The prize is awarded to emerging neurologists who have a strong interest in stroke research and have demonstrated a passion for learning and expanding the field.
Ovbiagele was selected for his work in creating a hospital-based quality improvement stroke care program called Preventing Recurrence Of Thrombo-embolic Events through Coordinated Treatment (PROTECT). The program is a set of guidelines geared toward integrating proven therapies into standard stroke care.
Ovbiagele said the PROTECT program helps to improve health care provider adherence with stroke prevention guidelines, as well as raise the compliance of hospitals with stroke care quality performance indicators.
"Implementation of the program has been associated with significantly higher hospital discharge treatment rates, better long-term adherence to evidence-based stroke therapies, and a greater compliance with target goals for blood pressure and cholesterol," said Ovbiagele.
The program was originally implemented at UCLA and has been adopted by several hospitals around the world with similar results. However, Ovbiagele added that improvements can still be made to the program, including creating rigorous studies to directly link the impact of systematic hospital-based stroke care with actual clinical outcomes.
For more information on the UCLA Stroke Center with links to information about stroke signs and prevention, please visit http://www.stroke.ucla.edu/.
-UCLA-
