In This Section:
Girotto finds remedies for students and patients - Jennifer Girotto, pharmacy practice
Questions for new technology - Gerald Engels, computer science & engineering

Pediatric pharmacist seeks improved drug treatments for children

Even as she spends most of her time teaching UConn pharmacy students about pediatric drug therapies, Jennifer Girotto ’00 (PHR), ’02 Pharm.D. is seeking to improve drug therapy management for children with infectious diseases by conducting a number of research studies, including skin and ear infections.

Photo by Lanny Nagler

In one recent retrospective study she looked at groups of children who were admitted to children’s hospitals with skin and soft tissue infections, mostly abscesses.

Typically, the infection is drained and treated with intravenous antibiotics. Girotto and her fellow researchers wanted to know if initial therapy with a powerful antibiotic like vancomycin was associated with a difference in outcome if given within the first 48 hours of treatment.

Her preliminary research showed that using a powerful antibiotic or combinations of antibiotics was not associated with a differerence in the first 48 hours, suggesting that the empiric use of such powerful antibiotics may not be needed. Instead, drainage combined with more traditional antibiotics may be more appropriate.

“The concern is that if you go to the big drugs with everybody, you’re going to encourage resistance to certain antibiotics and not have them for infections that you really need them,” Girotto says of the study that was presented in September 2007 at the Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group meeting.

Her research into the subject is timely because skin and soft tissue infections have often been associated with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus.

A specific resistant form of this bacteria, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was associated with the “superbug” scare that caused worry last year in Connecticut.

Girotto also conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate different antibiotics as single antibiotic therapy options for empiric treatment of neutropenia with fever in children.

This study, which was presented at an American College of Clinical Pharmacy meeting, showed no difference between the two commonly used agents ceftazidime and cefepime when compared to other therapies and, more importantly, when they were compared to each other.

Girotto says as a student she thought of research as “a daunting prospect” even as she developed a passion for it.

“Doing undergraduate research helped me develop self-confidence and the ability to look at some outcomes,” she says. “I remember being very excited being able to work on a research project from start to finish and then to see it published.”

Now, as a teacher, when Girotto determined that she would not be able to meet with the students who wanted to enroll in her pediatric pharmacy class during her maternity leave this past spring semester, she arranged an online course in order to maintain a continued level of involvement with them.

“Pediatric pharmacy is my passion and I want to be able to give that back to the students,” says Girotto, assistant clinical professor of pharmacy practice in the School of Pharmacy and a clinical specialist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

“I didn’t want the students to miss out because of my maternity leave, so in working with other people, we found a creative way to make sure they got the experience.”

After graduating from UConn, Girotto completed her residency in pediatric pharmacy at Children’s Hospital in Boston.

As luck would have it, as she was finishing her residency, UConn was seeking a new specialist in pediatric pharmacy.

Girotto, a board certified pharmacotherapy specialist, was named 2005 Pharmacist of the Year by the Connecticut Society of Health-System Pharmacists, for which she previously served as president.

— Alix Boyle

Gerald Engel's students connect computer science
with professional ethics

Photo by Peter Morenus

Whether you are buying the most up-to-date digital camera or striving to become an overnight expert on the latest and greatest computer program, you’ll inevitably find that, before long, you’ve fallen behind the times.

But understanding how to operate updated digital gadgets is not the only concern surrounding new technology that seems to emerge each week.

Along with every version of a computer program or hi-tech device, a new and unfamiliar ethics issue often surfaces.

For Gerald Engel, Leonhardt Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UConn’s Stamford campus, staying ahead of these issues and knowing how to handle them is essential for today’s computer science students.

He teaches a course focused on the social, ethical and professional issues of computer science and engineering, also addressing issues of public policy.

Engel initiates discussions among his students about real-world ethical scenarios, urging them to explore how technology and ethics intersect.

“Tell me what field the computer hasn’t influenced,” he says.

“The computer affects everything we do. If we don’t have some knowledge of what’s going on with it, we’re in trouble.”

Students initially might doubt the value of such debates, says Engel, recalling the weeks before the 2000 U.S. presidential election, when he asked his students to consider what role technology could play in the voting process.

His questions: How might computers be used in an election? Should they be used to count votes? What would the implications be?

“The comment from the students was, ‘None of this is real. None of this ever happens’,” Engel recalls.

Yet when controversy erupted in Florida over the election results, which included electronic voting, a divisive recount process and a U.S. Supreme Court decision, the resulting media frenzy sparked further discussion among his students that lasted through much of the semester.

“That’s one of the exciting things about teaching this class,” Engel says. “You read the newspaper in the morning, and sure enough, there’s something there.”

Debates surrounding the use of electronic voting persist today, but the ethical and social implications and security concerns of employing computer technology also reach into many other realms.

Engel seems to be supplied with limitless ethics questions for his future computer science professionals. There often are no clear-cut solutions to the dilemmas Engel proposes.

“Probably the most interesting questions to me, and the most difficult problems for the students, are those that simply do not have an answer,” he says.

One of the topics he covered this past semester focused on whether Internet access should now be considered a basic human right.

“Is it necessary to provide Internet access, including necessary equipment, to all citizens?” he asked his students.

“Is it necessary to ensure low-cost access to high-speed Internet service? If the answer to these questions is no, then how do you adequately address the questions of the digital divide?”

Ultimately, Engel wants his students to consider the potential consequences of their decisions in a wide range of hypothetical scenarios.

“It will be the obligation of these students, as citizens and as professionals, to inform the public debate on such issues,” he says. “Where’s the line, and how do you decide these things? That’s what I try to bring out.”

— Stefanie Dion Jones ’00 (CLAS)