CUIMC Update - November 6, 2024

November 6, 2024

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CUIMC Update is a weekly e-newsletter featuring medical center news and the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and trainees. Please send your news, honors, and awards to cuimc_update@cumc.columbia.edu. Grants are provided by the Sponsored Projects Administration office.

News

Join Your Colleagues for the CUIMC Fall Festival on Nov. 12
All are welcome to attend the annual CUIMC Employee Appreciation Fall Festival on Haven Plaza, Nov. 12 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be free warm soup with recipes crafted by the Faculty Club's Chef Busby Keily, a winter squash giveaway, live music, and a live, giant pumpkin carving.

Open Enrollment Starts This Week: Here’s What You Need to Know
Open enrollment begins this week for all benefits-eligible CUIMC employees. Get a sneak peek at the changes rolling out this year and learn about some under-the-radar benefits.

Another Fruitful Season for ColumbiaDoctors Outreach
ColumbiaDoctors Outreach wrapped up their second season of tabling at the Fort Washington Greenmarket, having reached more than 1,200 people. The last day’s theme was Healthy Snacks, and visitors were offered fruit sushi and fresh local apples, as well as the chance to have their health questions answered by experienced nurses and nurse practitioners.

Addressing a Workforce Shortage: How Early Medical Education Can Shape Future Mental Health Care
The need for more medical students to pursue careers in psychiatry has become increasingly urgent. Janis Cutler, director of medical student education in psychiatry, is leading a comprehensive psychiatric medicine curriculum that has a dual mission to help grow the psychiatry workforce and increase literacy across all specialties.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Gary Miller, Environmental Health Sciences
    $976,667 over five years from Cancer Research UK for "SAMBAI: Societal, Ancestry, Molecular and Biological Analyses of Inequalities."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Jason Carmel, Neurology
    $2,056,250 over three years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for "Targeting cervical epidural spinal cord stimulation for functional recovery."
  • David Fidock, Microbiology & Immunology
    $3,244,376 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Defining the complex genetic basis of Plasmodium falciparum resistance to artemisinin and quinine and identifying resistance-refractory therapeutics."
  • Jennifer Manly, Sergievsky Center
    $526,330 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for "Health and Retirement Study: Yrs 35-40."
  • Konstantin Petrukhin, Ophthalmology
    $468,500 over two years from the National Eye Institute for "Pharmacological modulation of ion currents for treatment of exfoliation glaucoma."
  • Yuichi Shimada, Medicine
    $300,000 over three years from the American Heart Association for "Plasma proteomics to predict mortality and poor response to tafamidis in patients with transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis."
  • Marisa Spann, Psychiatry
    $500,000 over four years from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for "Innovative techniques to understand maternal-fetal synchrony as a way to predict adverse fetal outcomes in a hypertensive environment."

Honors

Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia Medicine | Join #ColumbiaNursing Dean Frazier, PhD as she bravely shares her journey from her #breastcancer diagnosis to survivorship and highlights... | Instagram

In the News Highlights

  • Women Are Still Under-Represented in Medical Research. Here’s Where the Gender Gap Is Most Pronounced
    Nov. 1, 2024
    TIME
    These days, “many investigators are reluctant to emphasize sex differences in their research because of the emotional turmoil surrounding the evolving complexity of what gender means and what sex means,” says Dr. Marianne J. Legato, emerita professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University and founder and director of the Foundation for Gender Specific Medicine. “It’s one of the elephants in the room of why gender-based research or male-female differences are not being more courageously investigated.”
  • Triplets Are Becoming Less Common in the United States. Here’s Why
    Oct. 31, 2024
    CNN Online
    Overall, the new data was “very informative,” Dr. Rachel McConnell, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, who was not involved in the report, said in an email. She added that the report’s findings indicate that the guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to transfer a low number of embryos “has helped to reduce the number of multiple pregnancies” in IVF cycles.
  • What Gives You Hope for Health Equity?
    Oct. 15, 2024
    Scientific American
    More than 20 years ago I remember going to a clinic very far away from the capital city in one of the provinces in South Africa. There was nothing available for HIV testing or for treatment, and, I remember this vividly, this nurse very proudly opened a notebook that she had in a drawer in her very rickety desk and said, “I have a list of people here who need treatment.” And then she pulled out another sheet of paper, and she said, “Look at this. I have a certificate. I’ve been trained. I’m ready. I want to save my people.”
    Wafaa El-Sadr, interviewed for this article, is executive vice president for Columbia Global and director of ICAP at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.