Community Engagement

“Ensuring children are empowered and raised to become healthy, happy, productive members of our communities is one of the most important things we can do,” says assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine James Metz, M.D. “Child abuse needs to be brought out from the underbelly of society. It’s easy for people to say ‘the problem is too big; it’s too difficult; it’s too sad.’ But that’s when you need to step into a problem, not away from it.”

Vermont United Ways and the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont are providing Vermonters with a say in prioritizing community health needs via a survey that is the largest and most comprehensive public health project ever conducted by UVM medical students.

A new $5.47 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine will support the creation of the UVM Center for Biomedical Shared Resources. The grant will fund completion of the Center's home on the first floor of the new Firestone Medical Research Building, which will be located on the south end of the Larner College of Medicine complex.

The University of Vermont (UVM) is participating in a major national research effort to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of varying types of blood thinners to treat adults diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19—the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.

University of Vermont Associate Professor of Psychiatry Stacey Sigmon, Ph.D., has been selected by Fast Company for its 11th annual list of the Most Creative People in Business, which honors an influential and diverse group of leaders from a vast range of global industries including tech, design, entertainment, healthcare, media, government, nonprofit, sports, food, and more.

Medical students at the Larner College of Medicine led a national movement in June to appeal to key national medical education organizations to advocate for a change in assessing a record of arrest stemming from social justice-related protesting. Larner students built a coalition of eight national student organizations, and crafted a letter signed by thousands of student supporters that was sent to the members of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine.

Ensuring the effectiveness of policies and media campaigns targeting young people is critical to achieving substance use prevention, but state surveillance systems are often not nimble enough to capture quickly changing substance use trends. New findings from UVM researchers and colleagues highlight how a uniquely flexible survey instrument and use of incentives help capture relevant data and keep young Vermonters engaged.

A commentary published in the journal Pediatrics by Benjamin Lee, M.D. and William V. Raszka, Jr., M.D., concludes that children infrequently transmit COVID-19 to each other or to adults and that many schools, provided they follow appropriate social distancing guidelines and take into account rates of transmission in their community, can and should reopen in the fall.

A new, three-year $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will allow members of the UVM Center for Health Services Research (CHSR) at the Larner College of Medicine, led by center director and Professor of Medicine Adam Atherly, Ph.D., to explore the effectiveness of community health teams in improving the quality and efficiency of health care delivery.

More than 250 University of Vermont Medical Center staff members, Larner College of Medicine students and leaders gathered June 5 at 1 p.m. for a silent demonstration of support for racial justice in honor of George Floyd and others who have died due to racism and police brutality.