First eminent scholar chair filled at the College of Pharmacy

Dr. Abraham G. Hartzema, an internationally renowned scientist and co-editor of the leading textbook in the field of pharmacoepidemiology, has accepted the first eminent scholar position at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy.

The $1.6 million Perry A. Foote, Ph.D., eminent scholar chair in health outcomes research and pharmacoeconomics was funded by contributions and state matching gifts collected over the past 13 years.

The chair was named in honor of the late Perry Foote Sr., who had a 62-year relationship with the college as an educator, researcher, dean and dean emeritus. Foote served as the school’s second dean from 1949 until he retired in 1968. He died in 1998 at the age of 98.

The eminent scholar chair will enable the college to develop its existing program in pharmaceutical outcomes research, a field in which scientists compare the effectiveness and cost for a variety of treatments for a disease.

“Hartzema brings his expertise and experience in this field, as well as in pharmacoepidemiology, which applies epidemiologic approaches to studying the use, effectiveness, value and safety of pharmaceuticals,” said Richard Segal chairman of the department of health care administration.

Hartzema’s affiliation with the college will add even more to the international presence that it has established in investigating drug therapy systems. He will be active in the college’s continuing efforts to reduce preventable drug-related complications by developing improved systems for prescribing and administering medicine.

“Drugs play an increasingly important role in health care,” Hartzema said. “They are the most prescribed treatment, are among the most effective means of treatment and are the most cost-effective treatment we know.

We must continue to study their effects on patients to ensure that the medication reaches the therapeutic objectives, that it does what it is supposed to do to.”

Hartzema comes to UF from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was on the faculty for nearly 20 years in the schools of Pharmacy and Public Health. At UF, he will continue to focus on health outcomes research in the elderly and on pharmacoeconomics, evaluating the costs and consequences of the behavior of individuals, firms and markets relevant to the use of pharmaceutical products, services and programs.

“The college has wrestled with questions such as why medicines fail to reach their therapeutic objectives and how such failures can be avoided,” Segal said. “Hartzema studies patterns and trends of illness on populations of people such as those treated for sepsis, a state of having toxins in the blood, or bleeding events in patients who have had a heart attack and are treated with tPA versus streptokinase.”

Hartzema said he accepted the position “because of the honor attached, especially one named after such an outstanding and widely recognized leader in pharmacy education as the late Dean Perry Foote. His name adds prestige and wide name recognition to the chair,” Hartzema said. “As well, being an eminent scholar means professional growth because I will have significant resources to build an outstanding program.”

Among the 82 colleges of pharmacies in the United States, UF’s college is ranked seventh by U.S. News & World Report. William H. Riffee, dean of the College of Pharmacy, noted that “the productivity of the scholar over the years will help our national stature and will allow us to become even more research intensive.”

In research spanning nearly two decades, Hartzema has generated more than $11 million in contract and grant funding as a principal or co-principal investigator, and published more than 50 refereed articles, four books and numerous research reports.

Hartzema received his doctor of pharmacy at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands; a master of science in public health at the University of Washington; and a doctor of philosophy in social and administrative pharmacy at the University of Minnesota.