Dr. Cheryl Wisseh has received the 2024 Athalie Clarke Achievement Award for Pharmaceutical Research!
Presented annually by UC Irvine Research Associates, the Athalie Clarke Achievement Awards Program recognizes research excellence from within each unit of the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences. This year’s event, held on June 4, 2024, was the 41st Annual Athalie Clarke Awards Ceremony.
As the awardee from the UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dr. Wisseh represents the high quality of research pioneered by our faculty.
“My overall research conceptual model looks at the relationship between the determinants of health, health of populations, and health outcomes,” she shared. “There are structural inequities, which often present as health, social, or economic policies and practices, that influence the determinants of health, which in turn shape the health of populations and lead to differential or disparate health outcomes for these same populations.”
Recently, Dr. Wisseh and her team published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Pharmacy entitled, “Associations between Diabetes-Specific Medication Regimen Complexity and Cardiometabolic Outcomes among Underserved Non-Hispanic Black Adults Living with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.” In this study, the researchers examined links between higher diabetes medication regimen complexity, medication nonadherence, and increased type 2 diabetes severity among non-Hispanic Black adults with the disease. The publication explores how prescribing practices, policies that impact patient access to effective treatment, socioeconomic limitations, and other factors can contribute to poor glycemic control and resulting health issues for people with type 2 diabetes.
“My research aims to answer the question: What is the pharmacist’s role in reducing racial and ethnic health disparities?” said Dr. Wisseh. “The funds provided by this award to support my research will contribute to an interdisciplinary, pharmacist-led intervention that has been developed from my medication regimen complexity work.”
Research funds given to the 2024 Athalie Clarke Achievement Award honorees were made possible through the support of Maggie and Ed Chang.
“As UCI School of Biological Sciences alumni who have been involved in medical device company start-ups in Orange County for over 30 years, advancing medicine to improve patient care has always been a passion for us,” Maggie Chang stated. “This ideal is what drives us to support medical research efforts at UCI through organizations like UCI Research Associates. We recognize the impact that individual researchers play in transforming the face of medicine. Avenues such as this provide our community with a means to support the advancement of medicine through science and technology in an accessible and meaningful way.”
In addition to research funding, awardees were given a crystal trophy, as well as a signed edition of Joan Irvine Smith’s A California Woman’s Story contributed by James Irvine Swinden and Morton Smith.
“It was an honor to have my work recognized at this early stage in my career. Being chosen to receive this award provided further confirmation and motivation to continue building my research program,” said Dr. Wisseh. “It was inspiring to see the great work that researchers in other schools and programs in the College of Health Sciences are doing.”
