Meet the Winners of the 2024 Clinical Research Challenge!
(Left to right: Grace Liu, Allison Frazer, Marian Fu)
This year, Grace Liu, Allison Frazer, and Marian Fu from the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy earned the title of ACCP 2024 Clinical Research Challenge (CRC) champion at the Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona! Their research proposal was titled “Comprehensive Management of Barriers to Adherence in Transplant Treatment (COMBAT-Tx).” After their first-place finish, the ACCP National Student Network Committee chair, Ryan Kreill, and secretary, Jacob Govel, asked the team a few questions.
Please provide a brief introduction about each of you (where you are from, what year you are in pharmacy school, goals for after graduation, and any other fun facts you might want us to include!).
- Allison: I’m a P3 student from Grosse Pointe, Michigan. I’m hoping to pursue my PGY1 and PGY2 in order to become a clinical specialist. Currently, I’m passionate about pain and palliative care, particularly substance use disorder; however, I look forward to learning more in the next few years and staying open to the opportunities!
- Marian: I’m a current P3 from Rochester Hills, Michigan. I plan on pursuing a PGY1 and PGY2 with a focus on psychiatry/neurology, with goals of obtaining board certification in psychiatry and practicing as a specialty clinical pharmacist. My research interests lie in specific and personalized pharmacotherapy for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, including, but not limited to, pharmacogenomics and metabolomics. Fun fact? I dropped out of my undergraduate program to become a sushi chef for a little bit, so that was fun!
- Grace: I’m a P3 student from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I hope to complete a PGY1 and PGY2 after graduation to become a clinical pharmacist specialist. I am still exploring various specialties within pharmacy, but my current interests include infectious disease, ambulatory care, and drug information.
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Why did you choose pharmacy?
- Allison: I’ve always wanted to be in the health care field in some way, but pharmacy piqued my interest for its emphasis on chemistry and the opportunity to gain so much in-depth knowledge about medication. I also love the number of diverse opportunities that come with a Pharm.D. degree, giving me the opportunity to explore different areas before graduation and find something I’m passionate about!
- Marian: It took a long time for clinicians to find the right medications for my mental health conditions, as the current guidelines for mental health pharmacotherapy prescribing are still largely trial and error. In addition to wanting to work in a health care setting, I’ve always been interested in precision medicine for refractory psychiatric disorders for this reason, and I strive to improve patient outcomes by contributing to evidence-based medicine.
- Grace: I’ve always been fascinated by how medications work, and I liked the opportunity of being able to learn that information and use it to make a positive impact on the health of a patient or a population. I am also passionate about teaching, and as a pharmacist, I look forward to sharing knowledge with other health care professionals, patients, and students. I enjoy the lifelong learning aspect of pharmacy, as our knowledge of disease states and treatments is constantly evolving.
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How did you choose to work together on this team?
- At the conclusion of our evidence-based medicine course, our professor reached out to about 10 students who excelled in the class to introduce us to this competition. Since our institution does not have a student chapter of ACCP, he selected students in a manner similar to holding a local competition. We were the three students who expressed interest and attended his informational meeting!
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What did you do to prepare?
- For the Online Journal Club portion, we reviewed notes from our evidence-based medicine course and applied knowledge that we had gained through extracurricular research experiences and internships. For the Letter of Intent and Proposal, we had not had much exposure to solid organ transplantation in our curriculum yet as P2s. We reached out to pharmacist experts at our institution working in solid organ transplant or related fields, who provided us with helpful background information and literature regarding the state of solid organ transplant pharmacy. We performed extensive literature searches on PubMed to help us brainstorm ideas for our intervention and learn about the research design of similar studies.
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What tips or tricks do you have for future competitors?
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Bold of you to assume that we’d give up our secrets so easily :~) But actually:
- Start brainstorming ideas early, and read as much literature on the chosen topic as possible! If it’s an area you aren’t familiar with yet, reach out to clinical pharmacists to help get a feel for the specialty.
- Also, seek multiple perspectives! We definitely couldn’t have made it this far if we’d only consulted one or two pharmacists.
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What did each of you bring to the team that was unique?
- We all have different areas of interest and past experiences, which brought in a lot of unique perspectives when we were working together. We all found each other to be extremely hardworking and dedicated, which made this whole experience a lot easier!
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In hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently to prepare?
- As we looked through our proposal right before our poster presentation in October, we thought that we could’ve sought more guidance during the proposal drafting process to narrow in our scope. We mostly just used reviewer comments to tailor our letter of intent into our proposal, and we didn’t really meet with any faculty during that phase. We wished that we had taken a bigger step back to look over the holistic picture of our proposal and “cropping that picture,” so to speak.
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What motivated you to compete in the CRC? What motivations did you have throughout your preparation?
- Allison: I knew it would be a great learning experience, especially as we were working on research proposals for another course at the same time! The CRC really helped me feel more comfortable doing projects like this.
- Marian: I needed to get out of my comfort zone and wanted to become more involved in things that capture my interest, like the CRC. I’ve hesitated to commit to these sorts of projects because of the (what feels like) hundreds of other obligations I’ve taken on while in pharmacy school, but I’m glad I did! I feel more comfortable accepting opportunities I would’ve otherwise passed up because of workload and stress. I’m also competitive and I like winning things, so that definitely motivated me :~)
- Grace: I knew that working on this project would help us develop skills that we’ll need as pharmacists – critically evaluating literature and research studies is essential, no matter what area of pharmacy we go into. Pharmacy is a field where we need to “learn how to learn” rather than memorize treatment guidelines because new research is always happening!
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Who was your most influential mentor?
- We met with multiple faculty members throughout the competition process, and everyone gave us a unique and helpful perspective that brought us to our final idea and project. Thank you to Drs. Mike Dorsch, Karen Farris, Dan Hertz, Abbie Leino, Jeong Mi (Jamie) Park, and Amy Pasternak!
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