Virginia Commonwealth University
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Virginia Commonwealth University
The VCU C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research provides the commonwealth with infrastructure and resources that promote interdisciplinary human health research. As the first federally funded clinical and translational research center in Virginia, we foster research collaborations across the state and accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries to patient care. 
-Virginia Commonwealth UniversityDennis Hopkinson, M.D., traveled to Kigali on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2018 where he taught at the University of Rwanda. The hospitalist at VCU Health and assistant professor of Internal Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine collaborated with local Kigali researchers on multiple projects while he was there, and work has continued remotely. Join Hopkinson for a presentation of his research into
February 19, 2021Maybe you wrote it off as a buzzword when you first saw it. But Team Science has guided and shaped cutting edge research at Virginia Commonwealth University from behind the scenes for years. Understanding it and its value, in fact, has informed the research of some of VCU’s best scientists and physicians. “Early in my career, I had this misconception that research involved a scientist, a clinician
February 16, 2021Terrance Afer-Anderson wants to create an army of ambassadors. The Norfolk native and prostate cancer survivor wrote, produced and directed a movie, “The Black Walnut,” to bring attention to inequities in screening and mortality rates for prostate cancer in the Black community. “I tell men scared of the invasiveness of a prostate cancer screening, ‘You have to toughen up,’” Afer-Anderson said on
February 09, 2021This story was initially published as a feature in the spring issue of the MCV Foundation's NEXT magazine and is excerpted on its website. Arun Sanyal, M.D., describes the early part of 2020 like seeing, without any defenses in place, an army advance around the globe toward Richmond. “As we were watching COVID-19 march through China, through Singapore, and then through Europe, we knew it was only
January 27, 2021As the pandemic brings potentially lasting change to every corner of society, Virginia Commonwealth University researchers are working to capture data around one of the most ubiquitous changes to emerge from the health care world. Telehealth — where doctors and patients are distant from one another, connected through digital means — can mean anything from a brief phone call to an urgent video
-Virginia Commonwealth UniversityJoin Jane Chung, Ph.D., RN, for a presentation of her research, "Using Technology to Help Seniors Age in Place." An assistant professor in the VCU School of Nursing's Department of Family and Community Health Nursing, Chung will explain her findings and lead a discussion on the topic. The Wright Center's Discovery Dialogues Series is a regular event that bridges the divide between science, health
January 21, 2021The VCU Wright Center and its researchers were featured in an MCV Foundation magazine article about how the university and health system adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Petri dishes and slides were frozen. Study plans were amended. Some research pivoted. And more than 50 new projects at Virginia Commonwealth University emerged to combat the new virus on multiple fronts. Research- January 20, 2021Organ transplant recipients, people with HIV, those with autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis – the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially scary for people whose immune systems are compromised or suppressed. They’ve fought or are fighting battles against other diseases – or even their own immune systems. And the newness of the virus means no one is sure how they
January 19, 2021The Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU spoke to Virginia Commonwealth University researcher Uyen Truong, M.D., about her research into pediatric pulmonary hypertension. Last year, Truong received a VCU Wright Center Pilot Imaging Fund award, supported by the National Institutes of Health, for her project titled “The impact of bariatric surgery on adolescent cardiovascular function.” The fund
-Virginia Commonwealth UniversityThe Heart Health in Women 2021 Conference will be a half-day educational conference for health care professionals focused on promoting comprehensive understanding of heart disease in women. Topics will include risk factors, prevention, clinical presentation, treatments and outcomes of cardiovascular disease in women, highlighting areas where women have unique disease features and outcomes. The
-Virginia Commonwealth UniversityThe VCU Wright Center’s Health Equity Series is a quarterly exploration and community discussion of health disparities in collaboration with partners locally, in Virginia and nationwide. Join VCU faculty, medical providers and expert guests from the community as they present on the latest research, listen to attendees and plan a way forward – through community-engaged research and increased
December 14, 2020The VCU C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research has received a $16 million gift from the foundation of its namesake benefactors. The funds are part of a $24 million gift from the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Foundation, announced on Friday. The Wright Center’s $16 million will support the mission of the center — to advance science and foster partnerships that- December 10, 2020The researchers and study teams that make clinical research happen at Virginia Commonwealth University have gone above and beyond this year. They worked quickly to adapt ongoing research. They started new studies hoping to contribute to knowledge of COVID-19. They joined national and international studies. And they continued their important research on all the other diseases that didn’t take a
December 10, 2020As the nation gets closer to authorized COVID-19 vaccines, VCU Health is gearing up to be part of the unprecedented distribution in central Virginia. F. Gerard Moeller, M.D., director of the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, and a diverse roster of researchers and health care providers will join forces to offer fact-based perspective on the safety and
