Scholarly Pairings for Academic & Research Collaboration (SPARC)

Melissa Arthur, PhD, LMFT, recently completed her doctoral work in Counseling Education at the School of Education at Syracuse University. Dr. Arthur has worked as the behavioral scientist at St. Joseph's Hospital Family Medicine Residency for over a decade and a half, but began doctoral studies in 2005. Through the SPARC program, then-Ms. Arthur was hired to help develop and evaluate the Integrated Standardized Patient Evaluation (ISPE) that was developed for use in the Family Medicine Clerkship. This work was presented as a poster at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) annual meeting in Montreal, Quebec in November, 2009, and several manuscripts are presently in production. Dr. Arthur also participated in a paper that was recently accepted for publication by the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, with Co-authors Dr. Morley, Flad, Manyon, and others.

Armin Arasheben, M.D. just completed his Family Medicine resident at the St. Joseph's Hospital Family Medicine Residency in 2011. In addition to his interests in primary care, Dr. Arasheben is interested in sports medicine, and particularly in the care of elite athletes. Dr. Arasheben is presently working on a literature review and meta-analysis on the effects of elite athletic competition by females on bone mass density and other metabolic outcomes with Ms. Barzee and Dr. Morley. The first paper from this work was presented as a poster at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) annual meeting in Seattle, Washington in November, 2010, and was recently accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

Dr. Alevtina Durmashkina recieved her medical education and specialty training as a pediatrician at Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy in Russia, as well as a PhD in pediatrics research, before coming to the United States as an IREX Edmund G. Muskie graduate fellow. She recently completed joint masters degrees in public administration and international relations at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, focusing upon health policy. Her time in the U.S. also included an internship in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. To complete her time in the United States as a Muskie fellow, she worked as a program analyst and research intern in the Deparmtnet of Family Medicine at SUNY Upstate, where she was engaged in several of our ongoing projects and evaluation efforts, including an evaluation of a medical bariatric intervention for children in collaboration with Dr. Morley and Dr. Wendy Scinta ( http://www.weightlosscny.com/tag/wendy-scinta), and an evaluation of a chromic care model implementaion for diabetes in collaboration with Dr. Morley and the Family Health Network of CNY. She also worked on an extension of her doctoral work. Several of these projects have been submitted for presentation at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) in 2011, and are being developed into journal submissions. We look forward to multnational collaboration in the near future. Thanks, Dr. Durmashkina!

Lindsey Kingston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Webster University. She is a recent alum of the Social Science Program at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Dr. Kingston's primary research interest is in examining the effects of statelessness on the rights - and lives - of people around the globe. As a SPARC Graduate Research Associate, Dr. Kingston lead and co-authored a debate-format manuscript addressing the effects of statelessness and lack of nationality upon access to healthcare, as a collaborative effort between faculty in the Department of Family Medicine, and with Professor Elizabeth F. Cohen at the Maxwell School. This manuscript was presented at the 2010 Western Political Science Association annual meeting, and was subsequently published in the journal BMC International Health and Human Rights. The paper was also presented at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) annual meeting in Seattle, Washington in November, 2010. Additional collaborative ventures are being planned.

Dr. Jennifer Selvarajah graduated from medical school at the University of London, completed her Family Medicine Residency Training in the United Kingdom, and is an Associate of The Royal College of General Practitioners. She spent several months working on project with faculty at SUNY Upstate, including great work on the Genetic Psychiatry Cohort. Dr. Selvarajah was accepted into the Psychiatry Residency Program at SUNY Upstate, where she began in July, 2010. Good Luck, Dr. Selvarajah!

Mary Grace Flaherty, M.A., M.L.S, is a doctoral student at the School of Information Studies of Syracuse University.  She has experience working in academic, medical research, and public libraries.  As a SPARC associate, Ms. Flaherty worked closely within a collaboration between the Department of Family Medicine and faculty and staff from the Department of Pediatrics at SUNY Upsate Medical University, and specifically with Dr. Nienke Dosa and Kim Garver, MSW. Ms. Flaherty recently performed a chart review study over the summer of 2009, looking at information sharing patterns, and preferences, and health status of 130 adult patients at The Spina Bifida Center run by Dr. Dosa. This work was presented as a poster at the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) annual meeting in Seattle, Washington in November, 2010 by Dr. Dosa, with Ms. Flaherty and others as co-authors. Ms. Flaherty also helped to write research protocols to be implemented in the near future for the Healthy Transitions Training Institute.

Ana Villarreal is a graduate of the University of Rochester (2009) with a BA in Economics and History, and is currently attending Syracuse University as a dual-Masters Student in Public Diplomacy (MA- International Relations, MS- Public Relations). She has specific interests in Global Health Communications, as well as in Water and Sanitation Issues. Ms. Villarreal is currently working as a research intern and SPARC associate in the Department of Family Medicine examining factors that influence medical student interest in future global health practice and, more generally, in medical idealism. Additionally, she is working with Dr. Morley to design a potential study of water quality and health effects within the Central New York region.

Natalie Jones is a graduate of Syracuse University (2010) with a BS in Biology and minor in Psychology. Natalie is currently a first-year graduate student in the CNYMPH program. She is working in the Department of Family Medicine as a research intern, generally helping examine disparities in health workforce distribution and training programs to ameliorate these disparities. She is also helping conduct two studies via SALT-Net: a) a study of Vitamin D Deficiency screening and treatment norms in regional primary care practices; and b) a study of primary care provider participation in ILINet, the NYS system for Influenza-Like Illness surveillance.