Spring 2025
A Legacy of Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders
Mar. 6, 2025—One hundred fifty years ago, a small group of visionary Nashville physicians had an aspirational goal — to create a school of medicine to train physicians to better meet the South’s health care needs. Looking across today’s bustling environs of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM), it’s hard to envision the early years of the...
Taking a proactive approach
Mar. 5, 2025—Vanderbilt University Medical Center has joined an extraordinary national effort to develop and stockpile new vaccines and antibody therapies against a host of viral threats to prevent another pandemic. Pending the availability of funds, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health expects to commit approximately $100 million annually...
Study links cognition and brain networks before the first psychotic break
Mar. 5, 2025—Early detection opens the door for noninvasive intervention for those with treatment-resistant symptoms of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. After correlating cognitive impairment and brain network organization in people diagnosed with psychotic disorders, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers discovered the same link in those who hadn’t had a first psychotic episode. Their groundbreaking study was published...
Marking extraordinary milestones
Mar. 5, 2025—As we celebrate Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s sesquicentennial, I find myself reflecting on the remarkable journey that brings us to this moment. For 150 years, Vanderbilt has been at the forefront of biomedical science, education and patient care. We each spent time learning and connecting in the halls and clinics of this storied institution,...
Research Roundup
Mar. 5, 2025—Study reveals surgeons have most complaints of bad behavior Co-worker reports about physicians’ unprofessional behaviors from 193 hospitals were analyzed for a study reported in JAMA Network Open. It turns out that surgeons draw the most complaints. William Cooper, MD, MPH, Steven Webber, MBChB, and colleagues pulled reports from the Coworker Observation Reporting System (CORS),...
Even more motivation to move
Mar. 5, 2025—It’s well known that spending too much time on the couch can shorten your life. Now, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have shown that moderate-intensity, leisure-time physical activity can partially reduce the elevated risk of death from all causes due to prolonged sitting time. In a study of 8,337 predominantly low-income and Black Americans ages...
Study identifies preoxygenation method that reduces hypoxemia and cardiac arrest risk
Mar. 5, 2025—For critically ill adults undergoing emergency tracheal intubation, hypoxemia (low levels of oxygen in the blood) increases the risk of cardiac arrest and death. In current clinical care most critically ill adults receive preoxygenation using an oxygen mask. The Pragmatic Trial Examining Oxygenation Prior to Intubation clinical trial was led nationally by Vanderbilt University Medical...
A Closer Look at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Mar. 5, 2025—
Alumni Notes
Mar. 5, 2025—1960s Rebekah Ann Naylor, MD’68, a longtime Baptist medical missionary, received the M.E. Dodd Denominational Service Award from Union University. This is the highest denominational service award given by the university. 1970s Susan Niermeyer, MD’79, was honored with the 2024 Florence Rena Sabin, MD Award from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. 1980s C....
Losses
Mar. 5, 2025—E. Vernon Anderson Jr., MD’69, HO’70, died May 27, 2024. He was 80. Dr. Anderson is survived by his wife, Gwyn; sons, John, Alan and Chris; and 11 grandchildren. Robert Carver Bone, BA’58, MD’62, HO’67, EMBA’85, died March 11, 2024. He was 87. Dr. Bone is survived by his wife, Connie; children, Robert and Bonnie;...
Giving in Action: The Vrtiska ‘Joy in Service’ Scholarship
Mar. 5, 2025—For Terri Vrtiska, MD’87, the drive to help others was part of her life long before she enrolled in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her parents — a teacher and a farmer by trade — were pillars of the small, 4-by-7-block community of Table Rock, Nebraska, where she grew up. Between the two of...
Giving in Action: Honoring a family’s passion for education
Mar. 5, 2025—The Helene and Ralph Parnes Scholarship has not only given Curt Parnes, MD’82, the opportunity to recognize his parents for their dedication to his education, but also to celebrate the life of his late wife, Susan, who passed away in February 2024, just months after she and Parnes established the new scholarship. The couple met...
