Inova

Nursing students help underserved communities get their kids back-to-school ready

Shayla Brown — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 17:05:19 +0000

Nursing students help underserved communities get their kids back-to-school ready Shayla Brown Wed, 08/14/2024 - 13:05

��AV’s Mason and Partners (MAP) Clinic holds free clinics throughout Northern Virginia every day. This summer, two of those community-based clinics helped local elementary school students get back-to-school ready.

School of Nursing students at the MAP Clinic in the Population Health Center. Photo by Shayla Brown

Managed by practitioners in the College of Public Health, the clinics offer uninsured school-aged children and other underserved communities essential health services. They also allow undergraduate nursing students, including MSN Family Nurse Practitioner and Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) students, as well as graduate psychology, social work, health informatics and administration students among others, to complete Community Health Clinical requirements in a meaningful way.

George Mason’s School of Nursing ran the first clinic on June 21, where 38 ABSN and four nurse practitioner students were working, and the second on July 19, where 28 ABSN and three nurse practitioner students were working. In total, 45 families brought their children to receive vaccines and physical examinations.

“The clinics are a different side of nursing. The families are so sweet and grateful for everyone who’s there,” said ABSN student Kaleigh O’Keefe.

The MAP Clinic collaborates with many community partners throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area including Fairfax County Public Schools, Manassas City Public Schools, Manassas Park City Schools, Prince William County Schools, Refugee Resettlement Agencies, Fairfax United Methodist Church, Inova Alexandria Hospital, and non-profits across the region.

School of Nursing faculty providing medical care to a student in the Population Health Center. Photo by Shayla Brown

School nurses, school-parent liaisons, refugee resettlement case managers, and caregivers from these various locations reach out to MAP Clinic administration to schedule appointments for students.

“Many of these families are long-term patients who we’ve been seeing at our MAP Clinics for years now,” said Kenneth Frese, director of clinical operations in the School of Nursing.

The clinics are able to address a variety of communities and health issues such as general health, pediatrics, and substance abuse, said O’Keefe. Nursing students rotate through all of the specialties.

The clinics collaboration with Inova comes in the form of the Inova Cares Clinic for Families, which allows patients that need to be closely monitored to receive care from Inova for a discounted rate based on income.

“I had a patient whose blood pressure was really high, which in children is typically caused by some type of kidney problem, so we tested his urine and there was a high protein count, which can indicate kidney damage,” explained O’Keefe. “We sent him to Inova where he was officially diagnosed, though he still comes back to the MAP Clinic to follow up with us sometimes.”

Nursing students also collaborated with students and faculty from George Mason’s Department of Social Work throughout the MAP clinics.

Amy Joyner with backpacks that were donated to the children at the MAP clinic. Photo by Shayla Brown

“Social work was a big part of the work we were doing. A lot of our job was ––communicating with those students,” Isabelle Kahng, an ABSN student who will be doing a neuro-ICU practicum for the MedStar Health Future Nurse Program partnership.

“It was our responsibility to relay the patient’s information to the provider, as well as the social workers, so that we could work together in getting the resources the patients need,” said Kahng.

“Bonding with these kids is my favorite part,” said O’Keefe. “They’re just so happy to be there, and being there to help them thrive is everything.”

In This Story

Kenneth Frese

Make a difference with the College of Public Health

Support the Mason Nation

Topics

School of Nursing

population health center

Mason and Partners (MAP)

Joint postdoc program develops from partnership between Statistics Department, Inova Health

Teresa Donnellan — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 18:42:25 +0000

Joint postdoc program develops from partnership between Statistics Department, Inova Health Teresa Donnellan Thu, 09/28/2023 - 14:42

In This Story

Jiayang Sun

A partnership between ��AV’s Statistics Department and Inova Health Care Services has entered its fifth year and continues to grow. The partnership has motivated a new initiative: a postdoc program for Inova researchers interested in developing skills in statistics and data science, run jointly by George Mason’s statistics and global and community health departments. Mohamad Bahij Moumneh, MD, and Jason F. Goldberg, MD, are the program’s standing inaugural members.

“As a fresh Lebanese medical graduate interested in expanding his acquired skills in the field of research, especially cardiology, and academia, the joint program provided me with this golden opportunity,” said Moumneh. He added, “By maximizing the resources of each institute, enhancements in the overall picture and quality of research and healthcare education occur, and allow both institutions to keep, if not exceed, pace with novel technologies and healthcare advancements and institutions.”

