Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health

Graduates from Vanderbilt’s Master in Public Health (MPH) program didn’t plan to become front-line soldiers against the COVID-19 global pandemic, but several have found themselves putting their training — and their career goals — front and center.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a one-year, $34-million grant by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, to conduct a nationwide study of “convalescent plasma” as a treatment for COVID-19. The randomized, controlled trial will test whether infusions of plasma, the liquid part of blood collected from COVID-19 survivors, can help other hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The plasma contains antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

In a new analysis, researchers from the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found a relationship between the growth of hospitalizations and masking requirements put in place across the state. Hospitals that have more than 75% of their patients from areas without masking requirements in place have seen a relatively faster increase in patients with COVID-19 than hospitals with higher percentages of patients from areas with masking requirements in place.

The effects of Covid-19 are here to stay, including in the brain, at least according to a new study by Mario Mazza and colleagues in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

NASHVILLE, TENN. (WSMV) - A new survey out of Vanderbilt University is showing the toll the coronavirus pandemic is taking on our mental well-being.  Researchers polled parents with children under the age of 18 at the beginning of June.  They found that 27 percent of parents felt like their own mental health had worsened. 14 percent of those parents saw negative changes in their kids. 

Over the past six months, we have learned COVID-19 is not solely a lung disease, but a disease that involves the brain as well. Most patients with COVID-19 have delirium, which is the medical way of saying they are confused, can’t pay attention, and have trouble organizing their thinking.

The Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is following patients who have been hospitalized for COVID-19 over time to see if they develop long-term cognitive impairment, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These disabling features suffered by millions of ICU survivors are called Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS).

The ongoing disruptive changes from efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are having a substantial negative impact on the physical and mental well-being of parents and their children across the country, according to a new national survey published today in Pediatrics.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is evaluating razuprotafib, a drug being investigated for the treatment of glaucoma, in a new randomized, investigational trial for the prevention and treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in adult patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. “We urgently need to find effective treatments for COVID-19, especially for patients who develop severe lung injury from the virus,” said co-principal investigator Wesley Self, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“It’s important for all of us to be patient and to be thoughtful in thinking about a new illness,” Natasha Halasa, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics at VUMC, said. “As scientists, we need to work together, to collaborate, and to approach these ideas in a multidisciplinary manner.”

"COVID-19 is a disease of communities and networks, a pathogen that floats along the infrastructures of human relations.

It’s critical to draw awareness to the disparity in communication and access to treatment as well as the economic, cultural and societal factors that impact ability to navigate care. We’re zeroing in on disaggregating the data by race, ethnicity and language because we can’t address inequities if we don’t know who they are,” said  Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, vice president for Health Equity for VUMC,  associate dean for Health Equity at Vanderbilt School of Medicine and executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance.