Dr. Digna Velez Edwards is a genetic epidemiologist, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Biomedical Informatics, Director of the Division of Quantitative Sciences in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Director of Women's Health Research center, Investigator of the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, and a member of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center. She has doctoral training in human genetics and has a master's degree in statistics. She started as faculty in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2010 pursuing research focused on understanding the genetic factors influencing differences in health care outcomes across groups. She also studied the role of gene and environment interactions in the risk for complex diseases, with a specific interest in fibroproliferative disorders that include uterine fibroids and keloids and diseases that disproportionately impact women's reproductive health.

Since the start of her faculty appointment, Dr. Velez Edwards has developed and coordinated a repository of biospecimens from participants in the Right from the Start pregnancy cohort to be used for genetic epidemiology studies examining reproductive health complications and risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes. She has several ongoing research projects utilizing this resource, as well as large clinical databases that link clinical information to DNA. These studies focus on understanding the differences in health care outcomes across groups in genetic risk for several complex diseases, including preterm birth, miscarriage, uterine fibroids and pelvic organ prolapse.

Her research is focused on understanding and identifying genetic risk factors for complex diseases with a specific focus on diseases that disproportionately impact certain sub-groups and genetic factors related to women's health and reproductive outcomes. She utilizes large clinical databases that link electronic health record (EHR) information to DNA and the Right from the Start cohort, a community-based prospective pregnancy cohort.

Current research projects include genetic studies of preterm birth, miscarriage, uterine fibroids, pelvic organ prolapse and keloids. These studies include genome-wide association analyses, next-generation sequencing, evaluation of biomarkers and phenome-wide association studies.

Christopher Lindsell is a collaborative biostatistician who is a leader in the application of rigorous of biostatistical methods in the acute care environment, and to the intersection between emergency care and public health. He is currently the Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC.

He has led data coordinating centers for numerous multi-center clinical trials, including FDA-regulated trials, and for epidemiological studies. He holds patents on risk stratification in septic shock, and he has contributed significantly to a number of NIH-funded networks, including the CTSA. His current focus is on learning health systems, leveraging clinical processes and data systems to enhance learning from pragmatic trials and observational studies, and for designing and implementing dissemination and implementation research.

PhD, Epidemiology, University of Southampton

Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) president, 2020 - 2021

Associate Director, Center for Clinical Quality and Improvement Research, 2017 - 2021

Ms. French is a Registered Nurse with over 35 years of clinical and administrative nursing experience in diversified healthcare settings. Tina holds a healthcare quality certification (CPHQ), originally obtained in 1998, re-sitting for the exam again in 2013 to satisfy her passion for supporting the Quadruple Aim. She joined our team in 2021 in a Nurse Informatics Data Analyst role. Tina started at Vanderbilt in 2004, working in Women’s Health before moving to the Evidence Based Medicine Team in 2009 focusing on clinical order set content for Women’s Health, Pharmacy, Anesthesia, and Psychiatry service lines. During this time, she participated in and taught a class for the Evidence Based Nursing Fellowship Program on “Why PICO?”.  Joining the Epic Leap Implementation team in 2015, she became an Epic Inpatient Certified Orders Analyst collaborating with clinical teams on the design, requirements, build, validation, and adoption of subject matter. Post implementation, her role was with the Clinical Decision Support team, in partnership with Pharmacy Informatics, developing/optimizing order panels and best practice alerts (BPAs) for OB/GYN, MFM, Anesthesia and Addiction Medicine. Most recently, Tina was the lead on aligning with Accreditation and Standards to implement Covid-19 Pandemic standing orders across the Enterprise.  

Samuel Melles is a research analyst working closely with Dr. McPheeters focusing on clinical genomics and health policy and improving public health through informatics. Samuel obtained his B.A from Florida agricultural and mechanical university with a degree in health informatics and information management. Prior to working at Vanderbilt Samuel worked in the pharmaceutical industry, and completed various clinical rotations at Doctors memorial hospital.