campuses also are working to become more accessible. Last fall, UI Health launched a pilot program providing free transportation to and from its Taylor Street campus for patients who meet certain criteria such as income level and not having insurance-based transportation benefits.
Community-based efforts have additional benefits, too, such as the on-the-ground insight gained by providers, as well as those gathered by community health workers — professionals whose job is to visit neighborhood residents and function as a conduit between the health care system and people who struggle with access.
One example comes from Victoria Persky, a UIC professor of epidemiology and biostatistics who spent decades studying race-based gaps in asthma prevalence and asthma-related deaths, and who now is researching health issues related to metal exposure. In addition to her research, Persky also helped found Mobile Care Chicago, a service that provides on-site asthma care to children in under-resourced communities.
A family connected to one of Persky’s studies couldn’t seem to alleviate their child’s asthma, despite employing all the suggested remedies. A community health worker from one of Persky’s studies doing a home evaluation found a large number of birds that may have been exacerbating the child’s asthma, a finding that had not been noted by the child’s medical provider. Removing some of the birds and cleaning the home was a straightforward fix — but one that the care team wouldn’t have identified without a community presence.
Another example comes from one of the school-based community health centers run by UI Health Mile Square Health Center. Leaders at the Davis Health and Wellness Center, located within Nathan S. Davis Elementary School, in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood, didn’t initially realize that hunger was a major issue for families in the community. Scan
“In the Latino community, many times we don’t talk about our needs; we just give a good presentation,” says Jose Lopez, a community health worker who helps coordinate the monthly events. “It’s ‘Everything is great!’ in your house — but in reality, there’s no food; you have problems.”
The clinic’s community presence fostered a great level of connection and observation, however, and one of the nurses began bringing food that she collected from church. That got the attention of the clinic’s leaders and led to a formal partnership with the Greater Chicago Food Depository — and a recurring food pantry that now draws more than 100 families each month.
Making It Easier To Be Healthy
For all the complex factors that influence health outcomes — from genetics to behaviors, cultural factors, life experiences and medicine — a nutritious diet is among the most important. For health professionals, encouraging people to eat healthfully means making it easy to cook and eat well.
So when Chef Polk leads the South Shore cooking classes, he recommends widely available ingredients that participants can get without traveling too far. Lofton, the UIC researcher behind the program, is mindful of participants who rely on public transportation or rideshares to get to stores that, in under-resourced areas, are often located far from home.
the South Side of Chicago where Dufraine and Holt
laying the groundwork to partner with the community for health research and provide education about the cancer risks from pollution in the area.
For people who don’t have access to nearby parks or who don’t feel safe outdoors, another staple of preventive health care — exercise — can be similarly challenging. Those are the situations that get high-level systems designers such as the Institute for Healthcare Delivery and Design’s Musick to think about communityor policy-level interventions, while on-the-ground practitioners such as Silvia Lara from the Davis Health and Wellness Center focus on devising workarounds such as YouTube workouts and at-home pushup regimens.
Yet beyond administering care and sharing best practices, among the most powerful gifts a provider can offer to a patient are hope and confidence. These days, cooking-class participant Katrina Gatson is feeling both as she’s grown passionate about cooking healthfully for herself and her family.
She’s got a piece of advice for would-be chefs that could also serve as a prescription for a country and health system looking to improve the care it delivers: “Try new things,” Gatson says. “Don’t be afraid. Just because you tried something one way doesn’t mean you couldn’t try it a different way and like it even better.” •
From left, Cancer Research Scientist Joseph Dufraine, Health Equity Organizer Adella Bass-Lawson, UI Cancer Center’s Dr. Hunter Holt and Jeanette Santana González, associate director of the office of Community Engagement and Health Equity at the Cancer Center, pose for a group photo at a community health event in Altgeld Gardens on
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From Addiction to Advocacy
UIC’s Community Outreach Intervention Projects employs local leaders for street outreach, health care services and more for people who use drugs.
By Anthony Jackson
RECOVERY CONNECTIONS
Maria Nieves is among the outreach leaders at UIC’s School of Public Health Community Outreach Intervention Projects (COIP). In this role, she uses her firsthand experience with addiction and recovery to provide street outreach, risk reduction counseling and other services to clients who use COIP’s storefront sites or mobile units. Through employment with COIP, outreach leaders turn their experiences into a career while offering clients services in an empathetic and nonjudgemental atmosphere that helps them change their lives.
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
HEALTH HUBS
At five storefront locations and three mobile units across Chicago, COIP provides health care, social services, harm reduction programs and hope to people who inject drugs. Started in 1986 during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, COIP has its roots in harm reduction programs such as disease testing, case management and drug abuse counseling. Today, it is a one-stop shop providing services and help for people who inject drugs. Clients can receive in-house medical care, clothes donations, bus passes, clean needles and even drug tests for fentanyl or other dangerous contaminants — potentially saving lives.
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MOBILE MISSION
In a three-van caravan, COIP mobile units move with a mission: providing medical care and harm reduction services to people who inject drugs. Stocked with fentanyl testing kits, Narcan, clean needles and tourniquets and other supplies found at their static locations, COIP staff canvass locations for hard-to-reach populations who are at risk for fatal overdoses. Each mobile unit has its own purpose and even contains space for a private doctor’s office, shower and bathroom. This accessibility allows COIP to bring services and break down barriers, like stigma from drug use, for people who need medical care. •
EXEMPLARY ALUMNI
By Jeremy Ohmes
Each year the University of Illinois Chicago Alumni Association proudly celebrates some of our outstanding alumni with its highest level of alumni awards presented by Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda. This year’s seven awardees represent the arts, writing, medicine and science. While each has made significant contributions in their fields, what connects all of these remarkable individuals is their dedication to giving back and creating lasting, meaningful change. They are shining examples of the excellence and service that UIC strives to cultivate in its alumni, and their leadership and service inspire us all to reach greater heights in our lives and careers.
PHOTO: UIC CDS
Rising Star Leadership Award
Erika Sánchez Award-Winning Poet and Author LAS, Honors College BA ’06
What surprised Erika Sánchez most about success at a young age? All of it — being a National Book Award finalist, the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Fulbright scholarship, the New York Times bestseller list — but also none of it because one of her UIC professors once told her, “You’re Erika f-ing Sánchez.” This confidence builder stuck, helping her navigate the self-doubt that has always nagged at her.
As a child of Mexican immigrants and the first in her family to go to college, Sánchez felt immense pressure to succeed, a feeling that was often at odds with her dream of becoming a poet. She fell in love with poetry and writing in high school as a way to express herself. “I was a lonely kid,” she says. “Poetry became this vehicle where everything is possible.”
She pursued poetry at UIC, attending with the help of scholarships, grants and the money-saving option to commute from her home in Cicero, Illinois. She loved UIC’s diversity, its Chicago-ness and its scrappiness. “I’m a very independent person, and UIC helped me advocate for myself and get things done,” she says.
But as a first-generation Latina college student who wanted a career in writing, she felt she had “to excel in everything at all times.” She remembers, “Instead of enjoying the college experience, I was already living in the future.” That future involved a Fulbright scholarship in Madrid, Spain; an MFA in Creative Writing; her first published poetry collection, “Lessons on Expulsion;” and her bestselling young adult novel, “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.”
Sánchez often writes about mental health and shares her own struggles with a relatable honesty and humor. Her memoir, “Crying in the Bathroom,” confronts the anxieties and traumas she experienced growing up. She admits, “I didn’t realize until recently when I started to look back upon my life that I was very tense all the time because I felt like I could not f- up…especially as a woman of color.”
Even now she feels that way. But with an irrepressible laugh, she says, “I have a novel being turned into a movie, I paid off all my loans and I feel like a badass.”
PHOTO: UIC CDS
Rising Star Leadership Award
Garth Walker Chief Medical Officer at Rush Health Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at Rush
University System for Health
College of Medicine MD ’14
If a mother cannot afford child care, if a father can barely feed his family, if a person has no access to public transit, how can they show up for a doctor’s appointment or keep up with their health? Dr. Garth Walker focuses on these social determinants of health and ways to help people live healthier lives.
Walker’s commitment to health equity and passion for civic engagement took root when he was a medical student in UIC’s Urban Medicine Program (UMED). The collaborative program connects future physician leaders to community-based organizations to address health disparities through service learning and advocacy.
“Between UMED and my role in the student national medical association, I was able to line up partnerships across the city,” says Walker. “From increasing preventive health awareness in Black men through Project Brotherhood to fundraising for North Lawndale Christian Health Center and setting up blood drives — we did something almost monthly to galvanize medical students and center the communities that need it most.”
After graduating, Walker quickly ascended to prominent practice and policy leadership roles. As a resident physician at University of Chicago’s emergency medicine department, he produced scientific publications supporting protocols to match high-risk individuals with resources to reduce gun violence recidivism. As deputy director of the Illinois Department of Public Health at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walker helped increase vaccination rates, advised vaccine operations, and shaped policies and initiatives around health inequities.
Then, in an opportunity of a lifetime, President Joe Biden appointed him as a White House fellow and senior advisor within the Department of Health and Human Services with the surgeon general. He worked with the Office of the Surgeon General to address physician burnout and partner with agencies for a better health care infrastructure.
Today, Walker channels his drive toward health equity and social justice into his role as the chief medical officer at Rush Health. By leading models across Rush that work with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services innovative reimbursement models centered on health equity, he is creating a health care system that considers people’s lived experiences.
“It is an impactful area,” says Walker. “Because you think about how people navigate their communities, and that data can support policy and initiatives to fill in gaps — if it’s a grocery store or transportation issue — and that can improve the care of a community overall.”
Alumni Achievement Award
Georges C. Benjamin
Executive Director of the American Public Health Association College of Medicine MD ’78
The work public health professionals do to promote and improve individual and collective health often happens out of sight: setting safety standards, developing school nutrition programs, tracking diseases, vaccinating communities, fighting pollution, preventing gun violence and advocating for laws to keep people safe.
When the system works, it is easy to take for granted. However, a public health emergency, like the COVID-19 pandemic, puts public health officials’ work on center stage. As executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), Dr. Georges Benjamin was a trusted voice at the height of the pandemic. He gave hundreds of interviews and calmly explained the virus to the American people and how to take care of themselves and their loved ones. Undoubtedly, his background as an emergency physician prepared him for the moment.
Born and raised in Chicago, Benjamin fell in love with emergency medicine at UIC while doing clinical rotations and helping underserved patients at teaching hospitals around the city. He says, “That foundational experience taught me to really listen to patients.”
Over the next decade, he took these lessons with him into the Army as a military physician. He rose to chief of emergency medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After that, Benjamin served in leadership roles in emergency medicine, ambulatory care and community health until, in 1995, when he was appointed deputy secretary for public health services at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Four years later he became secretary of the department, overseeing a dramatic expansion and improvement of the state’s Medicaid program.
With each of these experiences, Benjamin witnessed health disparities throughout the country and “a fractionated system that creates real problems for patients.” The COVID-19 pandemic in particular shined a light on many of these health inequities, especially, as Benjamin notes, “around vaccine uptake, cost of care and access to not just care, but the right kind of care.”
Today, as director of the largest public health policy organization in the country, Benjamin advocates for the health of all Americans. He says, “Public health was founded on the principle of social justice as a basic right. Everyone should have the opportunity for good health.”
