Bero’s history of mentorship recognized with Luft and Academic Senate awards

Lisa Bero, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member, is the recipient of two inaugural UCSF awards for outstanding mentorship. She is the first recipient of the Harold S. Luft Award for Mentoring in Health Services and Health Policy Research and the 2008-2009 UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Mentoring Award, Category 2 for faculty members at the rank of full professor.

Luft Award

The Luft award was established in 2008 in honor of Harold S. Luft, PhD, Caldwell B. Esselstyn Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Health Economics, who served as director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies from 1993 to 2007 and who has been an exemplary mentor committed to training future health services and health policy leaders. The institute now carries his name. Among the criteria for the Luft award, recipients must "expand mentees' ways of thinking by fostering an appreciation of different points of view".

Academic Senate Award

The 2008-2009 UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Mentoring Award is given by faculty, to faculty to celebrate and inspire excellence in mentoring, which is essential to faculty success and institutional excellence. History of Accomplishment and Mentorship

Bero is a professor in the pharmacy school's department of clinical pharmacy and department vice chair for research. She is also a member of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies in the UCSF School of Medicine. She is well known for her assessments of bias in scientific research and publications, measurements of influences on the quality of research, how research is disseminated, and the policy implications of research evidence. Bero teaches a core course on critical appraisal of the medical literature for pharmacy students and lectures across campus on topics including meta-analysis, research translation, and tobacco control policy. She has designed and implemented a curriculum that examines the influences of pharmaceutical industry marketing.

On the international stage, Bero is an advisor to the World Health Organization Drug Action Programme as a member of the WHO Essential Medicines Committee and a member of the Pan American Health Organization Advisory Committee on Health Research. She is co-director of the San Francisco Branch of the United States Cochrane Center and an editor for the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group. This international group of researchers conducts meta-analyses of the literature on interventions aimed at getting research into practice.

While working to ensure the quality of research and its interpretation worldwide, Bero works to ensure the success of those who are her academic juniors at UCSF. "Lisa epitomizes the ultimate mentor, providing opportunities for countless junior faculty members, fellows, and students to develop their research tools," comments Joe Guglielmo, PharmD, chair of the department of clinical pharmacy. "We are enormously proud of her many, long-standing mentoring accomplishments."

Bero will receive the Academic Senate award on April 8, 2009 at 12 noon during an awards ceremony in Cole Hall on the UCSF Parnassus campus. The Luft award was presented on March 31, 2009 during a special ceremony at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the UCSF Laurel Heights campus.