Graduate Student Awarded Travel Scholarship

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Tricia Lee Wilkins, a Ph.D. student in the WVU School of Pharmacy, was selected as a scholarship recipient of AcademyHealth’s new Minority Scholars Program.

The Minority Scholars Program, supported by a grant from the Aetna Foundation, supports the cost of travel and registration to attend AcademyHealth’s Annual Research Meeting in Boston, Mass., in late June.

“This speaks volumes to the competitiveness and talent of our graduate students and the quality of research that they conduct,” Suresh Madhavan, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Systems and Policy, said.

Wilkins is conducting research in the Health Outcomes Ph.D. pathway in the Department of Pharmaceutical Systems and Policy under the direction of her mentor, Usha Sambamoorthi, Ph.D. The Health Outcomes pathway focuses on the results of health care treatments as they relate to the improvement of patient care and quality of life, decreasing morbidity and mortality, health policy research and cost effectiveness of treatments. Wilkins’s areas of research interest include health disparities, health resource utilization and economic evaluation.

“Tricia Lee is passionate, enthusiastic and dedicated to eliminating health outcomes disparities through knowledge, research and policy,” Dr. Sambamoorthi said. “This scholarship is a stepping stone towards achieving her long-term goal of finding research-driven policy solutions to the problem.”

-WVU-