PHOTO:
UIC
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Alumni Achievement Award
Eui Geum Oh Dean of the College of Nursing at Yonsei University College of Nursing PhD ’99
As a distinguished researcher, educator, scholar and advocate for evidence-based nursing practice, Eui Geum Oh is committed to enhancing patient care by empowering nurses. New research, technologies and science constantly change the field of nursing and its potential to impact individual lives — and Oh is dedicated to keeping nurses trained for the times.
During her doctoral studies at UIC’s College of Nursing in the 1990s, Oh focused on improving the quality of life for patients with respiratory illnesses. She had access to emerging IBM and Microsoft technologies for data analysis and reference management and benefited from mentorship from renowned nurse scholars like Janet Larson, Carol Ferrans and Mi Ja Kim.
“They instilled in me the importance of leadership in research and administration and demonstrated how nurse researchers can significantly impact the health care industry,” says Oh.
After graduating in 1999, Oh moved to Korea, where she has transformed nursing science and education for two decades. As the inaugural chief of the Review Board at Korea’s National Research Foundation, Nursing Division, she made notable contributions to research and development. She published more than 160 papers in esteemed journals, secured more than $3 million in research grants from the Korean government and earned recognition as the Best Nurse Scientist from the Korean Academy of Nursing Science. She also founded the Korean Center of JBI, bolstering evidencebased research and professional training for health care professionals.
These and many more achievements led to her current role as the dean of the College of Nursing at Yonsei University, the No. 1 ranked nursing program in Korea. At Yonsei, Oh mentored countless nursing students and developed an innovative nursing entrepreneurship curriculum, which received funding from Brain Korea 21, a government scholarship program that “aims to cultivate outstanding scholars who take the lead in responding to social changes.”
Oh says, “My passion project for the nursing profession is to advocate for entrepreneurial endeavors and to leverage cuttingedge technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, to advance health care. Nurses play a crucial role in integrating these innovations to improve patient outcomes and to streamline health care delivery, and new ideas and technologies enhance patient care and elevate the nursing profession.”
PHOTO: UIC
Distinguished Service Award
Greg Cameron
President and CEO of the Joffrey Ballet College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs MPA ’87
Greg Cameron is the president and CEO of the Joffrey Ballet, but he is the first to admit he is not a dancer. But watching him engage a room is like watching a beautiful dance in its own right. “I realized early on that I didn’t have the creative energies to be an artist, but I’m good at making connections,” says Cameron.
For more than four decades, Cameron has worked to shine a spotlight on Chicago art and artists. He served in administrative and philanthropic roles with prominent organizations, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), Art Institute of Chicago and WTTW-Channel 11. The Joffrey Ballet hired him as executive director in 2013, and he helped the once-struggling institution set box office records and re-establish itself as a worldrenowned dance company.
Cameron’s love for art was always clear — as a young boy he organized theatrical productions in the garage and set up a mini-museum in the basement. However, his route to the Chicago art world was circuitous. He began his studies in special education before switching to German and Art History for his undergraduate degrees.
He then moved to Chicago and started taking classes at UIC, where he fell in love with the campus, the courses and the school’s connections to the Chicago art world. He acquired a Master of Public Administration and interned at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, which set the scene for his career as an arts leader. “I got this introduction to the breadth and depth of the cultural community in Chicago — from music to theater to the visual arts — and I found a space for me to support artists,” he says.
Over the years, Cameron dedicated himself to giving back to the institutions that impacted him. While at the MCA, he taught a UIC art history course that brought students to the museum every week to learn from curators, designers, facilities and fundraisers. He developed connections between Chicago Public Schools and the Joffrey’s training program, the Joffrey Academy of Dance, to engage the next generation of dancers. And he has served on various UIC leadership and advisory boards to strengthen the school’s role in the Chicago arts community.
“I want to give people an opportunity to be part of something that’s bigger than them — and that’s the arts,” he says.
