Awards & Recognitions – Summer 2021
Nurse of the Year—Art of Nursing
Barrow neuro-rehabilitation nurse Kenneth Bacsin, RN, received the Nurse of the Year—Art of Nursing award from St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center. The award, bestowed by nursing executives, recognizes Ken’s commitment to the Nursing Professional Values outlined in the hospital’s Professional Practice Model. These values include safety, responsibility, accountability, critical thinking, competence, and integrity. Each year, the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center Professional Practice Council accepts and reviews nominations for Nurse of the Year in three categories, including Art of Nursing. Ken received more nominations than any other nominee in any category. He is appreciated by every discipline for his excellent patient care.
CARIS POA Collaboration Award
The Caris Life Sciences Precision Oncology Alliance (POA) recognized the Neuro-Oncology Program at Barrow, led by Ekokobe Fonkem, DO, for five years of collaboration. The contributions made by our neuro-oncology team have helped to expand precision medicine and improve the lives of patients with cancer. POA is a network of leading clinicians focused on precision medicine and integrating molecular profiling into all aspects of cancer care.
NAIMS Cooperative
The North American Imaging in MS (NAIMS) Cooperative has named Barrow Neurological Institute as a member site—one of only two in Arizona. The organization brings together a range of imaging experts from academic centers across the United States and Canada. These experts share a common goal of advancing imaging technologies for MS to better understand and treat the disease. MS imaging research at Barrow is a collaboration among neuroimaging scientists Ashley Stokes, PhD, and Richard Dortch, PhD, and MS neurologists Ram Narayan, MD, Aimee Borazanci, MD, and Michael Robers, MD.
Platform Trial Regimen Co-Leader
Shafeeq Ladha, MD, director of the Gregory W. Fulton ALS and Neuromuscular Disease Center, was recently selected to co-lead the upcoming fifth regimen of the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial. This national trial, run by the Northeast ALS (NEALS) Consortium, differs from traditional clinical trials in that multiple drugs are tested simultaneously. The trial also runs in perpetuity, allowing drugs to be dropped as they are deemed ineffective and new drugs to be added in their place. Currently, there are four drugs in the trial. Each drug is labeled a regimen and overseen by a lead investigator. Jeremy Shefner, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Neurology at Barrow, is already leading the fourth regimen. Each regimen is expected to enroll more than 200 patients across the United States.
JNS: Spine Cover
Artwork created by Barrow medical illustrator Peter M. Lawrence was selected for the cover of the July issue of Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. The illustration accompanies a paper authored by Barrow faculty and trainees entitled, “Predictors of indirect neural decompression in minimally invasive transpsoas lateral lumbar interbody fusion.”
AANS Louise Eisenhardt Award
Charuta Furey, MD, a PGY-4 neurosurgery resident at Barrow, received the Louise Eisenhardt Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) for her abstract entitled, “Mutations in TFAP2B and Previously Unimplicated Genes of the BMP, Wnt, & Hedgehog pathways in Syndromic Craniosynostosis.” She will present her work at the 2021 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando.
CNS Paper of the Year
The Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) selected a manuscript from Barrow Neurological Institute as its Paper of the Year! Barrow neurosurgery resident Joshua Catapano, MD, was the first author on the paper, entitled “Spetzler-Martin Grade III Arteriovenous Malformations: A Multicenter Propensity-Adjusted Analysis of the Effects of Preoperative Embolization.” He will present the paper at the CNS annual meeting.
FASEB Publication
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) recently published a report entitled “Maximizing Shared Research Resources.” The publication contains recommendations for a federal strategy to support shared resource facilities, also known as cores. Sara Bowen, PhD, a research technician and certified cytometry specialist in the Barrow Flow Cytometry and Nanostring Core Facility, contributed to the report as a member of the FASEB Shared Research Resources (SRR) Task Force.