News
Roughly 300 Covid-19 deaths still occur daily nationwide; Public compliance with booster vaccine recommendations is critical, says Schaffner
Apr. 24, 2023—Many people in the U.S. who are fully vaccinated and boosted for COVID have been waiting—eagerly in some cases—to receive another layer of protection as they pass the six-month mark after their last booster in fall 2022. But most will have to continue to wait. Late last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upheld...
Rosenbloom investigates new algorithms for improving electronic health records: Intervention enhanced patient problem list but had no effect on clinical quality measures
Apr. 21, 2023—In a multisite randomized trial reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, completeness of the patient problem list, a pivotal section of the electronic health record (EHR), was improved with automated disease surveillance and suggestions for clinicians to consider adding specific problems that appeared to be missing from the list. Adam Wright, PhD, Dean Sittig,...
Van der Heijden discusses implementing shorter treatment regimens for Tuberculosis patients in South Africa
Apr. 20, 2023—A global infectious disease killer existed long before COVID-19 and continues to wreak havoc on the lives of millions of people worldwide. Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.6 million people in 2021. Unlike many bacterial infections that can be treated with several days of...
Self finds renin-angiotensin system (RAS) drugs ineffective in treating Covid-19
Apr. 19, 2023—Despite the success of vaccines for preventing COVID-19, and of drugs for treating the disease, outcomes for severely ill patients admitted to the hospital remains poor. Identifying new therapies for severe COVID-19 remains a high priority and one in which Vanderbilt University Medical Center is taking a leading role. A study published April 11 in...
Buntin reflects on 75th Anniversary of the World Health Organization
Apr. 17, 2023—Engraved into a wall on a campus building at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health. Melinda Buntin, PhD, would pass this engraving every day on her way to her graduate courses. Years later, she recites the 21-word definition, verbatim, in an interview with HCPLive—not missing a...
Creech and colleagues awarded $7.85 Million from NIH to launch the Vanderbilt Antibody and Antigen Discovery for Clostridioides difficile Vaccines
Apr. 14, 2023—The National Institutes of Health awarded a five-year, $7.85 million grant to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to launch the Vanderbilt Antibody and Antigen Discovery for Clostridioides difficile Vaccines, or VANDy-CdV. The grant will support a team of over 25 VU and VUMC multidisciplinary researchers to discover novel Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) antigens through genetic and...
Hartert to co-lead two environmental research projects on adoption of electric vehicles and corresponding public health benefits
Apr. 13, 2023—Michael Vandenbergh, co-director of the Energy, Environment, and Land Use Program at Vanderbilt Law School and director of the Vanderbilt Climate Change Research Network, and Tina Hartert, MD, MPH, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center will lead two research projects that aim to identify the barriers to and potential health benefits of adoption of electric vehicles in...
U.S. prostate cancer patients with low to intermediate-risk diagnoses are more likely to prefer active surveillance over surgery or radiation treatment, says Al Hussein
Apr. 11, 2023—The number of prostate cancer patients in the U.S. choosing active surveillance over surgery or radiation has rapidly increased since 2010, rising from 16% to 60% for low-risk patients and from 8% to 22% for patients with favorable intermediate-risk cancers, according to a study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine. Active surveillance includes actively monitoring prostate...
Policies that disclose real estate investment trusts and private equity data can improve nursing home operations, says Stevenson
Apr. 10, 2023—Greater insight into potential buyers is just one possible benefit of rules that would make publicly available more information about private equity and real estate investment trust ownership of nursing homes. That was the take Monday from two academics who have spent the last several years researching investment activity in nursing homes and other aging...
Richardson discusses Copiktra, a PI3K inhibitor for leukemia treatment, and its effects on patient health outcomes
Apr. 6, 2023—Secura Bio says it has no plans to change the marketing status of its PI3K inhibitor Copiktra (duvelisib), which won full approval in September 2018 as a third-line treatment for relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma. Updated pivotal trial results raised fresh safety questions about that approval, and the FDA’s outside...
Rogers discusses increased gun violence among adolescents
Apr. 4, 2023—The devastating toll of gun violence shows up in emergency rooms every day. At the UChicago Medicine trauma center, the number of gunshot wounds in children under 16 has doubled in the past six years, said Dr. Selwyn Rogers, MD, MPH, the center’s founding director. The youngest victim was 2. “You hear the mother wail,...
Diamond co-authors online course for adolescents on opioid use
Apr. 3, 2023—Addressing opioid overdose deaths among adolescents, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in collaboration with the Tennessee Department of Health, is providing a short online course for educators via QuizTime, VUMC’s innovative on-demand learning platform. The course, “Preparing Educators to Help Save Lives: What You Should Know about Opioid Use and Adolescents,” arrives in three- to five-minute installments via...
Murry investigates Tennessee parents’ perspectives regarding school firearm safety measures
Mar. 31, 2023—School-based gun violence was among the top five concerns identified by Tennessee parents in the 2022 Vanderbilt Child Health Poll, and the highest majority of parents, 83%, agree that schools are safer if one or more school resource officers work in the school. Generally, a majority of Tennessee parents agree on several firearm-related school safety measures....
Bala awarded NYC Hayes Innovation Prize for development of Public Health Partners Connect, a data visualization platform that helped facilitate COVID-19 and Monkeypox vaccine distribution
Mar. 30, 2023—New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Matthew Fraser, and Jonathan Weiner, president of the Frederick O’Reilly Hayes Prize Foundation, last night presented 15 city employees with the first NYC Hayes Innovation Prize of his administration during an awards ceremony at Gracie Mansion. The winning projects — originating from 10 city...
Serious pneumococcal infections increase the risk of heart attack, says Wiese
Mar. 29, 2023—Patients with serious pneumococcal infections, including pneumonia and sepsis, are at a substantially increased risk of heart attack after the onset of infection according to a Vanderbilt study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Prior work has demonstrated that infections can potentially lead to systemic inflammatory responses that can trigger the development of major cardiovascular events, including...