TCOM student wins first place at JPS Research and Quality Symposium
When Destinie Settlemyre got the news, she knew she was in the right place doing the right thing. Settlemyre, a rising third-year student with the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine won first place in the Original Research Poster competition at the JPS Research and Quality Symposium. Her poster, “Assessing Social Determinants of Health in Women of Reproductive Age and Exploring Community Resource Solutions,” was top in a competition that featured 117 entries.
“The outpouring of support and praise I got from my friends, peers and faculty was so amazing because it really showed how much of a community TCOM is,” Settlemyre said. “The best word I can use to describe the news of being awarded top poster is ‘affirming.’ It affirmed that I am in the right place, doing the right thing, for the right reasons and that what I’m doing matters and has the potential to really spark change, especially when I carry it into my future practice.”
Working with Marie Crompton, DO and Didi Ebert, DO, MPH, MS, CPPS, FAAFP, from The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth’s HSC Health Clinic, her project focused on the prevalence of social needs in women of reproductive age. Settlemyre especially wanted to look at this group because women have been identified as a population that is vulnerable to the negative effects of poor social determinants of health.
Settlemyre had plenty of other TCOM colleagues joining her in being recognized at the symposium. TCOM students Matthew Biggerstaff, along with Jonathan Sweeney and Caleb Reagor, finished in a tie for second place in the competition. Their poster was entitled “Phenotype of Pacing-Induced Heart Failure in Lean and Obese Ossabaw Swine.”
Biggerstaff and his classmates wanted to better understand the disease, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. HFpEF makes up roughly half of all cases of heart failure, is strongly associated with obesity and its related comorbidities and is notoriously difficult to treat — the survival rate is poor.
“I simply feel honored that Dr. Jonathan Tune, Dr. Gregory Dick and Cooper Warne have allowed me and my colleagues Jonathan Sweeney and Caleb Reagor to participate in such interesting and meaningful research and gain hands-on experience that we can use to better care for our patients one day,” Biggerstaff said.
In addition, TCOM students Guntash Khasria, Saqeeb Ali and Alex Thomas won third place in the Top Case Study Gallery for their poster “A 55-year-old male with intractable hiccups and vomiting.”
Their work focused on a patient who presented as an atypical case of acute kidney injury. The purpose of this case study was to highlight the importance of taking a detailed history and taking into consideration alternative risk factors a patient presents with when considering diagnosis and management.
“It has been a great honor to have won an award at JPS Research symposium,” Khasria said. “This was my first time preparing a research poster and it was a great learning opportunity. I do not want to take solo credit for this achievement. I would also like to thank and congratulate my colleagues, Saqeeb Ali and Alex Thomas, who helped put the poster together.”
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