LUCOM student-doctors win first place for presentation on e-cigarette effects on the unborn

Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine (LUCOM) congratulates King Ampofo, VicLouis Arreola, and Aubrey Jackson, second-year osteopathic medical students, for their Virginia Academy of Family Physicians (VAFP) recognition on Saturday, Nov. 7. Together, they earned first place in the oral presentation category during VAFP’s first-virtual Scholarly Symposium. Their research project was titled “Two-Cell-to-Hatching-Blastocyst Development of Embryos After E-Cig Aerosol Exposure in Adult Female Beginning 3 Days Prior to Ovulation and Continuing to 2-Cell Collection”.

“The use of e-cigarettes has become increasingly popular, often viewed as a better alternative for smoking cigarettes. Investigating this topic, and more specifically how vaping affects pregnant mothers and their unborn babies, is a crucial step to help family medicine physicians (and doctors of other specialties) address this issue with their patients and make proper recommendations,” said Jackson.

During the virtual event, nine residents and 14 students presented their scholarly work — 15 of the projects were posters and eight of the projects were oral presentations.

“This project has been several years in the making under the direction of Dr. R. James Swanson. Before our team inherited it this past academic year, it was run by student-doctors Joe Carter and Kane Smith, now fourth-year medical students. Our contribution has been to expand on their research and focus on new variables in order to strengthen the overall project,” added Arreola. “It was an interesting experience to present to a camera, but we had the opportunity to interact with our audience and answer questions over Zoom which was nice. It felt somewhat normal to do things virtually and I believe that’s due in part to LUCOM’s extensive use of WebEx for learning activities that started last semester.”

Amber Fedin, DO, FAAFP, FACOFP, assistant dean of clinical education for LUCOM, serves as the co-chair for the VAFP’s Resident, Student and Faculty Committee. “The caliber of the scholarly work presented was excellent and many participants were impressed by the presentations. Several physicians who participated commented that they found the symposium to be highly educational and noted they will use what they learned to help them better care for patients in their practices.”

“Congratulations to the LUCOM students for their hard work on excellent projects. I am proud of the many ways our students are contributing to quality patient care at regional, state and national levels,” she added.

Dr. Fedin recently completed three years of service as a Director on the VAFP Board.

The following categories were presented during Saturday’s symposium: basic and biomedical sciences, clinical medicine, the future of medicine and impact of Covid-19, as well as education and preventive medicine. Acting as a judge during the symposium, one physician reviewer commented that, “The importance of this topic to Family Medicine was very well explained. The students did a nice job giving context at the beginning of their presentation about why this topic is important and how it fits into a larger topic.”

According to Mary Lindsay White, executive vice president for VAFP, there was a great response when the symposium was opened to include students and not only residents, per the normal routine to follow Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requirements. “It worked really well virtually. Through the Zoom platform, we had breakout rooms for presentations of similar subject matter, and all were very well attended. We sent out a post symposium survey and have received nearly 100% in favor of hosting another research symposium in the future.”

The mission of the VAFP is to empower its members to be physicians who provide high quality, accessible health care, dedicate themselves to the well-being of the citizens of Virginia, and are guided by the principle that the family physician remains the specialist of choice to guide lifelong health care.