UB’s Jacobs, Noyes honored with 2025 BTC Clinical Research Achievement Awards

Studies addressing unmet health-related social needs and the applications of robot-assisted surgeries have earned 2025 Buffalo Translational Consortium Clinical Research Achievement Awards. The annual awards recognize clinical researchers for their innovative work, their dedication to translational research, and the significance of their findings.

This is the tenth annual program for the awards, which honor outstanding accomplishments in clinical research performed at a Buffalo Translational Consortium (BTC) institution with investigators from the University at Buffalo or Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center serving as principal authors. Eligible submissions are those published or in press in a peer-reviewed journal during the calendar year of the competition.

The 2025 Clinical Research Achievement Awards Top Award recipient is David Jacobs, PharmD, PhD, Associate Professor, Division of Outcomes and Practice Advancement, Department of Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, for the study titled “Implementing a Community Health Worker Model to Address Health-related Social Needs in a Community Pharmacy Network: A Pragmatic Evaluation.” It was published in the November-December 2025 edition of the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.

Recognized as a Finalist is Ekaterina Noyes, PhD, MPH, Associate Dean for Translational and Team Science, School of Public Health and Health Professions, for the study titled “Trends in Industry Payments and Volume and Distribution of Robot-assisted Surgeries.” It was published in the May 2025 issue of Surgical Endoscopy.

Jacobs and Noyes will be recognized during a reception preceding the University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Annual Forum, held on April 16 at the Clinical and Translational Research Center. Following the awards presentation by Awards Committee Chair Anne B. Curtis, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Department of Medicine, Jacobs School, Jacobs and Noyes will present their work. 

“Innovative clinical research is being conducted throughout the Buffalo Translational Consortium,” states Curtis. “Our Clinical Research Achievement Awards highlight the most novel and impactful of these clinical research studies each year. We can see the results of this work in our community and beyond today and in the years to come.”

The BTC Clinical Research Achievement Award Top Award and Finalist presentations and reception will run from 12 to 1:50 p.m.; register here to attend.

The study earning the Top Award was led by Jacobs and Christopher Daly, PharmD, MBA, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. The study examined a statewide program that cross-trained community pharmacy personnel as community health workers to address health-related social needs. Between January and December 2023, 15 community pharmacies across New York State implemented a screening and referral process. More than 1,000 adults were screened, identifying 708 unmet social needs. The program demonstrated that pharmacy-based interventions can extend access to communities with limited healthcare infrastructure.

“This work represents an important step forward in understanding how community pharmacies can serve as accessible and trusted sites for addressing health-related social needs,” explains Jacobs. “The evidence generated from this project provides a compelling foundation for policymakers and health systems to invest in pharmacy-based social needs programs particularly in rural and under-resourced communities.”

Jacobs credits the dedication of the study team members for the project’s success.

“From the pharmacy facilitators on the ground to our academic and community partners, this program succeeded because of a shared commitment to advancing pharmacy’s role in addressing social determinants of health.”

The Noyes study addressed how financial incentives impact physicians’ adherence to clinical guidelines and their decision making. Using existing publicly reported data, investigators examined the effect of industry payments on utilization of robot-assisted surgery including applications where the surgery is recommended and not recommended by clinical guidelines.

“Our study identified significant risks associated with the current physician payment practices common among surgical device companies,” Noyes explains. “We demonstrated that industry payments could amplify significant biases impeding equitable access to emerging high value surgical technologies.”

Noyes calls the awards recognition “incredibly encouraging,” and says it provides motivation to continue pursuing translational collaborative research.

“On behalf of our cross-disciplinary team, I would like to express our deepest gratitude to the BTC, the committee and to the colleagues whose support made this work possible,” she says. “I am especially excited that this project was conceived and led by a talented and creative team including UB students (Taylor Brophy, who was a medical student at the time, and Joseph D. Boccardo, PhD candidate in biostatistics); a faculty mentor from the School of Public Health and Health Professions (Ajay Anand Myneni, PhD, MPH); and a clinician from Jacobs School (Steven D. Schwaitzberg, MD).”

CTSI Director Sanjay Sethi, MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Research, Jacobs School, says the awarded studies for 2025 are examples of the types of impactful research happening across the BTC.

“The studies from Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Noyes have the potential to change healthcare in Western New York and far beyond,” Sethi says. “This is significant work, and we are proud to see it happening here in the Buffalo Translational Consortium.”

For a complete list of past BTC Clinical Research Achievement Awards honorees, see the CTSI website.