Local

• Jan. 12: Hawthorne Middle/High School
• Jan. 31: Eastside High School
• Feb. 2: Buchholz High School (Virtual)
• Feb. 3: Gainesville High School
• Feb. 7: Newberry High School
• Feb. 9: Loften High School
• Feb. 10: Santa Fe High School

GAINESVILLE – Over 45,000 pounds of peanut butter have now been sent out to local food banks statewide following the 2021 Peanut Butter Challenge, an effort led by the Cooperative Extension offices of UF/IFAS and Florida A&M University (FAMU) in partnership with local organizations.

The annual jar collection began in the Florida Panhandle counties in 2012 as a way to combat food insecurity with a shelf-stable product while also highlighting the peanut’s Florida-grown roots. The effort expanded statewide in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when an estimated one in 10 Floridians faced food insecurity, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Participating offices rely on grassroots community support to collect jars of peanut butter from Oct. 1 until the day before Thanksgiving, after which they’re counted, bragging rights are awarded, and the jars are delivered locally.

By the numbers:

• 45,157 total poundage collected
• 35,109 total jars collected

This year’s Peanut Butter Challenge community collection alone can make over 700,000 peanut butter sandwiches! Fifty-five competitors accepted the 2021 challenge, including FAMU’s first entry and a UF campus collection for the campus food bank, the Alan and Cathy Hitchcock Field & Fork Pantry.

Many of the newcomers seemed to hit their stride, as totals increased 18,000 pounds over the first statewide competition. The top overall community collector of 2021 earned the title in only its second attempt: Levy County amassed 6,954 jars for a whopping 7,120 pounds.

“Our success this year is all thanks to our community, from the local school collections to an incredible donation from the Levy County Farm Bureau, Williston Peanut and Peanut Proud,” said Kristen Brault, who coordinated the UF/IFAS Extension Levy County collection. “We grow and process a lot of peanuts here in Levy County, and it’s rewarding to be able to give these jars right back to food banks, big and small, across our county.”

Madison County brought in an impressive haul, as well, at 6,807 pounds; other top performers include regional champions Jefferson County (Northwest, 2,237 pounds), Hardee County (Southwest, 2,000 pounds), Hernando County (Central, 1,731 pounds) and Indian River County (Southeast, 1,185 pounds).

In addition to engaging local communities, the Peanut Butter Challenge has partnered with the Florida Peanut Producers Association (FPPA) and Florida Peanut Federation (FPF) for years. These organizations, based in the northwest and northeast peanut-producing regions of the state, also contribute pallets of the nutrient-dense spread to the totals distributed to food pantries in those regions. Peanut production contributed $119 million to the state economy in 2019, according to the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service.

“The Peanut Butter Challenge makes such a simple ask – donating a jar of peanut butter – but our communities always respond in a big way,” said Libbie Johnson, UF/IFAS Extension Escambia County agriculture agent and co-organizer of the Challenge since its inception. “It’s exciting to be able to share so much of this nutritious, Florida-grown product with our neighbors who may be struggling. Thank you to everyone who donated a jar to the cause this year.”

County coordinators of the Peanut Butter Challenge also shared some success stories:

