LCOM & Department News

UVM Part of NIH Study of Rural South's Health & Longevity Challenges

May 22, 2019 by Jennifer Nachbur

(May 22, 2019) In an effort to understand why some people born in rural communities in the South live shorter and less healthy lives than their counterparts elsewhere in the same counties as well as across the country, researchers from the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont at 11 other institutions will be participating in a new longitudinal cohort study aimed at combating this issue - the Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal Study (RURAL) .
(May 22, 2019) Why are some people born in the rural South less healthy and prone to die sooner?

In an effort to understand why some people born in rural communities in the South live shorter and less healthy lives than their counterparts elsewhere in the same counties as well as across the country, researchers from the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont (UVM) today announced they will be participating in a new longitudinal cohort study aimed at combating this issue.

The Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal Study (RURAL) will allow researchers to learn what causes the high burden of heart, lung, blood and sleep (HLBS) disorders in Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and offer clues regarding how to alleviate them. 

With funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, this six-year, $21.4 million multi-site prospective cohort study will include 50 investigators from 15 other institutions, including UVM University Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Russell Tracy, Ph.D., FAHA, ABCC.

To better understand why certain factors amplify risk in some rural counties and what renders some communities more resilient, the researchers will be recruiting and studying 4,000 multi-ethnic participants from 10 of the most economically disadvantaged rural counties in southern Appalachia and Mississippi Delta and parts of the rural South.

Using a self-contained mobile examination unit, ‘a research center on wheels,’ a transdisciplinary team will conduct an approximately four-hour detailed baseline examination on the study participants. Familial, lifestyle and behavioral factors, along with medical history including risk for HLBS disorders will be recorded. Environmental and economic factors will also be studied and standard and novel risk factors for HLBS disorders will be assayed. Investigators will use smart phones and wearable activity monitors in order to help collect health and lifestyle information of the participants.

“RURAL is a unique opportunity to work with participants in economically-challenged areas, people who have not had much opportunity to participate in NIH epidemiological studies,” says UVM’s Tracy, who has over 30 years of experience in population studies of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic diseases of aging, and currently directs a national-level biorepository at UVM with more than 4.5 million biosamples.

Tracy explains that UVM’s Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry Research will help design the overall protocol, especially for the collection of biosamples, such as blood and urine. The lab will serve as the RURAL Biorepository, ultimately storing and making available hundreds of thousands of biosamples for future research. In addition, Tracy’s lab will also perform a variety of clinical and research measurements to help identify critical factors that determine better or worse health status in rural communities. 

“The rural health challenge in the South does not spare any race or ethnicity. These high risk and economically disadvantaged rural communities are vulnerable to clusters of multiple health problems,” explained Vasan Ramachandran, M.D., FAHA, FACC, principal investigator and Boston University director of the renowned Framingham Heart Study, with which he has been affiliated for more than 20 years. “We aim to understand the rural health challenge in the South and share our findings with and offer health education to these rural communities.”

The study coordinating center is Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). Investigators from the University of Louisville (Kentucky), LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, University of Mississippi Medical Center and University of Alabama at Birmingham, will play a central role in participant recruitment, retention, follow-up, data return, return of results, community engagement and education.

UVM’s Larner College of Medicine is one of 12 institutions participating in RURAL. Other participating institutions are Duke University; Emory University; Johns Hopkins University; Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute (UCLA); University of California, Berkeley; University of Massachusetts Medical School; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; University of Virginia at Charlottesville; and the Wake Forest School of Medicine. 