The partnership between Mason Statistics and Inova Health was supported by a contract between the university and the healthcare system via a parent award from NIH to the iTHRIV partnership. It supported the experts in George Mason’s Statistics Collaboration Core (SCC) to work with colleagues from Inova Health Care Services on research projects involving statistics or data science. To initialize each new project, INOVA researchers visit statinova.gmu.edu.

“The Statistics Collaboration Core (SCC) is a collaboration platform that supports and facilitates statistical collaborations with internal and external investigators or seekers for evidenced-based research, or statistical, biostatistical, or data science support to decision-making,” explained Jiayang Sun of Mason’s statistics department. Sun is a Principal Investigator on the new grant establishing the postdoc program, alongside co-PI Carolyn Drews-Botsch, the chair of the department of global and community health in Mason’s School of Public Health.

“The partnership between Inova and Mason will help with our research efforts aimed at prolonging life after heart transplantation,” said Goldberg. He noted that, for his case, SCC has provided advanced analysis of mircoRNA clinical rejection scores and has used machine learning to evaluate risk modeling of adverse outcomes within the first year of heart transplantation.

“These collaborations will continue to produce meaningful cardiovascular research,” he said.

Of the five-year partnership between Mason Statistics and Inova Health, Sun noted the relationship has been fruitful, producing additional grants, publications in the health and medical sector, and new grant proposals. She added that it serves as a welcome opportunity for both tenure track and term faculty to perform original research and collaborate with colleagues dealing with real-world problems. Research projects from the partnership have covered such important topics as opioid use, sepsis, heart failure, and—before there were reliable tests—the spread of COVID-19 among children in northern Virginia.

Sun, Moumneh, and Goldberg are likewise optimistic about the new joint postdoc program.

“Researchers can collaborate on various projects that eventually might lead to medical breakthroughs. One could say that the joint program fosters an environment of innovation and growth. The joint program also allows the addressing of pressing healthcare dilemmas, an event that might encourage students to think of possible solutions and managements,” said Moumneh.

Topics

Statistics

Inova

Department of Statistics

College of Public Health

College of Engineering and Computing

School of Computing

Community Partners

Students

Mason Statistics Collaboration Core partners with Inova

Tama Moni — Wed, 11 May 2022 20:27:14 +0000

Mason Statistics Collaboration Core partners with Inova Tama Moni Wed, 05/11/2022 - 16:27

The ��AV College of Engineering and Computing statistics department and its Statistics Collaboration Core is working with Inova Health Care Services as part of a partnership called “iTHRIV.” Inova is Northern Virginia’s leading nonprofit healthcare provider, with 20,000+ team members providing more than two million patient visits each year at five hospitals. This partnership is funded by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

“The collaboration with Inova Health is one of the examples of Mason Statistics actively collaborating in and/or taking leadership positions on large projects aimed at impacting science and society,” says Jiayang Sun, chair of the Mason Department of Statistics. Ben Sieyon Lee, a faculty member in the department, adds, “By connecting experts from both Mason and Inova, we are able to explore exciting research opportunities at the intersection of statistics and health care research. Many would have been otherwise overlooked.”

The Collaboration Core works with external organizations to provide support in the areas of statistical expertise; grant, manuscript writing, and conference abstract writings; survey design; research in statistics and data science; and interdisciplinary collaboration. The Collaboration Core website guides outside groups through the project proposal process.

The Core allows Mason faculty to be engaged with research in new ways and helps new, tenure-track faculty get exposed to grant work and external collaborators. In addition, it allows the university to establish itself as a leader in data science. “Our graduate students also play an active role in these collaborations,” says Lee. “They gain valuable experience in applying their statistical knowledge to real-world challenges.”

Topics

Inova

Statistics Faculty

Healthcare

National Institutes of Health

Michelle Vassallo Honored as CHHS Alumna of the Year

John Brandon Cantrell — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 20:43:25 +0000

Michelle Vassallo Honored as CHHS Alumna of the Year John Brandon C… Tue, 04/19/2022 - 16:43

Topics

Health Administration

Inova

Department of Health Administration and Policy

Alumni Spotlight

Master of Health Administration alumna led effort to get 100,000 people vaccinated in just 53 days.

When faced with fighting an unfamiliar and contagious virus, Mason alumna Michelle Vassallo rose to the occasion. Vassallo led a team of infectious disease prevention specialists, physicians, pharmacists, and researchers at Inova Health System to develop and execute a plan to distribute 100,000 vaccines in just 53 days. To do this, Vassallo and her team of nearly 30 public health professionals reimagined how their hospital system could fight the pandemic while keeping everyone's safety top of mind. The team reevaluated many components of the hospital system, such as establishing trusted communication channels for patients seeking information on vaccines and redesigning their treatment centers to accommodate a large number of socially-distanced patients. The team also faced ethical considerations when determining which groups would receive the vaccination first based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

In recognition of her achievements and contributions, Vassallo has been named the 2022 College of Health and Human Services Alumna of the Year.

Vassallo began her career as a registered nurse at Inova. Having graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, she advanced in her career by accepting nursing leadership positions at Inova. As a graduate of Mason’s Master of Health Administration (MHA) program, Vassallo not only learned about health systems, she also learned about leadership and problem-solving. This knowledge served her well in her current role as vice president, clinical platform service line at Inova.

"It's very humbling," Vassallo said on being named the CHHS Alumna of the Year. "The work I am being acknowledged for is something that has saved my life, my family, and all the people I interact with. I can't imagine there will be something else that impactful to my community and the people I care about as that endeavor was."

The process of reworking how the hospital system would operate in the wake of the pandemic required Vassallo to hone her leadership abilities and work with a group of interdisciplinary professionals on critical projects in just a short amount of time.

"Everybody took on a different role and chipped in,” Vassallo said. “We had to fall back on the fundamentals of what are the right ways to engage, influence, and empower team members to make the decisions that are right in the moment. You, as a leader, had to pivot kind of moment by moment based on what the needs were of the situation."

Despite the challenges faced, Vassallo and her team embraced the adversity through strong leadership, organization, and trust in one another.

"We took the opportunity to function well as a system in a way that we never had before," Vassallo said. "We were able to quickly make decisions that were very important to patient care and for team member safety. It was hard work, long hours, and difficult times, but it was also incredibly inspiring and motivating. It's affected our work in a positive way as we have moved through the pandemic."

Vassallo said that the training she received in the MHA program had particularly helped her lead others through the pandemic. Having a clinical background as a nurse and experience in hospital system operations, she saw an MHA degree as a way to develop further her understanding of business management and leadership. These skills resulted in saving many lives through the successful vaccination outreach.

"Almost every class was applicable to this crisis," Vassallo said. "I really think the best benefit was that [the MHA program] gave a broad foundation of knowledge for theory, for business, for leadership skills themselves. The leadership principles and those foundation elements were important to lean back on. When you have a moment to breathe, you can think about them and do them a little more purposefully, and then in the times of crisis, you're just glad you have that muscle memory."

When asked what advice Vassallo would give to graduating CHHS seniors, she encouraged new graduates to pursue assignments that can advance their exposure in their organization, even if the tasks are not a part of their job description.

"The best advice is if someone asks you to do something, it's because they think you're going to be successful and you can do it," Vassallo said. "So, take that opportunity and have confidence in yourself and take that stretch assignment or project because you never know where it will lead you. I think that has been the number one key to my success."

Vassallo was honored as the CHHS Alumna at the Year in April during the Honoring Mason Nurses event. The School of Nursing invites all faculty, staff, students, and alumni to join the celebration. She will also be given the CHHS Distinguished Alumni Award at Mason's Celebration of Distinction on October 21. Learn more here.

President and CEO of Inova Health System Shares Leadership Insights with Mason's Master of Health Administration Students

John Brandon Cantrell — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 19:25:07 +0000

President and CEO of Inova Health System Shares Leadership Insights with Mason's Master of Health Administration Students John Brandon C… Wed, 12/08/2021 - 14:25

In This Story

Maria Uriyo

J. Stephen Jones Encourages the Next Generation of Health Care Executives to Lead with Purpose

Master of Health Administration students enjoyed the opportunity to network with Jones following the presentation.

Master of Health Administration (MHA) students recently had the opportunity to speak with J. Stephen Jones, president and CEO of Inova Health System, one of Virginia’s largest hospital systems. Jones shared his leadership philosophy and advice with MHA students as part of the HAP 704 Executive Speaker Series, where students meet highly-respected leaders in the industry.

"All of you have chosen to pursue leadership," Jones says before sharing his perspective on the role leaders play in health care organizations.

"Leadership is usually not what people think it is," says Jones. "It's not about having power or being the boss. Leadership is about getting others to achieve something they wouldn't naturally do—or do as well—on their own; It's having an impact and making something happen that wouldn't have happened at all."

