The inaugural in health On the day UIC College of Pharmacy student Kent Hanson learned he had landed the college’s inaugural health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) fellowship with Pfizer, he couldn’t contain his excitement. In the lobby of the College of Pharmacy building on Wood Street that December day, Hanson wildly pumped his fists in celebration of the news delivered by Dr. Simon Pickard, a professor in the college’s Department of Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes, and Policy (PSOP). “Look on the lobby camera and that’s what you’ll see,” says an unembarrassed Hanson, who earned his PharmD degree in 2020. “This will enable me to grow in an area I’m passionate about and one I believe informs patient care.”
E XPANDING INDUSTRY REL ATIONSHIPS Pfizer is now the third company—and the first outside of the Chicago area—to invest in a HEOR postdoctoral fellowship with UIC and its prominent Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomic Research (CPR). “Our HEOR team was looking for motivated individuals with strong technical training, and I was really impressed with the talent pool that UIC was able to attract,” says Debanjali Mitra, senior director of HEOR-Breast Cancer at New York–based Pfizer. “Industry experience at Pfizer combined with a strong curriculum and mentorship during the PhD program should provide Kent with a solid start to his career in HEOR.” As with existing HEOR fellowships at AbbVie and Takeda, Hanson and future Pfizer fellows will spend the opening year of their two-year fellowship at UIC working with CPR faculty while taking courses in biostatistics, research design, pharmacoeconomics,
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