 

Past Department Highlights

Congratulations to Anne Stowman, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on accepting the position as Network Vice Chair for Anatomic Pathology. (3/2024)  

Congratulations to Ashley Volaric, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on receiving a Physician-Scientist Pilot Award through the Translational Global Infectious Disease Research (TGIR Group) for her research on Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) epigenetics of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas in sub-Saharan Africa. (3/2024)

Congratulations to Rebecca Wilcox, M.D., associate dean for faculty affairs, and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, on receiving The Polaris Award for Outstanding Mentorship, and Dr. Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., on receiving the Gender Equity Outstanding Achievement in Medicine & Science Award at the 5th Annual Celebration of Gender Equity in Medicine and Science Awards. This award honors a Larner College of Medicine faculty or staff member who provides outstanding formal or informal mnetorship for women or gender diverse** college community members. Dr. Wilcox was nominated by Andrea Green, Julie Dumas, Alexandra Kalof, and LE Faricy. (2/2024) **Gender diverse refers to those who identify with a gender outside of the she/her, he/him binary   

Congratulations to Dr. Brian Cunniff, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, the team in the Cunniff Lab, and industry partner , RS Oncology, on having their novel therapy enter Phase 2 Clinical trials. Read more here Milestone for UVM-developed cancer drug. (2/2024)

During the annual Larner College of Medicine's Foundations Award Celebration, Amer Abu Alfa, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine received The Dean Warshaw Integration Award recognizing the faculty member whose teaching best captured the spirit of the Vermont Integrated Curriculum. Congratulations. Christina Wojewoda, M.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and vice chair for education pathology, presented the Ephraim Woll Award for Excellence in General Pathology to John Rustad. (2/2024) 

Congratulations Dr. Bei Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP)CM, on January 17, 2024, is to receive the Educational Scholarship Award from the Teaching Academy Awards for Teaching and Educational Excellence. This award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated a record of Quality, Quantity, and Engagement in medical education scholarship. Dr. Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP)CM, has been advanced to Distinguished Educator by the Teaching Academy at LCOM. Congratulations also to Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., for advancing to the level of Master Teacher and Agnes Balla, M.D., on being inducted as a Member. (1/2024)

Congratulations to University Scholar Mary Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine, on being ranked #90 in the U.S. and #144 in the world as one of the Best Female Scientists in the World, by Research.com. Also, Dr. Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., recently delivered the Robert Reneman Lecture at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM)'s 2023 symposium in The Netherlands. The tile of her talk was "Stroke and Cognitive Impairment in a Biracial U.S. Cohort: The REGARDS Study." (1/2024)

In a recent Nature Methods paper, Doug Taatjes, Ph.D., Director of the Microscopy Imaging Center, and the Center for Biomedical Shared Resources at the Larner College of Medicine, together with colleagues from the international consortium QUAREP-LiMi, proposed a set of standardized community-developed checklists to assist researchers, reviewers, and journal editors with the goal of increasing the clarity and reproducibility of image figures and their analyses. The hope is that many journals will adopt these guidelines as part of their “Instructions for Authors”—providing a succinct and easy to use checklist for authors when compiling images for reproduction and descriptions of image analyses performed. (11/2023) (from the LCOM Newsletter)

Congratulations to some of our residents and our fellowship student on having their abstracts accepted for the upcoming 2024 USCAP annual meeting in March. "Unexpected Cardiac Amyloidsis: Demographics, Histology, Distribution and Clinical Significance: A Review of 15 Autopsy Cases." (Jesse Mostoller, Neel Hedge, Nick Taylor). "GATA3 Positive Malignant Spindle Cell Neoplasm Involving the Liver Diagnosed as Metastatic Sarcomatoid Chromophobe Renal Cell Carcinoma at Autopsy." (Rae Nusapan). "Long Term Outcome in a Case of Tetralogy of Fallot Surgically Treated with Palliative Shunts: Findings from an Adult Autopsy." (Dore Guptil, Heather Giguere). (11/2023)

Mark_FungCongratulations to Dr. Mark Fung, M.D., PhD., Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on receiving the 2023 College of American Pathologists (CAP) Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Fung is a nationally recognized expert in transfusion medicine. (10/2023) 

Congratulations to Jessica Crothers, M.D., Assistant Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on achieving the Notice of Special Interest Team Science award from NIAID for: "Effects of the gut microbiota on oral vaccine response in adults and children." (10/2023)