Chadwick Smith, medical director of a leading health system and online MHA student, values the Executive Speaker Series as an opportunity to learn from health executives like Jones. "Dr. Jones' discussion brought home the real-world importance of all the topics we have discussed during the past six weeks," says Smith. "I cannot think of any better presentation than the one tonight to emphasize the importance of communication, leadership, and teams in health care administration."

Nafis Labib, MHA student, found Jones' presentation highly relevant to his career goals. "One of the points that resonated the most was [the importance of] having credibility," says Labib. "My priority is to build up credibility as a health care leader so that I can impact the health care policies in my home country of Bangladesh for the better."

Jones discussed his leadership philosophy from his experience leading one of Virginia's largest health systems.

Students left the presentation feeling motivated to implement the advice they received from Jones after meeting with him.

"Dr. Jones emphasized having a leadership philosophy that inspires others to action," says Maria Uriyo, instructional assistant professor and MHA online coordinator in the Health Administration and Policy (HAP) department. "This is possible by recognizing teamwork is not about 'me' but 'we' and that successful leaders serve."

Jones' presentation was followed by a question and answer session, which generated a range of discussion topics. Students were interested in learning more about overcoming leadership challenges surrounding COVID, building credibility through education and work experience, and managing the increasing use of telehealth and ambulatory care by health care systems.

Jones' presentation concluded the HAP 704 Executive Speaker Series for the fall 2021 semester. The series gave MHA students opportunities to network with prominent health care executives throughout the semester and discover new perspectives from the speaker’s vast experience in the health administration field.

Thank you to Jones and all of this semester's guest speakers for investing time to speak with our MHA students and continuing Mason's ongoing relationship with local health care organizations. Visit the HAP 704 Executive Series web page for a complete list of this semester's speakers.

Topics

Health Administration

Leadership

Guest Speaker

Inova

Rising Healthcare Leaders Making Connections at Mason

eander6 — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 13:30:08 +0000

Rising Healthcare Leaders Making Connections at Mason eander6 Thu, 09/30/2021 - 09:30

In This Story

Brenda Helen Sheingold, PhD, RN, FNAP

PJ Maddox, EdD, MSN, RN

RHLM leadership team with the Director of the Master of Health Administration program, Brenda Sheingold.

On September 16, Rising Healthcare Leaders at Mason (RHLM), a Mason Registered Student Organization (RSO), hosted its first in-person networking event since March 2020. The graduate student leadership team in the Department of Health Administration and Policy (HAP) worked to make the event a successful networking opportunity for attendees. P.J. Maddox, chair of HAP, and many HAP faculty members were present as well as alumni and students. Mark Lainoff, an Inova administrative fellow, also attended and spoke with students who were interested in pursuing an Administrative Fellowship. The event was supported by a team of volunteers from the undergraduate Health Administration program.

The president of the RHLM leadership team, Akshaya Chinnathevar Ramesh, delivered comments to thank those who attended. “Rising Healthcare Leaders at Mason is a registered student organization representing the HAP department,” said Ramesh. “Our mission is to open the platform for students to enhance their career advancement through networking and other activities, and this event is a stepping-stone toward that goal. We want to set a path for the future leadership team as well as the emerging healthcare leaders who have joined [us] in our journey.”

Brenda Helen Sheingold, director of the Master of Health Administration program, said that the event was successful thanks, in large part, to the student leadership team’s efforts to create a safe and professional environment for students and faculty to connect during the pandemic.

"The Master of Health Administration is a network-intensive degree, and students haven’t had the opportunity for face-to-face interaction with healthcare executives, the faculty, or each other for over 18 months,” said Sheingold.

All COVID safety protocols were followed at this event.

Topics

Rising Healthcare Leaders

Healthcare

Health Administration

Inova

HAP Faculty

HAP Alumni

Department of Health Administration and Policy

Student Spotlight

CHHS News

Mason statistics researchers help plan and analyze a study on COVID-19 prevalence in children in Northern Virginia

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:00:11 +0000

Mason statistics researchers help plan and analyze a study on COVID-19 prevalence in children in Northern Virginia Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/24/2021 - 15:00

In This Story

Jiayang Sun

Brett Hunter

Scott Bruce

Inova Children’s Hospital, the Virginia Department of Health, and the College of Engineering and Computing joined forces last summer to conduct a COVID-19 antibody study to analyze the incidence of COVID-19 in Northern Virginia’s children.

The overall antibody positive rate in children was 8.5 percent.