Letter from Sarah Creekmore Woodall
Mar. 5, 2025—Dear Alumni, We’re turning 150! Vanderbilt University School of Medicine officially turns 150 this year, and we have a lot to celebrate on this “sesquicentennial” milestone! Each of you provides a piece of our VUSM story, and we would love to hear your experiences and memories. Contact us to share your memories and photos that...
Alumni Profile: Susan Niermeyer, MD’79, MPH
Mar. 5, 2025—Global advocate for infants Susan Niermeyer, MD’79, MPH, has had two careers, running simultaneously. They both, at their core, focus on how to best care for newborns. A full-time neonatologist doing clinical care, research and education at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado for more than four decades, Niermeyer’s areas of expertise include...
Alumni Profile: Anna Tanner, MD’95
Mar. 5, 2025—An Accidental Career Anna Tanner, MD’95, a pediatrician and global expert on eating disorders, landed in an “accidental career” brought about by the growing number of youth in her Georgia community who were developing eating disorders. “It wasn’t what I carved out to do. I didn’t hang out a shingle. I didn’t even focus my...
‘Angel’ transport celebrates 50 years of giving critically ill children a fighting chance
Mar. 5, 2025—For five decades, the Neonatal and Pediatric Transport team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has provided safe and specialized emergency transport, 24 hours a day, for critically ill children and newborns. Primarily serving Tennessee, southern and western Kentucky and north Alabama, highly trained care teams transport children from birth to age 21...
Christina Bailey, MD, MSCI’10
Mar. 5, 2025—Associate professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology & Endocrine Surgery and General Surgery Residency program director Education includes undergraduate at Louisiana Tech University, medical school at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, general surgery residency at VUMC, MSCI degree at VU and fellowship in complex surgical oncology at University of Texas MD...
Protectors of the Past
Mar. 5, 2025—When Vanderbilt University archivist Jim Thweatt slips a massive tome from a shelf and gently opens its pages, it’s as if a portal to the past has magically flung open and history cascades out. The elaborately illustrated “De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem” (“On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books”) is one...
A historic addition
Mar. 5, 2025—In October 2024, Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced the naming of the new expansion tower for Vanderbilt University Hospital as the Jim Ayers Tower in recognition of Janet and Jim Ayers’ philanthropic legacy and abiding interest in improving the health care and quality of life for Tennesseans. The naming of the 15-level, 470,000-square-foot tower, currently...
Q+A: Douglas Terry, PhD
Mar. 5, 2025—Neuropsychologist Douglas Terry, PhD, works with the National Football League as the senior director of Research, a role focused on initiatives to enhance the health and safety of NFL players. This is an extension of Terry’s expertise in sport-related concussion and cumulative head impacts. Q. What goes through your mind when you see a player...
Faces and Places
Mar. 5, 2025—
The man who gave Angel 1 its wings
Mar. 5, 2025—In 1954, shortly after he completed his year of ground control radar training at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, Curtis “Dean” Driver was transferred to Châteauroux, France: It was his first assignment, and he’d never been on a site with working instruments. Two weeks later, he was unexpectedly promoted to station chief, which...
Minutes saved mean lives saved
Mar. 5, 2025—July 5, 1984, marked a major change in trauma care in Middle Tennessee as Vanderbilt University Medical Center launched the LifeFlight program. Before that date, people who were severely injured anywhere in the small towns, farmland and rolling hills of the region had to travel to Nashville by ground to access sophisticated, lifesaving trauma care....
How Fast Can He Run
Mar. 4, 2025—Six-year-old José Capablanca was excited to see his visitors. “I think you guys want to know how fast I can run!” he shouted, as he gleefully raced around the living room and kitchen of his family’s home in Gallatin, Tennessee. José has Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disorder that affects mainly boys, and...
The Obstacle is the Way
Mar. 3, 2025—In late June 2024 James Crowe Jr., MD, began a grueling, seven-day, 155-mile ultramarathon through the Gobi Desert of Central Mongolia. It was one of several physical challenges undertaken that year by Crowe, 63, whose lab at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has attracted international attention for developing monoclonal antibodies against a host of viral diseases,...