Three members of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine faculty have been elected this year to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the organization announced Monday, Oct. 19. They are:

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.

Early data assessing the primary language of those who received COVID-19 tests at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and tested positive, illustrates the disproportionate impact the pandemic is having on racial or ethnic communities. Of the first 18,491 patients tested for the novel coronavirus, 1,063 speak 37 languages other than English, according to analysis of electronic health records by VUMC’s Office of Health Equity. Although this group represents 5.7% of those tested, they are 19.4% of those positive and the highest number reside in two adjacent Nashville ZIP codes.

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.