Awards & more

Eva Tansky Blum (A&S ’70, LAW ’73), a University of Pittsburgh trustee and cochair of Pitt’s $2 billion capital campaign, has been named the head of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health’s (GSPH) Board of Visitors. She also serves on the Pitt School of Law Board of Visitors and is the past president of the University of Pittsburgh Alumni Association. Blum is the senior vice president and director of community affairs for PNC Bank and president of The PNC Foundation.

Neil Resnick, Thomas Detre Professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of Geriatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Janice L. Pringle, a research professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, have been selected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for its inaugural group of Innovation Advisors. CMS began the Innovation Advisors Program to help health professionals deepen skills that would lead to improved patient care and lower costs. Its inaugural class comprises 73 advisors from 27 states and the District of Columbia. UPMC and Pitt’s School of Pharmacy will each receive a stipend of as much as $20,000 from the program to support Resnick’s and Pringle’s participation in the program.

The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) has been awarded $194,400 over three years by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to expand the participation by high school students from underrepresented groups in summer research programs. The Summer Academy prepares rising high school seniors to further their studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and to consider careers in cancer care and research.

Rachel Berger, a professor of pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and a member of the Child Protection Team at the Child Advocacy Center of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, was appointed to the Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection by Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati.

Berger is one of the leading child abuse experts in the nation. Her clinical research involves the development of the nation’s first blood test to help physicians screen infants who may be victims of abusive head trauma, sometimes also referred to as shaken baby syndrome. Abusive head trauma is the leading cause of death from child abuse and the most common cause of severe traumatic brain injury in infants.

Elaine Vitone, associate editor of Pitt Med, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine magazine, has won the Robert G. Fenley Award for Basic Science Writing from the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Institutional Advancement.

The award will be presented on March 22 in Palm Springs, Calif.