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| DBMI'ers Enjoy Summer 2024!
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Summer is in full swing and many of us in DBMI took the opportunity to use their PTO by traveling across the globe and celebrating life with friends and family! Enjoy some summer pictures from a few of our DBMI members! Pictured above, left to right, top to bottom:
Row 1: Alvin Jeffery celebrating Pride Month at the Pride festivities last weekend; Laurie Novak traveled to Verdon Gorge, France (recommended by Megan Salwei!) with her husband, Bill, and sons Wilson and Connor in June. "We traveled around the country before dropping my son off at a Topology Summer School at the University of Grenoble!" she said; Yaa Kumah-Crystal was on a panel at the intersystems Global Summit in DC recently, and participated in a skit performance during the keynote with Don Woodlock and Jonathan Teich about AI in healthcare.
Row 2: Mia Garchitorena and her husband, Derek Scancarelli (Lead Comms Specialist in VUMC Radiology), traveled to Manchester, England, and Ireland for their honeymoon! In Ireland, they visited Dublin, Cork (failed to "kiss the Blarney Stone"), the Cliffs of Moher in Doolin, and Galway. They also saw Liam Gallagher of Oasis perform in concert *twice*!
Row 3: Katie Brown traveled to San Diego for work (Mount Palomar and Bahia Bay). Katie is also an astrophotographer and loves taking pictures in her backyard! Pictured right: Whirlpool Galaxy. "I try to post on Instagram @katie.stargazer and I’ve been learning this since March," she said. "it’s been the best hobby!"
In case fellow astrophotographers are interested: Katie used the Canon T7 camera with a 500mm lens from TTArtisan. "The magic, in my opinion, is the mount which is a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer GTI connected to a mini PC. Those two pieces of equipment automatically guides the camera to whatever target I want to image, and I can monitor the progress on my iPad. Also, they rotate the camera along with the earth to keep the targets still for longer exposure time!"
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- HR & Admin Updates
- DBMI Faculty Updates
- A Message from Katherine Musacchio Schafer: June is PTSD Awareness Month
- Open Positions & Upcoming Events
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New Support for DBMI Computers and Equipment: Effective July 1st!
Effective July 1, 2024, DBMI will be moving to a new team for its departmental computer support. DBMI will shift from NTTData to VUMC “MIT” (Medicine IT) in accordance with VUMC institutional processes. Working with the new team will allow for expedited computer assistance, as DBMI will now have a dedicated team to assist with IT issues. Elizabeth Brown has met with a couple of these team members and they are excited to be working with us.
The only important change to keep in mind: Submitting Pegasus tickets will need to include specific wording to expedite IT help requests. Please see Elizabeth Brown's email on 6/28/24 to find an attached tutorial on how to submit Pegasus requests to the new team.
This is the very same method via Pegasus that you have been using; however, you will now need to add the following note within the title of your request: “Assign to MIT IT”. This will direct DBMI issues to the proper IT work group. The final slide within the attached power point will make this clear.
NOTE: Only employees and students who have a VUMC machine (computer) are able to submit these requests.
If you need to order a new computer or computer accessory, please continue to reach out to Wil Comstock (wil.comstock@vumc.org). Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions.
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REMINDER: Annual Self-Evaluations
Annual evaluations are upon us again. Elizabeth Brown asks that you each complete the self-evaluation within Workday prior to 7/1/24. Annual evaluation meetings will most likely occur between mid-July and mid-August, so all are completed well ahead of our 8/31/24 deadline. If you have any questions, please reach out elizabeth.a.brown@vumc.org to jennifer.martellotti@vumc.org.
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| Faculty Affairs Updates, News & Publications
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Michael Matheny & CIPHI Team Members Received Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Grant
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Michael Matheny is a site PI for a large ARPA-H grant for the project Federated Ecosystem for Analytics and Standardization Technologies (FEAST) (led by Dr. Vahan Simonyan) to develop a high capacity computational infrastructure and use cases for analysis of healthcare data.
Michael's focus is in medical device surveillance in partnership with Liz Paxton at Kaiser Permanente, Fred Resnic at Lahey Clinic, and Art Sedrakyan at Cornell. The team will be led by Michael, Sharon Davis, Mohammed Al-Garadi, and Michele LeNoue-Newton. This will be a two year grant with a direct budget is about 225k per year. Congrats team!!
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Congrats to Glenn Gobbel on His Retirement!
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Glenn Gobbel, DVM, PhD, MS, Research Associate Professor in DBMI and Medicine, retired on June 24, 2024. To celebrate, the Center for Improving the Public's Health through Informatics (CIPHI) team threw a retirement party for Glenn at Maggiano's! Congratulations, Glenn, and happy retirement!
