Dr. Alan Schmetzer, IUSM, is the recipient of the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). He received the award this spring during the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New York City and was among 16 other mental health-care professionals nationwide to receive the honor. “Exemplary psychiatrists are caring professionals who go the extra mile to help their communities,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, acting national executive director of NAMI. “They share our commitment to improve the quality of life for people living with brain disorders, ensuring dignity, raising public awareness and working to increase access to needed treatment and services.” Schmetzer, who specializes in the treatment of chemical dependencies and psychiatric emergencies, is superintendent of the LaRue D. Carter Memorial Hospital. The 2004 NAMI awards went to practitioners for developing or directing innovative training programs which demonstrate consumer and family-driven best practices.

Hacker

As part of a move toward increased IT support and better access to research facilities for IUPUI students, staff, faculty and researchers, Thomas Hacker has joined University Information Technology Services as an associate director for the research and academic computing (RAC) division. He will be communicating university-wide regarding IT services, identifying the resources needed to accomplish major initiatives and leading in the development and implementation of those initiatives, and helping to set technology standards and policies. He is also charged with managing and measuring the quality of RAC services, such as high-performance computing, hardware, and software support, through means such as the UITS customer survey. He was formerly at University of Michigan as assistant director of the Michigan Center for Grid Research and Infrastructure Development, where he helped lead an effort to develop a campus-wide grid computing infrastructure. He also served as systems project coordinator for the Center for Advanced Computing.

Dr. Anna Sagoyan, a second-year resident in family practice at IUSM, will be going to the Republic of Georgia to participate in an international medical relief effort. She is making the trip by way of winning the nationally competitive American Academy of Family Physicians scholarship. She was the only recipient of the award, which drew applicants from family practices around the United States. From Oct. 27-Nov. 6, she will be part of an international team that meets with local physicians to discuss health-care needs and to provide medical care to children in several orphanages. Sagoyan is a native of Armenia, which borders Georgia to the south, and earned her medical degree in that country at the Yerevan State Medical University. She and her family left Armenia for the United States in the early 1990s when civil war broke out in her homeland. After completing her residency, Sagoyan plans to work in a multi-specialty group, providing care for the growing Russian-Armenian community in the Indianapolis area.

Marsha Ellett, IU School of Nursing, is principal investigator for a research grant of $1.3 million from the National Institute of Nursing Research to identify the safest insertion distance for a nasogastric tube, which is placed into the stomach through the nose to provide nutritional feeding or to remove contents from the stomach, in children. The study will provide important safety information about the best location of tubes to maximize nutrition already in place in hospitalized children. Even though there are an estimated one million tube placements in adults and children in the U.S. every year, Ellett said there are few studies researching the safe insertion and placement of these tubes in pediatric patients. “Past preliminary studies show that between 21 percent and 44 percent of nasogastric tubes are placed incorrectly in children, which increases the rate of aspiration, pneumonia and, on occasion, death,” Ellett said. Co-investigators are Joan Austin, IU Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Enhancing Quality of Life in Chronic Illness; Mervin Cohen, professor and chair, Department of Radiology, IUSM; Joseph Croffie, gastroenterologist and professor, IUSM; Susan Perkins, biostatistician, IUSM; and Jo Ellen Rust, clinical nurse specialist, Clarian Health Partners.

Joanne Martin has been appointed director of the school’s Institute for Action Research in Community Health (IARCH). The mission of IARCH is to develop and support community research that can be used to shape public policy and build community resources. “My goal is to develop the program so that university faculty, researchers, student and community leaders work together as partners to address public health needs,” Martin explained. “IARCH will provide an infrastructure to facilitate this collaboration. I believe community leaders and members have invaluable insights and perspectives that can inform health-related research. By partnering, we can learn from each other and apply our collective talents to address important public health needs.” In February, she was recognized by Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan for her work with the Healthy Families Indiana program. Martin oversees HFI’s Training & Technical Assistance Project, which includes an annual budget of $1.2 million to support staff at 56 sites serving all 92 counties in the state. Modeled on Healthy Families America, a national program to prevent child abuse, Indiana is one of two states in the nation credentialed to meet that program’s stringent standards. She is also co-founder of the Maternity Outreach Mobilization (MOM) project, launched in 1990 to reduce the mortality rate of African-American infants in the Indianapolis area and serves on the executive committee for the Indiana State Department of Health, which has developed and is implementing a three-year, statewide plan for community health improvement.

David Handel is the new director of SPEA’s Master of Health Administration program. He will have responsibility for helping strengthen the MHA program, teaching and building alliances with health care organizations in Indiana. He has 36 years of experience in the health-care industry, most recently as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Clarian Health Partners.

William Bradford of the IU School of Law-Indianapolis traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, in July as an ambassador for the Miami, when tribal representatives sought international support and new strategies for their struggle for federal recognition as an Indian nation. He accompanied Brian Buchanan, chief of the Miami Nation of Indians of the State of Indiana, and John Dunnagan, vice chief and tribal historian, to the 22nd annual meeting of the United Nations’ Working Group on Indigenous Populations. The trip marked the first time the Miami, headquartered in the Hoosier city of Peru, have been invited to attend sessions of a U.N. subcommittee focusing on securing human rights for indigenous peoples worldwide. While the Miami were invited strictly as observers of the WGIP meeting, they eagerly anticipated the opportunity to “listen and learn” in hopes of garnering international support for and developing new strategies for resolving conflicts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bradford teaches international law, federal Indian law, property and national security/foreign relations law. About 5,500 Miami live in the U.S., Buchanan said. Almost half live in Indiana, residing in 60 of Indiana’s 92 counties.

Petronio

Sandra Petronio, communication studies, is the author of Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure, which has won the inaugural book award from the International Association for Relationship Research. Her book also received the National Communication Association’s 2003 Gerald R. Miller Award. In 2002, she received the NCA Bernard Brommel Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Service in Family Communication. The book offers a practical theory for why people make decisions about revealing and concealing private information. Boundaries of Privacy taps into everyday problems in personal relationships, health concerns and work to investigate the way people manage their private lives. Her book serves as a guide to understanding why certain decisions about privacy succeed while others fail. Petronio has focused on applied research in interpersonal, family and health communications. She is one of the few in her discipline who has developed her own theoretical model for practical applications of communication studies scholarship. Known as the theory of communication privacy management, it is the culmination of a 22-year research effort that addresses issues of how individuals regulate the disclosure of personal and private information in various contexts and relationships. She has integrated her interests in privacy management with health and well-being concerns. This has resulted in a particular focus recently on privacy issues for people with HIV/AIDS, which is detailed in another book, Privacy and Disclosure of HIV/AIDS in Interpersonal Relationships: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners.