Office of Medical Communications

(AUGUST 25, 2021) Randall Holcombe, M.D., M.B.A., director of the UVM Cancer Center and Juckett Professor of Cancer Research, commented on the role of mRNA in cancer treatment research.

(AUGUST 9, 2021) First-year medical students Gabriela Sarriera and Justin Henningsen were interviewed by WCAX reporter Cat Viglienzoni on the first day of Orientation about their reasons for starting medical school.

Described as “a traditional summer camp experience with a queer twist,” Camp Outright provides a supportive environment and a range of activities focused on community, social justice, and fun for youth aged 13 to 17. During the two 2021 summer sessions, the camp also served as a place for medical trainees and campers to see a different side of patient care and clinicians, respectively.

Bob Gramling, M.D., D.Sc., has witnessed grief in its many forms. As the inaugural Holly and Bob Miller Chair in Palliative Medicine and a professor of family medicine, he counsels seriously ill patients and their families while they navigate the challenging terrain between life and death.

With Vermont’s vaccination levels at well over 80 percent and Delta variant-related cases rising, the 124 members of the Larner College of Medicine’s medical Class of 2025 began their journeys to becoming physicians during a completely new and different academic year that started on August 9.

Patricia King, M.D., Ph.D., UVM professor of medicine and former chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), led and created the Workgroup on Physician Sexual Misconduct, which conducted a deep review of all available U.S. sexual misconduct disciplinary data, and state medical board physician sexual misconduct laws, policies and procedures might be contributing to this dire problem. Their findings were reported in 2020 and featured in an April 27, 2021 JAMA Viewpoint article.

On Monday, August 2, the familiar quieter campus scene encountered by Larner College of Medicine researchers, educators and staff members over the past seventeen months of the pandemic grew to an audible hum of activity as more employees returned to in-person work in the Given, Health Science Research Facility, Stafford and Medical Education Center buildings and, indeed, across the entire UVM campus.

VCBH Director Stephen T. Higgins spoke with Health Check’s Claudia Hammond about the evidence supporting the use of incentives for vaccination adherence in this brief 5-minute podcast.

The VT IDeA Retreat is being organized by the Vermont Biomedical Research Network. We encourage your participation in this exciting program that will bring together faculty from across Vermont to strengthen our biomedical research infrastructure - a key goal of NIGMS’ IDeA program.

More than 75% of women with Opioid Use Disorder report having had an unintended pregnancy, but they are less likely to use effective contraception compared to women who do not use drugs. Results from a multi-year trial led by UVM Professor Sarah Heil found that a two-part intervention featuring co-located contraceptive services in opioid treatment programs and financial incentives could offer an effective solution.

(AUGUST 4, 2021) A MedPageToday article focused on a JAMA Psychiatry article by Professor of Psychiatry Stephen Higgins, Ph.D., and colleagues that examined the effectiveness of using contingency management to address comorbid behaviors like cigarette smoking in patients receiving medication for opioid use disorder.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of “Contingency Management for Patients Receiving Medication for Opioid Use Disorder” and accompanying podcast appear today in JAMA Psychiatry. Led by the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health (VCBH) at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, the podcast features VCBH Director Stephen T. Higgins, PhD discussing the examination, completed by first author Hypatia Bolívar, PhD and the VCBH team, of the utility of the behavioral intervention contingency management (CM) for addressing key clinical problems common among patients enrolled in MOUD.

The Clinical Research ECHO will focus on developing all types of clinical research including investigator-initiated projects.

Not only is Vermont small and rural, but it’s also old. Currently, the state is ranked fourth in the nation for the relative number of residents over 65 years old – a whopping nearly 20 percent of Vermont’s population and rising. And with that status comes a disproportionately large share of heart disease, as well as blood vessel diseases and brain circulation problems that can lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

UVM and University of Maryland researchers have shown how the brain communicates to blood vessels when in need of energy, and how these blood vessels respond to direct blood flow to specific brain regions -- information that can help determine what goes wrong in conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, where faulty blood flow is a predictor for cognitive impairment.

The trial, led by Sarah Heil, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, tested a novel two-component intervention informed by behavioral economics that combined contraceptive services co-located with an opioid treatment program with financial incentives for attending follow-up visits in an effort to increase initiation and continuation of prescription contraceptive use

New trial results from the University of Vermont and an international team of researchers show that administering a full dose of a standard blood thinner early to moderately ill hospitalized patients with COVID-19 could reduce the risk of severe disease and death.

Investigators from across the globe came together virtually July 12-15, 2021 for the University of Vermont-hosted ninth biennial "Stem Cells, Cell Therapies, and Bioengineering in Lung Biology" conference to share the latest research in the field and set priorities for their work in the future.