South Carolina AHEC News & Updates

Upstate AHEC Executive Director Fay Brown will be stepping down this spring after nearly five years of service to the AHEC system.   During her time as executive director, Fay has guided Upstate AHEC to many notable accomplishments. Although the introduction of online continuing education capability was initiated by Candace Luciano, the former Upstate AHEC Center Director, Fay shepherded an era of unprecedented access through the AHEC U platform to quality online enduring professional development opportunities. AHEC U saw a 35 percent increase in participation during this past year alone. Fay was also instrumental in designing and overseeing the acquisition of the new Upstate AHEC office building and its state-of-the-art classroom. She also facilitated the involvement of the South Carolina AHEC in the introduction and implementation of the DHHS-sponsored Community Health Worker Program. Fay and her husband will be returning to her hometown of Nashville so the...

The 2015 South Carolina AHEC Annual Report is now available online .   The report highlights the accomplishments of the South Carolina AHEC system during the past year and features notable achievements that address the healthcare workforce needs of our state.

Cathie Storey, Coordinator of Health Services for the School District of Greenville County, has been named South Carolina Nurse Administrator of the Year by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and the South Carolina Department of Education. Mrs. Storey, who has a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Clemson University, coordinates health services for more than 90 schools and supervises 150 school nurses who provide services to Greenville County Schools’ 76,000 students.   Under her leadership, the district has reached the national average of one nurse for every 750 students. She played an integral role in securing a much-needed pay increase for nurses, and two years ago she hired four floating nurses to help cover schools when nurses are absent. “Our nurses work in an environment that’s like an emergency room with no doctor,” she said. “That is why we look for someone who can react quickly and calmly in a serious situation.” One of her greate...

Pee Dee AHEC Health Professions Students (HPS) coordinators will be working with McLeod Family Medicine Residency Program to present educational sessions to HPS students from various disciplines in 2016. HPS students who are in the area for clinical rotations will be invited to participate in interprofessional learning opportunities. Pee Dee AHEC will lead team building activities, teach concepts of interprofessionalism and provide information on a variety of healthcare topics. For any HPS student in the Pee Dee region unable to attend these sessions in person, the coordinators invite them to participate through videoconferencing technology. They can use the videoconference system to interact during the discussions with other students and presenters. For students rotating in the Pee Dee region who are interested in attending, please contact Kam Richardson or Traci Coward, Pee Dee AHEC HPS Program Coordinators, at krichard@mcleodhealth.org or tcoward@mcleodhealth.org for mo...

Sarah Owens, a native of Greenville and communications graduate of the University of South Carolina, Upstate Campus, has joined the staff of Upstate AHEC as Office Coordinator and Student Services Program Assistant. As the Office Coordinator, Sarah will manage multiple functions of the office, including facilities maintenance of the Upstate center while providing expert customer service to program participants and partners of AHEC.    Additionally, she will provide administrative and technical support services to program coordinators of the Health Careers Program and the Health Professions Students Program.  Sarah comes to Upstate AHEC after two overseas stints teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in Rome, Italy, and Ulan Bator, Mongolia.   Welcome, Sarah, to the AHEC family!   She can be contacted at sowens@upstateahec.org or 864-349-1177.

Stan Sulkowski joined the South Carolina AHEC Program Office on February 1 as the Program Manager for the Office for Telehealth Education. Stan comes to us from MUSC’s Office of Instructional Technology and Faculty Resources (ITFR), where he served as Director of Instructional Systems and helped manage the University’s learning management system, lecture capture system, and educational assessment system, among others. Before his career turned toward technology, Stan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Furman University and previously worked as a Research Associate and Educational Program Specialist in the Department of Family Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia (now Augusta University). Stan’s wife, Amy, works at MUSC in the Addiction Sciences Division and his daughter, Nadia, is turning 3 in February. When he is not in the office or spending time with his family, Stan is a part-time football fan and helps lead Charsenal, Charleston’s Official Arsenal Sup...

Since pharmacy students and preceptors joined the institute in the fall of 2015, it seemed appropriate to have January’s monthly seminar focus on the role of clinical pharmacists in the primary care setting. Dr. Scott Bragg, clinical pharmacist with the Trident/MUSC Family Medicine Residency and assistant professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcome Sciences at the South Carolina College of Pharmacy, was the speaker. Dr. Bragg brought with him Cristin Adams, DO, a current family medicine resident who was spending the month with him on a pharmacotherapy rotation. Another guest in the audience was Cecily DiPiro, PharmD, who was a certified diabetes educator for the Diabetes Ten City Challenge while she was practicing at the Prescription Center Pharmacy near Charleston. Dr. Deborah Carson, the South Carolina AHEC Associate Program Director for Education and a retired clinical pharmacy faculty member, set the stage by providing a brief history of the changes in pharmacy education and pr...