Project: Advanced Ketogenic Therapy Education for Caregivers

As a member of the KetoGator team, I am responsible for data collection and entry of our patients and I will soon be responsible for a new initiate. I am also responsible for education material for caregivers during pre-initiation education, and as an archiving officer, I also help to archive previous patient folders. My current project involves improving education for caregivers.

Other Roles: KetoCarn, Education & Archive Officer

Semester Joined: Fall 2007

Major: Dietetics

Future Plans: Graduate School/Law School

Project: TBA

As a member of the KetoGator team, I am excited to serve as a support system for our patients and their families. Currently I am a KetoBuddy to two patients. To fulfill this role, I create assessments of the patient’s progress and in constant contact with family. In addition, I help keep the databases updated, entering and auditing information concerning the anti-epileptic medication scores, anthropometrics, seizure frequencies, ketone levels, and other values that might be of interest. I am also an active member on the food database team as well as KetoCarn. I hope to start a personal project soon, possibly examining the process of weaning AEDs on diet.

Other Roles: KetoCarn, Food Database Team, Biohazard Officer, Newsletter & Interview Officer

Semester Joined: Fall 2008

Major: Engineering

Future Plans: Medical School

Project: Relationship of Seizure Score to Diet Prescription

Currently I am a KetoBuddy to 1 patient. I make weekly phone calls to check on the families and ensure my patients are following the diet. This communication is vital to ensuring the diet’s success – the more comfortable a family is with the process, the more likely they are to comply. Aside from maintaining constant patient contact, I work with the drug database for the team and the patient families. This database contains hundreds of common medications, from Cold and Allergy to Antibiotics, and their carbohydrate content. Because our patients need to limit their carbohydrate intake, it is important to know how many carbs are in everything they consume. I plan to use this information in the drug database to help investigate the effect of non-dietary sources of carbohydrates (such as medications) and their role in seizure control.

Other Roles: Hardware/Software Officer, Interview Officer, & Newsletter

Semester Joined: Fall 2007

Major: Microbiology and Cell Science

Future Plans: Medical School

Project: Development of Seizure Score for Use in Ketogenic Therapy

I have been on the KetoGator team for about a year now. My job as KetoBuddy to three pediatric epileptic patients involves serving as a liaison between the medical staff and patient family, keeping in touch with the patient, tracking and analyzing the patient’s progress on the Ketogenic Therapy, creating new meals for the patients, and supporting the family with administering the therapy. I track my patient’s progress on the therapy. I am the editor of the newsletter, which is sent out quarterly throughout the year. As interview officer, I am responsible for checking the email and processing applications for the next interview session. For the Investigators, I am an IG performance officer to track the members weekly hours and attendance. I am also a member of KetoCarn, a hybrid group composed of Ketogators and Carnitine members that focuses on the scientific aspect of the therapy. In KetoCarn, I am in the Seizure/Med Score baby group. I am working on generating an idea for my personal project.

Other Roles: Interview Officer, Newsletter, IG Attendance Officer, & KetoCarn

Semester Joined: Fall 2007

Major: Microbiology & Cell Science

Future Plans: Medical School

Project: TBA

Currently, I am working on updating the Ketogenic Therapy section of the website to make it more family friendly and to include a recipe database and helpful hints and tricks for the diet. I am KetoBuddy to four patients that I make frequent phone calls to and offer support throughout their time on the diet. I help with making new meals for Meal Day and developing a recipe database. I am working on enhancing communication and awareness about the Ketogenic Therapy through Translational Research. I am also a Website and Archiving officer.

Other Roles: Secretary, KetoCarn, Education, Website Officer, Archiving Officer, & Food Database

Semester Joined: Spring 2008

Major: Food Science and Human Nutrition

Future Plans: Medical School

Project: Role of Protein and Carbohydrate in Ketogenic Therapy

Currently as a ketogator, I am the support system and ketobuddy to three patients. I keep constant contact with them via weekly phone calls, and see them when they come into clinic. My daily tasks include entering data from my patients, assessing their growth, diet, and overall progress on our therapy. I also assist my fellow ketogators by auditing their data entry and helping out in anyway I can. I am leader of the joint group, KetoCarn, where we present weekly journal articles about our findings and interests concerning the Ketogenic Therapy and Carnitine. I am also responsible for the food database. In this group we collect data on several hundreds of food products that our patients may be on and provide a resource for our staff and parents to go to when making meals or looking for alternative foods. I recently started my project about the inter-relationships of ketogenesis, caloric intake and growth. In order to track our patients, I update the evaluation of their diet prescription to see how it compares to the DRI requirements. I am analyzing prospective data to see how their prescribed calories compare to DRI requirements and how to create a plan of growth for their individual needs.

Other Roles: KetoCarn leader, Food Database, IRB Officer, & KetoCarn Therapy group-diet analysis/NDS

Semester Joined: Fall 2007

Major: Biochemistry and Nutritional Sciences

Future Plans: Medical school

 

As a new member, I am currently working on introductory training to create patient assessments and attend Ketogenic Therapy clinic. I am excited to become a KetoBuddy in the future.

Semester Joined: Summer 2009

Major: Biochemistry

Future Plans: Medical school

Project: Ketogenic Therapy and Supplements

I joined InvestiGators Summer 2008 and I am currently a junior majoring in Agricultural & Biological Engineering. As a member of InvestiGators, I am ketobuddy to one patient, to which I over see his well being while on the ketogenic diet. I am also part of the food database team, ketocarn, and a HIPAA officer. On a weekly basis I update our population database to keep track of data entry and auditing process for all our patients. On the side, I am working on a thesis project to see which supplements would be most beneficial in our patient’s development.

Other Roles: KetoCarn, HIPAA Officer, Thesis, & Population Database

Semester Joined: Summer 2008

Major: Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Future Plans: Medical School

Project: KetoGator Ratio: Role of Carbohydrate through the use of the Glycemic Effect

As a member of the KetoGator team, I am a KetoBuddy to three patients whom I keep in contact with through emails, phone calls, and clinic visits. One of my main roles is to care for and support my patients who are on Ketogenic Therapy by gathering data about seizures, diet prescriptions, and medications. The data I receive is inputted into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and analyzed; and in order to track their progress on the therapy, I create assessments about their progress and present them to Dr. Borum and the team during weekly team meetings. In addition to my KetoBuddy responsibilities, I am an Archiving officer, in which one of my tasks is to organize and archive patient information periodically to keep patient care efficient. As a member of the KetoCarn Therapy Components group, I work with fellow members in organizing and analyzing diet recalls we receive from our patients to be used to better assess the therapy.

Other Roles: Co-Captain, Archiving Officer, KetoCarn-Therapy Components, & Thesis

Semester Joined: Summer 2007

Major: Food Science and Human Nutrition

Future Plans: Medical School