Mason’s Department of Statistics experts collaborated in the design of the testing protocol. They also helped analyze the data to determine how many children have had COVID-19.

This was a public service project, says Jiayang Sun, chair of the Department of Statistics and the Bernard J. Dunn Eminent Scholar. “It is an excellent, comprehensive study that considered multiple factors to systematically assess the seroprevalence in the diverse population of the area’s children. I am pleased with the quality of data and that our statisticians were involved, early, starting in the design stage of a study versus those only after the data had been collected.”

Scott Bruce, an assistant professor of statistics, says, “The timely and valuable findings from this project are due to the outstanding partnership among the healthcare professionals, government agencies, and statistics researchers involved in this project. More efforts like this are needed to produce high-quality data and analysis that will continue to build our understanding of this disease and inform strategies for mitigating the risk of infection among children and between children and adults.”

“We considered multiple factors, including age, living conditions, types of antibody tests, the CDC’s recommendation on orthogonal testing, and the data collection sites, which are correlated with population characteristics,” says Brett Hunter, Mason’s principal investigator for this project and associate chair of the Department of Statistics.

The analysis of blood samples from more than 1,000 children, ages 0 to 19, found:

COVID-19 antibodies were found in 8.2 percent of white children, 5.2 percent of black children, 5.7 percent of Asian children, and 16.2 percent of children with multiple racial origins.
Children identified as Hispanic ethnicity had a 26.6 percent rate of antibody positivity.
The rate was 13.7 percent in young children (0-5 years), 7.5 percent in school-age (6-10 years), 5.1 percent in early adolescents (11-15 years), and 10.8 percent in older adolescents (16-19 years).
The majority (66 percent) of children who had antibodies had no history of symptoms of COVID-19 infection, which highlights the silent or asymptomatic infection in children, and the subsequent risk of transmission of infection to others.

When compared to an adult serology study in Virginia, which reported a COVID-19 antibody positivity rate of 4.4 percent, the pediatric positive rate is nearly double.

“The pediatric serology project unexpectedly found more children were seropositive than we had anticipated,” says Rebecca Levorson, division director for pediatric infectious diseases, Inova Children’s Hospital. “Most of these children did not have symptoms, which makes it difficult to know who may be infectious and who is not at a specific time.”

“Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population is children, and as they may represent a larger proportion of SARS-CoV-2 disease than we previously thought, we need to recognize that children will continue to be infected with and possibly asymptomatically spread this disease. As we continue to fight this pandemic, we need to consider ways to protect them and others by using the tools we have available to us, including masking, social distancing, and vaccination.”

The project is an example of new grants/projects that can be generated from a collaborative contract/award between the Department of Statistics and the Inova Health System. The contract is based on a parent UL1 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Transitional Sciences Award (CTSA) to develop new research to improve the health of individuals and the public.

Researchers in the statistics department also worked on several other COVID-related studies, Sun says. The researchers want to provide good data that can be used for the public good, as the theme of 2020 Joint Statistical Meetings advocated.

More information about this pediatric serology project can be found at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.28.21250466v1

Topics

Statistics

Department of Statistics

Inova

coronavirus; covid-19

CEC faculty research

Mason bioengineering grads invent device to improve brain and spinal surgery

Melanie Balog — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 09:00:32 +0000

Mason bioengineering grads invent device to improve brain and spinal surgery Melanie Balog Thu, 06/27/2019 - 05:00

Topics

Volgenau School of Engineering

Bioengineering

Inova

Students

Inova

Nursing students help underserved communities get their kids back-to-school ready

In This Story

Make a difference with the College of Public Health

Support the Mason Nation

Related News

Topics

Joint postdoc program develops from partnership between Statistics Department, Inova Health

In This Story

Topics

Mason Statistics Collaboration Core partners with Inova

Topics

Michelle Vassallo Honored as CHHS Alumna of the Year

Topics

Master of Health Administration alumna led effort to get 100,000 people vaccinated in just 53 days.

President and CEO of Inova Health System Shares Leadership Insights with Mason's Master of Health Administration Students

In This Story

J. Stephen Jones Encourages the Next Generation of Health Care Executives to Lead with Purpose

Topics

Rising Healthcare Leaders Making Connections at Mason

In This Story

Topics

Mason statistics researchers help plan and analyze a study on COVID-19 prevalence in children in Northern Virginia

In This Story

Topics

Mason bioengineering grads invent device to improve brain and spinal surgery

Topics