HOPE Center training unit closes after nearly 25 years
Amy Grizzle, Jason Hurwitz, and Lynne Mascarella say goodbye after a long affiliation with the HOPE Center. After many years of developing and offering training programs in the health outcomes space, the Center for Health Outcomes & PharmacoEconomic Research (HOPE Center) training unit will close effective January 17, 2024.
The HOPE Center provided a variety of training opportunities for thousands of colleagues in pharmacy, academia, managed care, and other settings. For nearly 25 years, the Center became well known for its annual 4-day Training Program in Health Outcomes and Pharmacoeconomic Research held in Tucson. As COVID restrictions impacted the live in-person program, the training team successfully retooled content for virtual delivery with the final programs delivered in September and October 2023.
The HOPE Center also offered programs in advanced modeling and meta-analysis for those wanting to dive deeper. In earlier years, the HOPE Center hosted the “January Conference,” bringing together colleagues from industry, managed care, health plans, and academia to network and focus on current issues. Other training opportunities included customized programs and self-paced module subscriptions for pharmaceutical companies. The training programs were taught by HOPE Center faculty and COP graduates from the BS, PharmD, MS, and PhD programs. The core HOPE Center training team included Amy Grizzle, PharmD, Jason Hurwitz, PhD, and Lynne Mascarella, MEd.
Amy received her PharmD from the UArizona College of Pharmacy and then completed a two-year pharmacoeconomic fellowship. After seven years in the pharmaceutical industry, she returned to the College and HOPE Center as Associate Director. In addition to developing and overseeing the training programs, Amy’s research efforts at the Center have included cost-effectiveness analyses and estimating the cost of Valley fever in Arizona. Amy enjoyed guest lecturing in both graduate and undergraduate programs as well as mentoring PharmD projects and rotation students. Amy has been in leadership at the HOPE Center for just shy of 25 years and has loved working with all the health outcomes faculty and graduate students.
Jason started as a Research Scientist at the HOPE Center in 2008. Shortly after, he completed a two-year PhRMA Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Health Outcomes Research, and later worked jointly as a Research Associate with the College of Education before finally becoming Assistant Director at the HOPE Center. Jason helped develop and teach much of the content in HOPE Center training programs since 2009 in addition to conducting health economic and outcomes research (HEOR). He also taught a course on research methods, data analysis, and statistics to HOPE Center Post-Graduate Fellows and UA Health Sciences clinical faculty.
Lynne joined the HOPE Center in 1995 to orchestrate conferences and training programs after 15 years of planning medical conferences. As demand grew in the College to deliver other types of programs and oversee ACPE continuing education accreditation, Lynne became Director of Continuing Education for the College but continued to work closely with the HOPE Center. She later added Alumni Affairs to her responsibilities organizing alumni, homecoming, scholarship, student, and some development activities. She retired in 2020 and returned to work again solely with HOPE Center training efforts as Coordinator, Training and Operations where she handled accreditation activities, program management, contracts, and assisted in developing online teaching techniques for web-based training programs.
The HOPE Center training team is grateful for the opportunity to meet and educate thousands of colleagues in health outcomes and to work with accomplished COP faculty and graduates. After January 17, they are leaving the University but can continue to be reached at: