Faculty Experts

More than 750 older Americans are hospitalized every day due to severe side effects from their medications. Many of them will die prematurely as a result. In this episode of Driven to Discover, host Laurie Kaiser talks to pharmacy researcher David Jacobs about the systemic failures in our health care system driving this alarming trend, and how he and other members of an interdisciplinary initiative called Team Alice are working to reverse it. Jacobs recounts the story of Alice Brennan, the vibrant, 88-year-old woman for whom Team Alice is named; explains how the team has grown over the years to involve researchers from across the university as well as the greater community; and shares what individuals can do now to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from medication-related harm.

A love of food led Danielle Meyer to become a dietitian. The joy of giving a cancer patient permission to eat ice cream led her to become a board-certified specialist in oncology nutrition. In this episode, she dispels common myths about trendy diets, superfoods, the sugar/cancer connection and more, and gives us all permission to eat chocolate cake for dinner if that’s what the day calls for.

Patricia Logan-Greene discovered her passion for social work after volunteering at a rape crisis center. Now she’s co-leading a national initiative aimed at giving social workers the tools to tackle firearms, the No. 1 killer of children and teens in the U.S. In this episode, she explains why she thinks social workers are uniquely positioned to reduce firearm deaths in America.

Working as a bouncer during college, Mark Frank found he could learn a lot about people by observing their gestures and expressions. Today the communications professor is a globally recognized expert on nonverbal communication who advises the FBI and the CIA. In this episode, Frank explains how he’s able to get the truth out of even the most practiced liars.