Distinguished Service Award
Patricia Hausknost Financial Planner and Teacher College of Liberal Arts and Sciences BA ’74
Michael Hausknost beams as he talks about his late wife, Patricia, and her love for her alma mater. He met and married Patricia long after her time at UIC, but he says she “credited her ability to succeed in business and life with the education she received there.”
Patricia attended UIC’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the early 1970s. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, she commuted to what was then referred to as the Circle Campus, taking classes during the day and caring for her younger siblings in the evening because her mother passed away when she was 14. Michael says, “UIC was important because she could transition to college while remaining close to her family.”
A motivated student, Patricia graduated in three years with a BA in Teaching of German. She planned to teach linguistics, but she needed a car to commute to Loyola for her master’s degree and therefore a job to afford one. She was hired at the Northern Trust, and one car and a couple of decades later, she had risen through the ranks to become an accomplished, sought-after leader in the banking industry.
Along the way, she passionately advocated for the advancement of women in business, mentoring many throughout her career. “Patricia dealt with a lot of cutthroat people in her industry, and she was tough and highly respected,” says Michael.
After moving to Southern California in 1998, Patricia found two true loves: her husband, Michael, and a new career as a financial planner. Both encouraged her to fulfill her deep-seated desire to teach.
While continuing to work full time, she taught financial planning at UCLA, and in 2010, she joined UIC’s Board of Visitors, an advisory group of alumni who support the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She served until her passing in 2021 as a committed ambassador for UIC — recruiting, advising, fundraising and creating a scholarship for low-income students.
“She felt so strongly about supporting UIC because it offered her so much opportunity, and she wanted everybody to have that same opportunity,” says Michael, who aspires to step into Patricia’s role as board chair in the future. “Even though I’m not an alumnus, I didn’t hesitate to continue in her place because I know how much Patricia loved the school.”
Humanitarian Service Award
Michael Barrows Endodontist
College of Dentistry DDS ’73, Advanced Certificate, Endodontics ’77, MS ’81
We all have those unsung heroes in our lives whose impact is understated yet invaluable. They are the humble, behind-the-scenes helpers who provide much-needed advice, offer comfort, share their time and talents selflessly and make the world a better place for so many. Michael Barrows is one of these people — an under-the-radar role model whose mission is to serve others.
After graduating from UIC’s College of Dentistry in 1973, Barrows served in the United States Army Dental Corps at the end of the Vietnam War. UIC readied him for the rigor and challenges of practicing dentistry in the Army dental clinics and in field exercises at Fort Riley, Kansas, and later in Germany. He says, “My commanding officers noticed how excellently I was prepared from my dental school training, and they gave me more challenging assignments.”
Post Army, Barrows earned degrees in Endodontics and Dental Histology, both from UIC. He joined a group practice of specialists while also mentoring UIC dental students — first as a part-time instructor (1977–94) and then as a full-time assistant professor and undergraduate endodontic clinic director from 1994 until his retirement in 2013. Over those 35 years of teaching, Barrows made an impression on an untold number of UIC students. “I didn’t like to lecture, so I was very hands-on in my teaching. I think they appreciated that. I’m still friends with a lot of my former students, so that’s a good sign,” he says.
Even while giving back to his alma mater, Barrows couldn’t help but think of his time in the Armed Services and how he could help those who also served their country. Upon retiring, he says, “I vowed that I would do everything I can for the veterans.”
Over the last decade, he has volunteered at the Illinois Veterans Home Manteno by working with veterans in the wood shop and transporting veterans; helping at the First Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois; assisting veterans with benefits and arranging for fellow comrades to donate food, supplies and clothing to the veterans home as a service officer through the American Legion; and volunteering with Honor Flight Chicago, which flies veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit the memorials built in tribute to their service.
This call to serve his community is at the core of who Barrows is. He believes it is an honor to help others, and he is a shining example of how UIC alumni can give back throughout their lives. •
PHOTO: UIC
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Partners in Service
From being students at the University of Illinois Chicago, to serving UIC students for more than 61 years combined, married couple Jacob “Jay” Mueller BA ’04, MEd ’13, and Stacie McCloud BA ’92, MS ’95, retired in May 2024, carrying lessons learned and more.
