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12 | Fall 2009 GAtORx
Exploring New Paths
UF Pharmacy Professor
Shares Expertise in Israel
By Alyssa LaRenzie
Though Leslie Hendeles, Pharm.D., had visited Israel three times
before, this was his first time living there on an extended stay.
Almost every evening, he set out from his Jerusalem apartment,
walking down a different path with his wife to choose a restaurant
for dinner. Far from home, Hendeles had also set out on a different
path in his career.
Time off for research or writing is common for professors taking
a sabbatical, but Hendeles took time off to teach.
Hendeles, a professor of pharmacy and pediatrics, took a break
from a group of about 1,200 Doctor of Pharmacy students at UF to
teach the eight students who make up Israel’s first Pharm.D. class
at the Hebrew University.
Though the Pharm.D. degree has become the standard to
practice pharmacy in the United States, most pharmacists in Israel
hold a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy. At UF, most students take two
years of undergraduate classes before entering a four-year Pharm.D.
program. The new program at Hebrew University involves a four-year
bachelor’s degree followed by a three-year Pharm.D. program that
also includes a research project.
The Pharm.D. program was designed to give students the
opportunity to be better clinical pharmacists — those who work in
hospitals and clinics alongside physicians.
Invited to teach for the full spring semester, Hendeles decided
to stay two months so he wouldn’t miss too much time from the
Asthma Lab at UF. His classes focused on his specialties: drugs for
asthma and allergies.
He taught for the degree program’s first class, which included
five Jews and three Arabs.
“I was really impressed with
how these Arab students and the
Jewish students were collaborative
and working together and helping
each other in the midst of rockets
being fired in the Gaza strip,” he
said.
Hendeles offered as a career
role model for the aspiring students,
since no one has yet earned a
Pharm.D. degree in Israel, said
Amnon Hoffman, the head of
the clinical pharmacy program at
Hebrew University.
During his short visit, Hendeles
became a close colleague and a
mentor in the new degree endeavor,
giving Hoffman a connection to a
university that has had a Pharm.D.
program for almost thirty years.
“It is encouraging for me to know that there is a group of
people who can help,” Hoffman said.
For Hendeles, teaching didn’t stop in the classroom. He
took his areas of expertise to Hadassah, the hospital that Hebrew
University partners with, teaching the pediatric doctors about
improving the delivery of asthma medications to children.
“The chief of pediatrics recognized that the pediatric
residents were not getting enough training from the pediatric
pulmonologists, and yet they graduate from the program and
have to go to clinics where they take care of asthma patients,”
Hendeles said. “So he saw this as an opportunity to capitalize
on me being there.”
As Hendeles has done much of his research on inhaled
asthma medications, he cued in quickly on a common problem.
In the hospital, a less effective medicine was still being used to
treat asthma and doctors often didn’t give inhaled medications for