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DBMI Welcomes New Primary Faculty Members!
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Alvin Jeffery and Katherine Musacchio Schafer will both be officially joining DBMI’s primary faculty as Assistant Professors on July 1, 2024. Congrats and welcome!
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| VUMC Researchers Establish Biomedical Informatics Training Program in Mozambique
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In collaboration with Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) located in Maputo, Mozambique, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) has been awarded a five-year, $1.2 million training grant by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health to establish the first biomedical informatics (BMI) training program for scholars and fellows using computational and information sciences approaches, primarily in biology and human health.
“For over a decade, successful training programs between UEM and VUMC have focused on building research capacity in infectious diseases, implementation science, research ethics and research administration. VM-BMI will leverage VUMC’s leadership in biomedical informatics to empower our Mozambican colleagues to lead their own BMI training and research programs. UEM will be well-positioned to sustain its own programs and be a training hub of BMI excellence for other Lusophone African countries,” said Martin Were, co-principal investigator and professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at VUMC. Click to read more!
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| A Message from Katherine Musacchio Schafer: PTSD Awareness Month
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June is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Month. Learn more about PTSD by reviewing this message from VUMC. Katherine Musacchio Schafer, who is joining DBMI as Assistant Professor on July 1, was previously a VA Quality Scholar who worked with Colin Walsh on suicide CDS work. In recognition of PTSD Awareness Month, she shares the following message and research:
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"PTSD is a clinical condition that develops following a traumatic event and is linked cross-sectionally and longitudinally with poor outcomes including suicidality [1]. It is made up of a constellation of symptoms wherein people experience intrusive memories related to the event, avoidance of reminders of the event, changes in mood or emotions, and are unable to relax [2]. On their own, these symptoms often interfere with people’s daily functioning. However, when people experience all these symptoms (which is the case among people with PTSD) symptoms are often severe enough to impact several areas of functioning [3].
For many people with PTSD, symptoms often remit on their own. But we have found that people who have symptoms for three years, likely won’t experience spontaneous remission, and instead would benefit from treatment [4]. Treatments for PTSD usually occur on a weekly basis through an outpatient provider [5,6]. Treatments usually last between 12-16 sessions. Under the direction of a therapist, patients process the traumatic memory as well as any thoughts they have around that event. Following completion of this work people consistently report decreased symptoms of PTSD. In fact most people who complete treatment for PTSD no longer meet diagnostic criteria at the need of treatment [7]."
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[1] Schafer, Katherine Musacchio. "Traumatic Events as Risk Factors for PTSD and Suicidal Ideation: A Nine-Year Study of Justice-Involved Adolescents." Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 33.2 (2024): 220-235.
[2] American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596
[3] Jellestad, Lena, et al. "Functional impairment in posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis." Journal of psychiatric research 136 (2021): 14-22.
[4] Morina, Nexhmedin, et al. "Remission from post-traumatic stress disorder in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of long term outcome studies." Clinical psychology review 34.3 (2014): 249-255.
[5] Resick, Patricia A., Candice M. Monson, and Kathleen M. Chard. Cognitive processing therapy for PTSD: A comprehensive manual. Guilford Publications, 2016.
[6] Peterson, Alan L., Edna B. Foa, and David S. Riggs. "Prolonged exposure therapy." (2019).
[7] Schnurr, Paula P., et al. "Comparison of prolonged exposure vs cognitive processing therapy for treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder among US veterans: a randomized clinical trial." JAMA Network Open 5.1 (2022): e2136921-e2136921.
Katherine Musacchio Schafer earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 2022. She is a clinician, teacher, and researcher who has published multiple peer reviewed journal articles, led randomized control trials, and earned grant funding for her work. She is interested in 1) harmonizing basic psychological principles with novel technologies to promote widespread systemic change in health and healthcare delivery 2) shifting model from healthcare delivery to promoting longterm sustainable health 3) integrating wearable devices with predictive analytics to implement real time intervention and behavior change 4) improving patient outcomes, reducing costs, and preventing healthcare burnout 5) cultivating relationships with senior stakeholders and identifying opportunities for high-value, high-impact research.
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Feel free to share our DBMI Open Positions with your friends and colleagues!
Contact Jennifer Martellotti with questions.
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| REMINDER: Update Your DBMI Bio Page
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REMINDER: Please review your DBMI bio page and notify us of any changes. Updates can include:
- New headshot
- Updated degrees, professional titles
- Updated bio information
- Adding Google Scholar, PubMed, LinkedIn URLs
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Upcoming Events
Visit here for more details on upcoming events and previously recorded DBMI seminars.
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