“We are one of the most culturally interesting and progressive campuses in the country,” Mueller said.
With separate work lives, they shared their dedication to service, or what McCloud called “getting people where they need to be.”
As a single mother, McCloud started her UIC journey when she entered the Honors College — a decision that proved life-changing. After graduation, the Honors College hired her, and for the last 32 years, she has helped thousands of students — ending her tenure as associate dean. “I have communicated in some way or worked one-on-one with almost all the 10,000 Honors College alumni,” McCloud said.
As a transgender person, Mueller was a pioneer in visibility at UIC. He started as support staff, then later became director of the Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns (now called the Gender and
Sexuality Center), making it a nationally recognized LGBTQ+ program. He worked in various roles at the university, retiring as the assistant vice chancellor and chief of staff to the UIC Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Engagement.
“There is a deep and abiding love for this place,” Mueller said.
McCloud said she was most proud of that love of place, and their service to it. Her biggest career accomplishment? “Never giving up on a student.” Mueller cited his collaborative role in establishing the UIC Neighborhood Centers in Auburn Gresham and North Lawndale during the pandemic as part of UIC’s Advancing Racial Equity charge.
Regarding their future plans, Mueller plans to work with youth, sharing his unique life experiences. McCloud, a member of FreeMomHugs.org, will continue her advocacy, network with Honors College alumni and shelter older dogs, a service Mueller is happy to share in. — Jen Cullerton Johnson
PHOTO: JENNY FONTAINE
The Best Medicine
Myron Laban PharmD ’18 said, “I was always making art, but I never had a direction.” For Laban, the degree he earned from UIC’s Herbert M. and Carol H. Retzky College of Pharmacy was more than a path toward a stable income. The rigorous and broad education he procured allows him to thrive as a “floater,” or traveling pharmacist, where he sets his own hours and decides what days he can work — and when. This flexibility allows him to pursue his passions as an artist and musician.
His dedication led him to earn “Best New Visual Artist” from the Chicago Reader and write-ups from PBS, CBS and USA Today. His paintings have hung in the United Center, and he has even sold some to NBA players. And he’s kept going — recording music independently with his friend Maurice Mayes and releasing it on streaming platforms. His songs were picked up by local radio stations Vocalo and The Mix and have also appeared on NPR.
Laban described UIC as “an introduction to the world,” for its diversity of cultures and backgrounds. “There’s more to life than your art,” he said. “Understanding the world around you helps you. I think you need to go live a life outside of your art in order to make good art.”
— Justin Rosier
Leap of Faith
Mary Maryland PhD ’94 is a primary care provider at WellBe Senior Medical and a proud alumna of Malcolm X College, where she got her associate degree, and UIC’s College of Nursing, where she became the seventh African American student to achieve a PhD.
After Maryland arrived at UIC’s College of Nursing with 10 years’ experience, she began recruiting students under UIC’s Urban Health Program, which was designed to diversify health professions. She has been a global speaker, educator, clinician and administrator; co-authored a $380,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and landed a consulting contract with NASA.
In addition to her clinical work, Maryland served on the boards of the American Nurses Foundation, American Nurses Association and the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and spent a year working in Rwanda. She established a scholarship in the College of Nursing and serves as the presidentelect of the UIC Alumni Association Board. Reflecting on her 47-year career, Maryland encourages others to “take a leap of faith” and embrace the possibilities within nursing.
— Jen Cullerton Johnson
PHOTO: ANTHONY JACKSON
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Passing the Torch
Dear UIC Alumni,
While watching the Olympic opening ceremonies this July, I was struck by the rich symbolism of and profound homage paid to France’s history. The creative artistic rendition and intertwining Parisian and French heritage beautifully honored the legacy of the Olympic Games. The Olympics are an evolution. They grace a host city for a fleeting moment, yet with each ceremony, the tradition builds upon its own legacy.