November 23, 2020Two leaders at the Wright Center are co-authors on articles in the New England Journal of Medicine this month. Arun Sanyal, M.D., associate director for KL2 Career Development at the Wright Center, contributed to research showing the effects of semaglutide, a medication used to treat diabetes, on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a disease that affects millions of people in the U.S. each year
November 16, 2020This year, COVID-19 has disproportionately attacked the lungs of Black and Latino people. But inequities in lung health are nothing new to researchers, patients and health care providers in minority communities. Those lung health disparities were front and center on Tuesday for Black Lives, Black Lungs, when attendees from Virginia Commonwealth University, VCU Health and the Virginia community
-Virginia Commonwealth UniversityWright Center for Clinical and Translational Research introduces a new three-part seminar series to train early career faculty and researchers in community engaged research. The series hopes to increase the number of junior faculty and researchers who comprehend CEnR and apply CEnR principles to their research. The first cycle of the series will occur on second Thursdays this December, January and
November 13, 2020Wright Center KL2 Scholar Elizabeth Wolf, M.D., MPH, published an article in JAMA Pediatrics this month addressing concerns about negative health impacts from common, and often unnecessary, medical tests and procedures for young patients. Wolf, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the VCU School of Medicine, studies health care for vulnerable populations, well-child visits and
November 02, 2020The machines are learning. But that’s OK, because Amy Olex, M.S., is there to teach them. The senior bioinformatics specialist at the Wright Center is extracting de-identified information from troves of clinical notes so that health researchers at VCU and VCU Health can create meaningful studies and bring research results to patients more quickly. Natural language processing (NLP) is her specialty- Virginia Commonwealth University
Due to the volume and complexity of COVID-19 clinical trials, in the midst of staffing and resource limitations (e.g., PPE), we established a COVID-19 Clinical Trials Prioritization Committee as a vital part of the VCU/VCUHS combined efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of the committee was to facilitate and guide multidisciplinary efforts through transparent and high levels of
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Many clinical questions have arisen with the COVID-19 pandemic, from who is at greatest risk for COVID-19 infection to adverse outcomes if infected to how COVID-19 has impacted healthcare utilization patterns. To help answer these questions, and many more, the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) has integrated real-world clinical observations from across the nation into a harmonized database
October 27, 2020VCU Health featured two VCU researchers, both serving in community engagement roles at the VCU Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, for October’s Global Diversity Awareness Month. “Diversity matters in health care because it drives innovation,” said Katherine Tossas, Ph.D., M.S., whose work is informed by bioinformatics and community-engaged research. Tossas, the director of
- Virginia Commonwealth University
The rate at which COVID-19 spread required a rapid response across many, if not all, industries. Academic medical centers had to rapidly evaluate, prioritize, and coordinate the multiple requests for clinical trial participation. This involved redirecting resources and the development of a collaborative system for assessment, decision making, and implementation. Our institution formed a team with
October 19, 2020Emily Zimmerman, Ph.D., M.S., MPH, wrote the book on community engaged research – literally. Released in March, “Researching Health Together: Engaging Patients and Stakeholders, From Topic Identification to Policy Change” features a collection of experiences from researchers across the country, sharing how and why their projects are designed to engage the community. The Wright Center sat down with
October 13, 2020For every two deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., a third American dies as a result of the pandemic, according to new data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, shows that deaths between March 1 and Aug. 1 increased 20% compared to previous years — maybe not surprising in a pandemic. But deaths
-Georgetown UniversityThis seminar is part of the GHUCCTS KL2 Visiting Scholars Seminar Series, in partnership with the Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Dr. Elizabeth R. Wolf, MD, MPH, earned her Medical Doctorate and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington. She also completed a National Research Service Award fellowship in General
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-Virginia Commonwealth University
The Wright Center’s Health Equity Series is a quarterly exploration and community discussion of health disparities from collaborating partners locally, in Virginia and nationwide. Join VCU faculty, VCU Health medical providers and expert guests from the community as they present on the latest research, listen to attendees and plan a way forward – through community-engaged research and increased
October 01, 2020Taylor Ochalek, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow at the VCU C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research, sat with Miss America, Camille Schrier, to discuss the opioid crisis in light of Ochalek's recent JAMA paper showing an alarming surge of overdoses during the pandemic. “Across the U.S., COVID-19 has really disproportionately impacted underserved minority
September 28, 2020If you get COVID-19, go to your local academic research hospital. That’s what Margaret Lessard told her parents. “The pandemic really emphasized to me how going to an academic medical center opens up the possibilities for you as a patient,” said the senior clinical research coordinator at VCU Health. “We had treatments here that weren’t available anywhere else.” Lessard would know. She was part of
