Dr. Frank Ascione - IHSO Spotlight

As I walked around the halls of the CC Little Science Building, aka the home of the College of Pharmacy, I noticed pictures of pharmacy students from years and years ago lining the walls. Near the end of the hallway, I knocked and entered the office of Dr. Frank Ascione. Dr. Ascione was no stranger to this hall, as he completed both a bachelor (1969) and doctoral (1973) degree at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy.

After his Pharm.D from the College of Pharmacy in 1973, Dr. Ascione ventured to Washington D.C to work at the American Pharmaceutical Association as the Director of the Drug Interactions Evaluation Program. Throughout his time in D.C., though, he was continually reminded of a course he took during his pharmacy studies, “Hospital law, Environment, and Community Health.” This was a class at the School of Public Health, and as the only pharmacy student in the class he realized two important lessons:

1. Public Health and health behavior is a body of literature that was novel to him as a chemical scientist, that had incredible implications for human health.

2. There was a great need to bridge the gap between clinical pharmacy practice and public health theory.

A Micro Scientist turned Macro Scientist

This realization led Dr. Ascione to return to Ann Arbor in 1976 to complete an MPH and PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. A pharmacist with a PhD in behavioral sciences was uncharted territory, and he had the thought of forgoing the micro- focus of pharmacy to pursue the macro- science of public health. Thankfully, one of Dr. Ascione’s mentors encouraged him to be the one to bring the two fields together. This advice led him to become a professor in the College of Pharmacy for over 40 years, serving 10 of those years as the Dean of the college. Throughout those years he focused on developing the curriculum into one that trains the pharmacist to work as an integral member of both a healthcare team and the community as a whole.

Changing a Culture

After completing his term as Dean of the College of Pharmacy in 2014, Dr. Ascione became the founding Director of the UM Center for Interprofessional Education (IPE). The Center for IPE is here to help change the culture of health care from “how does my field specifically address this patient's concerns?” to “where does my field fit in the collective needs of this patient?” The center aims at achieving this goal by going to the roots of the field...the health professional schools. With 10 different health professional schools at the University of Michigan (7 of which are at the Ann Arbor campus), it is the optimal place to set the precedent for a collaborative nature of health care.

Stemming from collaborative care models set forth by the World Health Organization and the Institutes of Medicine, the Center for IPE developed a framework for developing transdisciplinary health professionals.

Currently the Center for IPE is working on improving interprofessional education by:

1. Training and motivating current faculty to prioritize interprofessional education

2. Developing courses that are taken by students across the health professional schools

3. Giving students the opportunity to explore fields of interest

Dr. Frank Ascione is but one example of the incredible leadership in interprofessional education and interdisciplinary collaboration that has stemmed from the walls of the University of Michigan. As a student, this work has not gone unnoticed, and I know the interprofessional opportunities afforded by this institution will not only serve me well in the future, but my future patients too.

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Matthew Nagy is a 2nd year masters student in the School of Public Health studying Health Behavior & Health Education. He is interested in improving childhood health disparities through research and also improving his juggling skills.