Winter 2012 - The University of Tennessee Health Science Center

News & Events
Academics and Education
Free Health Screenings Conducted by Scholarship Recipients
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) scholarship recipients
who are first-year students in the MSN-CNL program conducted
health screenings and health education for children and adults
attending “El Festival del Día del Niño” at the Memphis Botanic
Garden on April 1, 2012. The students, along with Dr. Patricia
Cowan, teamed up with staff from CentroSalud Family Health
Center for this health promotion activity.
Each month, these scholarship recipients participate in
community-based service activities. These activities have
provided students with insight into the health care needs of
disenfranchised populations (homeless, person of color, those
living in poverty).
Nursing Student Ansley Stanfill Honored at 2012 Southern
Nursing Research Society Conference
Ansley Stanfill, RN, BSN, College of Nursing student at the University of Tennessee
Health Science Center (UTHSC), was awarded a prize for her dissertation research
at the 2012 Southern Nursing Research Society Conference, held in New Orleans,
La., in February. Stanfill’s award-winning dissertation, titled, “Dopaminergic Genetic
Contributions to Obesity in Kidney Transplant Recipients,” deals with genotyping
repository blood samples from kidney transplant recipients who gained or did not
gain weight after one year post-transplant. Salimetrics, a company that specializes
in analyzing saliva research, sponsored the award. Each award winner receives two
days of laboratory-based saliva research training at a Salimetrics Spit Camp, along
with $500 for travel expenses.
Spit Camp is a two-day session designed to assist researchers with training in the
integration of salivary measures into scientific studies. Each session combines lecture,
discussion, and hands-on laboratory experience to give attendees a basic knowledge of
oral fluids as biological specimens, proper saliva collection and handling techniques,
and the use of immunoassay techniques to measure salivary analytes. Camps are held
several times per year at the company headquarters in State College, Pa., at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and at the University of California, Irvine. Spit
Camps are also given periodically by partner labs located in the United States and by Salimetrics Europe in Cambridge,
United Kingdom.
Being sent to Spit Camp will assist Stanfill in future research endeavors because she will learn to use saliva for the extraction
of necessary DNA. This would make recruitment of subjects for future studies easier, as the collection of the DNA would
not involve a needle stick, and also possibly enhance the translational aspects of her research.
36 UT Health Science Center