Amanda Mixon, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine and Public Health), has been appointed co-director of the Center for Clinical Quality and Implementation Research where she will direct the Vanderbilt Implementation and Quality Improvement Core

Eiman Jahangir, MD (Cardiovascular Medicine), was part of a six-person crew on the Blue Origin launch of the 11-minute suborbital space flight on Aug 29. He experienced weightlessness for several minutes and got views of planet Earth that only about 700 people have ever witnessed.

VUMC and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) have been awarded funding from the NIH to establish a K12 program to train scholars in addiction research. The Vanderbilt Oregon Collaborative Scholar Training in Addiction Research (COSTAR) program will draw on both institutions’ expertise in addiction.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is one of roughly 60 study sites worldwide participating in RESPONDER-HF, a randomized clinical trial of an atrial shunt to treat heart failure patients.

Patients with a form of heart failure called HFpEF may breathe normally at rest but quickly become breathless with physical activity. The study will test an atrial shunt to relieve high pressure in the heart.

The testing is for younger patients who may be at risk for inherited cardiomyopathy or arrhythmia syndromes. Without treatment, younger patients may develop other serious cardiac disorders such as heart failure or life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias.

He is the first from VUMC to receive the award, which recognizes “champions” of health professions education who have advanced the VA’s health care education mission.

Emily Brown, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine (General Internal Medicine and Public Health), has been named the medical director of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Discharge Care Center, an around-the-clock call center comprised of a multidisciplinary team that serves as a centralized resource to aid adult patients navigating the health care system after discharge. Her new role was effective July 1.

Scanner combines fluoroscopy, a type of X-ray imaging that allows real-time visualization of body structures, with analytical software to visually document the lung’s air flow as color heat maps.

Vanderbilt’s adult heart, lung, liver and kidney transplant programs individually had record fiscal years, with 150 heart transplants, 90 lung transplants, 180 liver transplants and 333 kidney transplants. In addition, adult transplant teams performed three heart/lung transplants and four kidney/pancreas transplants. Heidi Schaefer, MD (Nephrology and Hypertension), is the medical director of Adult Solid Organ Transplant.

With a $3 million research grant, Henrique Serezani, PhD, Associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will investigate how altered metabolism in diabetes affects inflammation and sepsis.