Vanderbilt University Medical Center is playing a key role in a national effort to establish a registry of U.S. health care workers and test whether the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will protect them, their patients and their families from COVID-19. The Board of Governors of the non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in Washington, D.C., today approved up to $50 million to fund the initiative, known as the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) research program, to be led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DRCI). Co-chairs of the HERO Steering Committee are Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, VUMC Senior Vice President for Population and Public Health, and Judith Currier, MD, professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica. Fellow steering committee member Sean Collins, MD, MSCI, professor and executive vice chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at VUMC, will lead VUMC’s engagement in the HERO study and will serve as the site’s principal investigator. He also is a member of the protocol advisory committee.

"ICU patients need "to have humans around to orient them, to calibrate them, to touch them, to look in their eyes, and make them understand what's happening," Dr. E. Wesley Ely, a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University, said. "But that's exactly what the COVID patients won't get because they're all being isolated." Ely said physicians are learning about the specific impact of COVID-19 on post-ICU syndrome from countries that have already had large numbers of cases."

Today, on National Doctors’ Day, Music Row and Nashville’s creative community are coming together to support the Vanderbilt University Medical Center staff through the launch of ‘Gratitunes.’ ‘Gratitunes’ is a consumer-generated music platform to celebrate and thank members of the VUMC family, through the power of music, for their dedication, empathy and unwavering commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brad Paisley will kick-off the program with the first dedicated ‘Gratitune’ from his Instagram today.

A new partnership between Vanderbilt Divinity School and Mental Health and Chaplaincy, a national program of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Veterans Health Administration, will relaunch a doctor of ministry program at Vanderbilt. The program aims to equip chaplains with best practices for providing high-quality, evidence-based care for persons with diverse psychosocial–spiritual needs. “I am excited that we are relaunching our Doctor of Ministry program with this first track on integrative chaplaincy,” said Emilie M. Townes, dean of the Divinity School and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society. “This track will integrate spirituality and mental health in a hybrid online/in-person class format that engages students who are actively functioning as chaplains. They will be able to apply their coursework to their contexts immediately.”

Edwin Trevathan, MD, MPH, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH), has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the National Institute for Neurological Diseases and Stroke (NINDS) of the National Institutes of Health. Trevathan, the Amos Christie Chair in Global Health and professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, will serve a four-year term on the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (NANDSC). The advisory council meets three times a year to provide guidance to the NINDS director on programming, reviews and reports on intramural and extramural programs.

Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, a leader in health equity at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM), has joined Gordon Bernard, MD, as co-principal investigator (co-PI) of Vanderbilt’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). The $8-million-a-year federal grant supports the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR), which since 2007 has fostered the development of innovations including BioVU, Vanderbilt’s massive DNA repository, ResearchMatch, an online national volunteer recruitment registry, and REDCap, a Web-based research management application used worldwide.

Dan Roden, MD, Senior Vice President for Personalized Medicine, and Daniel Munoz, MD, MPA, medical director of Quality for Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute (VHVI), have been named interim directors of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Their appointments are effective February 2020. Munoz, who is also assistant professor of Medicine and medical director of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU), will be responsible for clinical matters and Roden, who holds the endowed Sam L. Clark, MD, PhD Chair in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, will lead academic efforts.

Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, professor of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy, Ingram Professor of Integrative and Population Health, and Vice President for Population Health Research, has been named as the new director of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health (IMPH), and Senior Vice President for Population and Public Health. His appointment is effective Feb. 1. In this new role Rothman will report to Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD, Executive Vice President for Research and Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Rothman is also principal investigator of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCOR) funded STAR (Stakeholders, Technology and Research) Clinical Research Network which engages VUMC, VHAN, Meharry Medical College, Duke University, the University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University, Health Sciences of South Carolina, and Mayo Clinic with electronic health records on over 12 million patients. The Network supports real world evidence research and pragmatic clinical research.

Over the years there has been uncertainty over which drugs are best for patients with Type 2 diabetes and one of its common complications, kidney disease. An observational study using medical record information from nearly 50,000 U.S. military veterans sheds new light on this issue. Among the 30 million U.S. adults with Type 2 diabetes, 20% have impaired kidney function. In patients like this, metformin, the recommended first-line drug therapy for Type 2 diabetes, is associated in the new study with 20 percent decreased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events when compared to a class of common diabetes drugs called sulfonylureas.

The HEAlth Data Science (HEADS) Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is undergoing a reorganization to further refine the center’s mission, and Christopher Lindsell, PhD, has been named a new co-director. “The HEADS Center is now poised to accelerate its work, and naming Dr. Lindsell to a co-directorship will assist us in doing just that,” said Kevin Johnson, MD, MS, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. “The vision is for the center to be a powerful catalyst for innovation and translation at the intersection of data science and healthcare practice at VUMC as well as on a broader scale.”