Fusco: Named a Fellow of the National Academies of Practice and recipient of AACP SOTL Grant

Fellowship in NAP is an honor extended to those who have excelled in their profession and are dedicated to furthering interprofessional practice, scholarship and policy in support of interprofessional care. NAP consists of multiple academies representing health professions programs.

Fusco was inducted for his work in interprofessional collaboration, innovative teaching accomplishments and scholarship at the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

“The National Academies of Practice is the only interprofessional group of healthcare practitioners and scholars dedicated to supporting affordable, accessible, coordinated quality healthcare for all,” says Fusco. “Recognition as a fellow is a tremendous personal honor but also an important representation of the pharmacy profession’s commitment to interprofessional practice and education.” 

NAP 2023 Fellows were inducted at the 2023 NAP Annual Meeting and Forum held in Washington, D.C. on April 1. Fusco will also receive a certificate and medallion acknowledging his fellowship distinction. 

SOTL grants, supported by AACP and the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) provide research funding for AACP members engaged in educational research. Fusco’s SOTL grant, Preparing Health Professions Students to Address Misinformation and Vaccine Hesitancy, will build upon a previous grant from the American Association of Medical Colleges. The SOTL grant will help expand and enhance current medical information and vaccine hesitancy training programs for University at Buffalo health science students to increase their skills and comfort addressing medical information with their patients and the public.

 “We piloted this program during fall 2022 with a small cohort of fifty-one students. Our goal with this phase of the project is to recruit 240 students, with approximately 120 of those being pharmacy students, to participate in the program,” says Fusco. “Data generated from this phase of the project will inform if our interprofessional, hybrid instructional design strategy prepares students of various health professions programs to effectively address medical misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. If the project is successful, next steps will include disseminating our findings along with the educational materials through a creative commons license.”

AACP views SOTL grants as critically important to the future of the academy as they allow faculty to engage with and create new knowledge to further advance the discipline of teaching and learning.