Nearly seven years ago, I had the privilege of becoming the inaugural executive director of our newly launched UIC Alumni Association. It was a pivotal moment in UIC’s history as we endeavored for the first time to build with and programming for UIC alumni exclusively. Over these years, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with many of you, our outstanding alumni, to establish our Alumni Association Board, cultivate new traditions and enrich existing ones. I’m so excited about our promising future and the exciting path ahead.
Just as the Olympic torch bearers pass the torch from one person and city to the next, it is now my turn to pass the torch. I am thrilled to introduce Damaris Tapia, our next UIC Alumni Association executive director. Damaris brings a wealth of experience as a seasoned alumni relations professional, having spent the last 13 years leading the alumni office at Northeastern Illinois University and, before that, working at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She deeply understands UIC’s significance to Illinois, the importance of the access and excellence it provides to students of all backgrounds and the pivotal role alumni play in achieving its mission. I am grateful she has chosen to lead us into the next chapter and confident your collaborations with her and her team will produce excellent outcomes. And I am not going away. I remain at UIC, working closely with our alumni and donors in a new capacity.
It has been an honor to serve as the inaugural executive director of the UIC Alumni Association. I am particularly grateful to Bill Merchantz BS ’79 founding alumni board president, and Ed Cohen BS ’75 immediate past president, for their unwavering dedication, visionary leadership and invaluable guidance. I am confident with Damaris’ leadership and Alumni Board support we can reach new levels of engagement among our 344,000-member-strong alumni community.
I encourage you to extend a warm welcome to Damaris at uicalumni@uic.edu and share your thoughts as we embark on this exciting new phase for the UIC Alumni Association.
With gratitude,
— CARYN SCHULTZ KORMAN ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ALUMNI AND DONOR ENGAGEMENT
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First-Gen Physician
University of Illinois College of Medicine
student Andres Gascon is the first in his family to attend medical school. Now, he’s giving back to the community that helped him get there.
WHAT INSPIRED YOUR INTEREST IN MEDICINE?
My first memories interacting with the health care system were from my brother’s leukemia diagnosis and watching my grandma deal with health issues when she came from Mexico. There weren’t many providers who spoke Spanish, so my grandma needed us to go to appointments with her. That drove my desire to go into medicine.
WHY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE?
I went to UIC for my undergraduate degree and received great help from UIC’s Hispanic Center of Excellence (HCOE). No one in my family is a physician, so the process was a mystery to me. Thanks to the HCOE, I felt supported. They helped navigate my pre-med program, assisted in my medical school application, provided mock interviews and connected me with students who went through the process.
I’m currently copresident of the Latino Medical Association, and we work very closely with the HCOE hosting events and providing mentoring for undergraduates. I’m passionate about helping pre-med students the way I was helped; it’s my way of giving back to my community.
ADVICE FOR FIRST-YEAR MED STUDENTS?
The first weeks are an adjustment. I had moments when I thought they made a mistake letting me in. But you learn how to study better, to use different resources. I look back on where I was at orientation, and it’s surprising how much I’ve grown. My advice: have self-confidence. If you were admitted, you have the tools you need to succeed.
— Samus Haddad
PHOTO:
DIANE SMUTNY
Thank You
The UIC Alumni Association has been fortunate to have one of its best alumni leading for the past two years. Outgoing president Ed Cohen BS ’75 managed a diverse, 68-person alumni board and restructured board committees to ensure that alumni stay connected and engaged.
As a dedicated advocate for UIC, Cohen attended numerous events and programs, and his passion for the role made the UIC Alumni Association stronger. In July, Cohen welcomed Kerl LaJeune BArch ’92 Architectural Design, BArch ’92 Structure as the new president and continues to serve in an advisory role. We are immensely grateful for Cohen’s service and contributions.
“One
— Christine Schwartz