Moves and Milestones

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a five-year grant to the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) Physician Assistant Program and the School of Allied Health Sciences. The Physician Assistant Cancer Education (PACE) project is an initiative focusing on assessment of cancer risk, risk reduction, and risk management in targeted populations. The project is designed to ensure that PAs are prepared to deliver high-quality cancer-related care to patients.

The PACE project’s principal investigator is J. David Holcomb, EdD, director of the School of Allied Health Sciences and associate dean at BCM. PACE project coordinators are Carl Fasser, PA, director of the BCM PA program; and Laurel R. Spence, MS, PA-C, and director of maternal and child health at the PA program.

In all, seven of the Texas PA programs will participate in the PACE project. The other programs besides BCM are the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (Elvin Edward Maxwell Jr., MA, MPAS, PA-C); the University of North Texas Health Science Center (Hank Lemke, MMS, PA-C); the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (J. Dennis Blessing, PhD, PA-C); the University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston (Richard Rahr, EdD, PA-C); the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Venetia Orcutt, MBA, PA-C); and the University of Texas – Pan American (Frank Ambriz, PA-C). In years four and five, project activities will be extended to PA programs located in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Nebraska.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center PA Program will serve as the “control,” and its students will complete the same self-assessment profiles for data collection that the students in the Texas and regional programs will complete prior to and following infusion of the PACE learning modules.

For more information about PACE, please contact

Laurel Spence, MS, PA-C
Telephone: (713) 798-5411
E-mail: lspence@bcm.edu

Gerald B. Merenstein, MD, is stepping down from the position of director of the CHA/PA program at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. He will remain with the program in the position of medical director. Anita Duhl Glicken, MSW, professor of pediatrics, will serve as interim director until a permanent director is found.

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PAEA Networker's Moves and Milestones is designed to help keep members informed about their colleagues’ activities. The column features information on faculty moves and promotions and on significant changes and achievements at member programs. Examples are faculty moving to new positions within the program or elsewhere, grants received, articles or books published, a new track or satellite campus established. We also welcome curricular innovations that may not have the research basis for peer-reviewed publication but that would be of anecdotal interest to PA faculty.

If you have news you would like to share, please send it to Eileen Evans, PAEA Networker managing editor, at eevans@PAEAonline.org; (703) 548-5538, ext. 307. News must be received by the 20th of the month for inclusion in the following month’s issue.