Nicole BouffardCongratulations to Nicole Bouffard on being awarded the "Scientific Research Staff Award" for 2023. This was presented to Nicole at the September 21, 2023, LCOM Research Excellence Award Ceremony. This is a great honor for Nicole and the Department of Pathology and recognizes her contributions and importance to the department and MIC. (10/2023)

Congratulations to Brian Cunniff, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on being awarded a $1.6 million R01 grant by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study the role of mitochondrial trafficking in regulating cell migration, a key feature of metastatic tumors. (9/2023)

Congratulations to Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., Professor Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, on becoming a University of Vermont Cancer Center Program Co-Leader, Cancer Cell. (9/2023)

Congratulations to the following pathology members on receiving research support funds in April 2023. Recipients were: John Kennedy, M.D., $6520 for morphologic and immunohistochemical re-evaluation of renal cell carcinomas exhibiting papillary architecture, with emphasis on tumors demonstrating "type 2" morphology. Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., $15,000 for a joint initiative between RBP, UVM Cancer Center, and faculty in the Department of Chemistry. Megan Tarte $745 for Stem Cells, Cell Therapies, and Bioengineering in Lung Biology and Disease Conference. Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., $14,400 for Redox processes in macrophage activation in IPF. (9/2023)

Congratulations to the following faculty members on their promotions: Vikas Anathy, Ph.D., to Professor with tenure, Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., to Associate Professor, John DeWitt, M.D., Ph.D., to Associate Professor, Sarah Nowak Ph.D., to Associate Professor, and Christi Wojewoda, M.D., to Professor. (6/2023)

Bei Zhang, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., MLS(ASCP), associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, did an educational scholarship session titled "Activate Students Learning Outside Classroom." at the 8th International meeting of the Association of Biochemistry Educators. Dr. Zhang also conducted two additional workshops with other ABE members titled "Linking Clinical Presentations to Their Biochemistry: A novel ABE Clinical-Biochemistry Curricular Treat Mapping Educational Tool.", and "Getting to Clerkship and Beyond: Crafting Biochemistry Learning Objectives that Connect and Integrate Basic Science Concepts with Clinical Application." (5/2023)

Congratulations to Dr. Maureen Harmon, M.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Dr. Amer Abu Alfa, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine for being recognized by medical students for their professionalism. Dr. Harmon was recognized for social responsibility and Dr. Abu Alfa was recognized for compassion. (5/2023)

Congratulations to Mary Cushman, Ph.D., M.Sc., professor of medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine, on being named a University Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology Division, and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. (5/2023)

View the story Mammograms of a study by Sarah Nowak, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and researchers at the UVM Cancer Center showing data that fewer women being screened for breast cancer. (4/2023)

vandervliet-habibovic420x280A new study by Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and a team of University of Vermont (UVM) researchers is honing in on why people with asthma often have worse symptoms if they are obese. This new research demonstrates that the gene DUOX1 likely contributes to the connection between obesity and asthma.  The research was published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology and was highlighted as an APSselect article for March 2023. Albert van der Vliet, Ph.D., was the senior author on the paper, along with department of pathology and laboratory medicine coauthors Aida Habibovic, lab research technician;Litiele Cruz, Ph.D., visiting scholar; Vikas Anathy, Ph.D., associate professor; University Distinguished Professor Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D.; and additional team members and authors from UVM. Read the full LCOM News story LCOM News (4/2023)

Congratulations to Bronwyn Bryant, M.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, for having your proposal, Consequential Validity of Entrustable Professional Activities in Pathology Residency Training selected to receive a Frymoyer Scholars Program project of $48,000 to be funded July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2025. (4/2023)

Congratulations to Martin Chang, M.D., Ph.D., on accepting the new role as Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs. (4/2023)

Congratulations to Joanna Conant, M.D., on becoming the new Pathology Student Fellowship Director starting July 1, 2023. (4/2023)

Congratulations to The Cunniff Lab, on receiving funding to support research focused on malignant mesothelioma. The funding was from The Butler Family Foundation Fund for Cancer Research at the University of Vermont Cancer Center. The Butler Fund was established by the Butler family in memory of two loved ones lost to mesothelioma. (03/2023)