• Bay County: A. Gary Walsingham Academy collected 167 jars totaling 231 pounds.
• Calhoun County (collection in featured image, courtesy of Claire Reach): Local peanut farmer and FPPA board member Joe Tillman served as the county’s 2021 Peanut Butter Challenge Ambassador, providing a whole case of peanut butter for the first donation of the season. A large portion of the donations came from a competition within the Calhoun County school system, with all of Carr School and a few classes from Altha Public School engaging in friendly competition that added up to a total of 498 jars for 607 pounds for the county.
• Escambia County: Delivering peanut butter was a community effort, with help from two local farmers and a Master Gardener Volunteer. Representative Michelle Salzman and a local Girl Scout group delivered almost 100 jars to the Extension office. The office also had help from Commissioner Steven Barry and his daughter in kicking off the event.
• FAMU: The peanut butter was distributed to help shelves in the Tallahassee area, the FAMU campus pantry, and to local Title 1 Schools for the backpack program that sends food home with kids who need it.
• Franklin County: Maddison Whitten, a student in the Franklin County High School National Honor Society chapter, chose to lead a service project to contribute to the Peanut Butter Challenge. The school engaged in some friendly competition and collected over 800 jars of peanut butter for 1,004 pounds.
• Gulf County: Commissioner David Rich donated the first jar of the 2021 collection.
• Hernando County: Two brand new elementary school 4-H clubs used one of their first projects to design a marketing campaign to collect peanut butter in their school. They set a first-year goal of 500 jars. Using posters, word of mouth and visiting some local stores, the Pine Grove Cubs and Cloverbuds collected 700 jars of peanut butter totaling 777.75 pounds. In another mini-competition, the county government departments competed for the traveling peanut trophy. Each year, the winning department’s name will be engraved; in 2021, it’s the Hernando County Utilities Department.
• Indian River County: The county not only took in donations from the community at large, but 4-H clubs got involved in a friendly competition as well! A local citrus company donated coupons for ice cream at their farm store to the winning club. One club donated 265 pounds, with the runner-up club receiving 258 pounds. Overall, they raised five times more than last year.
• Jackson County: 4-H’er Blair brought in the first donation of the 2021 competition.
• Jefferson County: The Jefferson County Somerset Charter School donated 925 pounds of peanut butter. Mrs. Barrington’s class donated 386 pounds of peanut butter.
• Lafayette County: A local 4-H’er, whose family also grows peanuts, served as the county’s 2021 Peanut Butter Challenge Ambassador and delivered its first jar.
• Madison County: An impressive 1,450.7 pounds of the collection came from one school with just 300 students.
• Martin County: The county also got one jar of jelly donated. The donor said, “You can’t have peanut butter without jelly,” as they dropped it off.
• Nassau County: County Commissioner Thomas Ford stopped by with the first peanut butter donation.
• Okaloosa County: Sheila Fitzgerald, Okaloosa County deputy administrator, donated the first three jars to its 2021 collection.
• Orange County: A friendly 4-H competition gathered 384 jars for 650 pounds, and then members and staff helped to deliver the jars to three local organizations.
• Polk County: 180 pounds of peanut butter went to the Florida Dream Center.
• UF campus: The Alan and Cathy Hitchcock Field & Fork Pantry was out of peanut butter prior to the competition’s close, but donations were made available when the need arose. Over 250 pounds of the spread went to feed campus community members in need.

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GAINESVILLE –  Cassidy Klein, a high school English language arts teacher at the A. Quinn Jones Center, was tabbed as the recipient of the 2022 Division for Emotional & Behavioral Health (DEBH) Region 8 Teacher of the Year award.

The award is presented annually by the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders. Region 8 represents Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Klein, who is in her fourth year at A. Quinn Jones and was the center’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, said that a passion for working with her students made receiving the DEBH award very special.

“I feel very passionate about students with emotional and behavioral disabilities,” Klein said. “It’s definitely my passion, so any time you’re recognized for something you really care about, it feels good.”

Having now earned teacher of the year honors in 2021 and 2022, Klein believes that her students have made her a better instructor.

“All of my students have different learning styles, different backgrounds and their experiences with school are different than mine,” Klein said. “They’ve shown me ways to look at curriculum differently. I’ve had to learn how to view something that’s made for every high schooler in the district and adapt it to fit my students’ needs.”

Klein will be presented with her award during the DEBH General Business Meeting at the CEC Convention and Expo in Orlando on Jan. 17.

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Gainesville, Florida – Santa Fe College’s Institute of Public Safety will host a special training on human trafficking for law enforcement officers and support staff Thursday, Jan. 20, from noon until 5 p.m. The training, timed to observe January being Human Trafficking Prevention Month, is being provided by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). 

This program introduces current indicators for human trafficking, as well as an overview of federal statutes and applicable state law related to trafficking. It is oriented with case studies, videos and student-centered learning activities, followed by a panel discussion with state, local, and federal law enforcement subject matter experts. Special guests include Assistant United States Attorney, Northern District of Florida Frank Williams, Human Trafficking Coordinator.  

This course is being held locally, in part because of efforts from federal elected officials dedicated to fighting human trafficking in the community and nationally. Florida ranks third in most human trafficking cases, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, behind only California and Texas. To learn more about efforts you can take to increase awareness or learn more about human trafficking in North Central Florida visit the North Central Florida Human Trafficking Task Force Facebook page.  

