Sharon Bahrych, PA-C, MPH

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  Sharon has been a PA for more than 20 years, having graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in 1987.  She has worked in a variety of adult medicine subspecialties such as hematology/oncology/BMT for 5 years, infectious diseases for 2 years, and gastroenterology/hepatology for 8.5 years. She also has experience working in family medicine while running a rural health clinic and currently works in a retail health clinic, while attending graduate school.
  
  After working at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center shortly after finishing her PA degree she found an interest in clinical research.  With this in mind, she acquired her Master’s in Public Health degree with an emphasis in community health from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston in 1994.
  
  While working at an academic medical center hospital in Denver in the GI/Hepatology Division she investigated an idea regarding using nutritional supplements in patients who were being treated for chronic hepatitis C with the FDA approved drugs of pegylated interferon 2b and ribavirin.  Over a 5.5 year time period of collecting data on > 215 patients she discovered that the patients who were on the supplements fared better with long term remission rates (75% vs 50% with those not on supplements) and also did better while on therapy (2% anemia rate vs the expected 10% rate, 10% URI rate vs the expected 50% URI rate, 2% depression rate vs 37% expected.)
  
  With her data, she and her supervising physician submitted a NIH grant asking for 1.3 million dollars.  Surprisingly, the grant was rated and she was informed to get her data published and then re-submit the grant for funding.  She’s currently working on publishing the data.
  
  Due to her success from her first NIH grant she has moved back to Houston to work on her PhD in clinical trials epidemiology at U. T. School of Public Health.  She hopes to be done with the degree by the end of 2010.  Her dissertation will be the data she submitted to the NIH.  Once she’s done with her PhD, she plans on moving back to Denver.
  
  Additionally, she has published > 60 articles in various PA publications, layman’s magazines as well as been a ghost writer for the American Cancer Society webpages.  She’s done multiple CME presentations in front of local, state and national organizations.
  
  She has won various awards including a Schering-Plough Hepatology Fellowship, and being listed in Marquis’ Who’s Who of American Women.