Although this class is focused on the Florida law enforcement community, all are welcome to attend. There is no cost to attend however space is limited. Please click the link to register for this training. 

In addition to this training, Santa Fe College also recently released a special podcast – Human Trafficking: Global Issue, Local Impact – in which SF professor Richard Tovar talks about the global problem of human trafficking and recalls the early days of founding the non-profit organization Fight Injustice and Global Human Trafficking (FIGHT). The podcast can be accessed at sfcollege.edu/listen. 

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Jatinder Lamba, Ph.D., M.Sc., led a team of researchers who developed a new genetic score to improve pediatric cancer treatments.

University of Florida researchers have developed a new genomics-based score to deliver more personalized and effective chemotherapy treatments to pediatric leukemia patients.

The predictive score brings a precision medicine approach to treating childhood acute myeloid leukemia, or AML, a common form of childhood leukemia.

AML spreads rapidly and affects the bone marrow and blood. The chemotherapy drug cytarabine has been a mainstay of AML treatment for more than 50 years. However, it fails to induce remission in about 10-15% of children, and another 40% will relapse after achieving remission.

In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, one of the top journals in the field, UF researchers outlined how they developed a patient-specific polygenic score to improve treatment outcomes. The score was generated by performing a comprehensive pharmacogenomic evaluation of cytarabine’s drug pathway in the body and predicting how much of the drug is activated in a cell.

“Cytarabine must be activated to effectively kill leukemia cells, but the amount of activation varies based on an individual’s genetics,” said Jatinder Lamba, Ph.D., M.Sc., the study’s lead author and a professor of pharmacotherapy and translational research in the UF College of Pharmacy, a part of UF Health, the university’s academic health center. “We anticipated our score would predict the outcome — and it did — but what was really interesting is that we were able to show if the patient had a low, or detrimental score, the outcome could be improved by augmenting the patient’s therapy.”

The study included more than 1,000 pediatric cancer patients treated through multisite clinical trials at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Children’s Oncology Group. It suggested patients with a low polygenic score would benefit from increased dosing of cytarabine or additional targeted therapies in their chemotherapy regimen. Meanwhile, patients with a high score may benefit from a less-intensive chemotherapy regimen — avoiding some of the toxicity associated with cytarabine.

“With this score, we can genetically define those patients who would benefit from intensifying the chemotherapy or adding a new cancer drug to the regimen and on the other side of the spectrum having their chemotherapy reduced to avoid toxicity,” Lamba said. “The score gives clinicians a new tool to devise an effective treatment strategy and deliver the best possible outcome to AML patients. It also has the potential to improve the guidelines for delivering AML chemotherapy.”

Another key finding in the study involved the role race and ethnicity play in generating the predictive score. UF researchers found the high score significantly differed by race, with 70% of white patients and only 30% of Black patients having a beneficial score. The study’s results suggest the polygenic score could be one of the underlying contributors to observed racial disparities in AML patient outcomes and may have the potential to reduce the observed racial disparities by optimizing treatment.

Lamba, the Frank A. Duckworth Eminent Scholar Chair in the UF College of Pharmacy and a member of the UF Health Cancer Center, said further exploration is needed to determine whether Black patients would benefit from a higher dose of cytarabine or additional drugs in their chemotherapy regimen.

“This study opens opportunities for examining how race and ethnicity impact AML patient response to cancer treatments,” Lamba said. “We need to be more conscious of racial disparities in cancer care and continue to investigate why we are seeing different outcomes by race.”

Lamba has joined a consortium of researchers in Africa studying racial disparities in cancer treatment. She expects the collaboration will create new opportunities for studying drug response in Black patients and allow for further research involving the new scoring model.

“Dr. Lamba’s innovative research program explores hidden genetic complexity behind response to therapy and serves as a cautionary lesson to all cancer researchers to enroll robust numbers of diverse individuals in clinical trials, in order to elucidate and address disparities,” said Jonathan Licht, M.D., director of the UF Health Cancer Center. “This is a theme embraced across all UF Health Cancer Center research programs.”

The study “Polygenic Ara-C Response Score Identifies Pediatric Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Need of Chemotherapy Augmentation,” was published Jan. 6 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Multiple investigators from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Children’s Oncology Group, Tennessee Health Sciences Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Nemours Children’s Health and the University of Florida contributed to the study.

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