Update on Opioid Prescribing in Vermont

Tuesday, October 11
“Update on Opioid Prescribing in Vermont”
Charles Maclean, MD, Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences Grand Rounds, 7:30-8:30 am, Davis Auditorium

Navigating the Grant Submission Process at UVM: Who Can Help Me?

Dear Department and Grants Administrators,

I am pleased to announce that I will once again be offering the Grant Writing “Brown Bag” seminar series.

This monthly forum is designed for a wide range of UVM faculty and staff interested in discussing grant writing best practices. We will cover topics ranging from the procedural aspects of submitting a grant, to tips for finding funding, and practical approaches for improving the clarity of your writing.

The main focus of the series content will be on improving the narrative/text components of a grant proposal. If you are involved in pre-award grant preparation, please consider joining in the conversation. A variety of perspectives and experiences will enrich the discussion.

Please consider joining me for one or all of the sessions. The first session: 

“Navigating the Grant Submission Process at UVM: Who Can Help Me?”

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016

12:00 – 1:00 pm

427A Waterman conference room

No RSVP required. Feel free to bring your lunch.

Please note: Topics for the 2016-17 academic year will be repeated from last year’s series.

To review the full schedule of topics:

http://www.uvm.edu/~ovpr/gpm/brownbag_grant-writing-series_2016-17.pdf

Note: If you would like to be removed from this email distribution list, please send me an email ( jeralyn.haraldsen@uvm.edu ).

Best regards,

Jeralyn

Jeralyn Haraldsen, PhD

Grant Proposal Manager

University of Vermont

Office of the Vice President for Research

Phone: (802) 656-2982

Collaborating with REGARDS

Mary Cushman, MD, Professor of Medicine, will be hosting an informational session on data availability from the ReGARDS study. This is a great opportunity!

October 21 from 9:15-10:15 in HSRF 200

-------------------------------

I am writing to provide information some of you might find useful to your research and to invite you to a session about one of our major research initiatives here at UVM.  We have been participating as central laboratory for a large cohort study, REGARDS, since 2003 now. REGARDS = Reasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke. The study is an observational study which enrolled 30,000 black and white adults aged 45+ and is following them prospectively for stroke, cognitive function and almost any endpoint you could think of.  We have extensive baseline information on these people, including a biorepository here at UVM. We are soon finishing a second visit of the cohort, 10 years after baseline, where we have ascertained information on the incidence of cardiovascular risk factors and a variety of other measures/data. To give you some basic numbers to describe what we have:

·        30,000 people, about ½ African-American, about ½ living in the southeast and the rest throughout the US

·        Baseline risk factor data, ECG, cognitive testing, geocoding, social factors, novel biomarkers, genomics data in subsets (almost anything you could imagine but apologies to our pulmonary colleagues we don’t have PFTs)

·        Follow up every 6 months with a cognitive battery every 2 years (so we have Trajectory data on cognition), some geriatric functional measures/outcomes

·        For outcomes (for each one this is the number who were free of that disease at baseline and developed it by 10 year visit.

o   About 1000 incident stroke

o   About 1000 incident coronary events

o   About 275 incident venous thrombosis

o   About 1400 incident diabetes

o   About 3000 incident hypertension

o   About 3000 incident hyperlipidemia

o   About 1200 incident atrial fibrillation

o   About 2500 incident kidney disease

A major goal of the project is to share the data as widely as we can, and we have been very successful on that, as evidenced by a large number of ancillary research projects that have been funded to add new data to the study, answer new research questions not covered by the main grant, and by the publication rate of the study (currently producing about 1 paper a week, mostly by first authors with no funding from the study). Several trainees here at UVM have used the data to write papers. The study has a website that you can look at for other details: http://regardsstudy.org/

Some of you may have attended talks in the past about the study at various Grand Rounds / Seminars, including the VVM Conference. I would like to hold a session to share information about the study and its amazing wealth of data with UVM’ers who might be interested in collaborating with the study on anything ranging from writing a paper on something that interests them to writing a grant to delve into interesting questions. This would allow attendees to learn about the study and to talk with some REGARDS investigators from our group about whether research ideas they have could be answered with the data.  

Mary Cushman, MD, MSc

Professor of Medicine

University of Vermont College of Medicine

Director, Thrombosis and Hemostasis Program

University of Vermont Medical Center

Burlington, VT

Twitter: @MaryCushmanMD

NIH Loan Repayment program

This is an excellent opportunity to get a very substantial amount of support for research training. Highly recommended!

-Ben Littenberg

NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRP) Application Cycle is NOW OPEN! The application cycle opens this year on September 1 and closes on November 15. Now is the ideal time to inform your colleagues about the many benefits of the LRPs.       Approximately 1,500 researchers benefit from the more than $70 million the NIH invests each year.       Participants in the NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) receive up to $70,000 of qualified educational debt repayment with a two-year contract           Please forward this email to anyone who may be interested in the Programs.       Thank you for your continued support of the NIH Loan Repayment Programs!     Important LRP Application Updates! Newly revised online application now available All applicants (new and renewal) are required to have an eRA Commons ID Same application submission deadline for applicants, colleague, and institutional documentation -November 15, 2016 Questions?Call : (866) 849-4047    Email : lrp@nih.gov    Website : www.lrp.nih.gov

Please join the LRP Director, Dr. Ericka Boone, and LRP information center staff onThursday, 9/22 at 3 PM EST for a LIVE LRP Technical Assistance Webinar to get an in-depth look at the LRP application process. Topics that will be covered include: Eligibility Criteria Qualifying Loans Contractual Obligations Application Cycle Timeline Got a question about the Extramural LRP application?  Submit your questions for the Q&A portion of the presentation to lrp.communications@mail.nih.gov by 12:00 PM EST Wednesday, September 21, 2016. Please note, we will not take live questions during the webinar, so submit your questions before the deadline. Details: Click the below link to access the webinar on 9/22: https://nih.webex.com/nih/onstage/g.php?MTID=e02d46190f6258f8340de4b05e9e2daec Date and Time: Thursday, September 22, 2016 3:00 pm, EST Event number: 627 616 379 Event password: LRPApp Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 1-877-668-4493 Access code: 627 616 379 The application deadline to apply for the NIH LRPs is November 15, 2016   lrp.communications@mail.nih.gov  Phone: +1.866.849.4047     Visit us at: http://www.lrp.nih.gov

Marianne Burke featured in Vermont Cynic articl

PhD Candidate Marianne Burke was featured in the Vermont Cynic's recent article on new construction at the Dana Medical Library. In her "day job", Marianne is Director of the library.

Need to search the literature, organize citations, organize your life?

Maybe a Dana Medical Library workshop can help. Click the link for the  workshop schedule at Dana this Fall. All sessions are on Wednesdays at noon.  A couple of workshops have already passed, but there are lots more to come. All students, staff and faculty are welcome. No sign-up needed.

http://library.uvm.edu/dana/services/currentclasses.php

Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: Sept 16, 2016

Present:   Marianne Burke, Nancy Gell, Kairn Kelley, Ben Littenberg, Gail Rose, Adam Sprouse-Blum, Connie van Eeghen

Start Up:

1.                   Kairn Kelley and Gail Rose – communicating science to engineering students

a.       Method: start with what the expectations/goals are from the students; use parking lot

                                                   i.      Answers: how to go from dull to “wowzer,” how to distill information

b.       Use of non-oral communication to foster understanding about communication

                                                   i.      Debriefing process: what was noticed

1.       Keeping up vs. anticipation affects ability

a.       Knowing where it’s going

2.       Cues

a.       Signposts

b.       Structure

3.       Performance pressure (presenter and audience)

4.       Building a relationship: virtuous cycles of behavior

                                                 ii.      What makes it better

1.       Slower

2.       One-thing-at-a-Time

3.       Field of view (point of view)

4.       Eye contact (useful if it tells about thoughts)

5.       Experience

6.       Practice

c.       Ask audience to make the connections; the presenter actually facilitates

d.       Follow up: parking lot and comments about those issues

e.       Gail’s presentation to the computer science students on PEARRS – comments on feedback forms

2.                   Next Workshop Meeting(s): Fridays, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., at Given Courtyard South Level 4 until end of Aug.   

a.       Sept 23:  Kairn Kelley – Science Communication, continued

b.       Sept 30:

c.       Future topics:

a.       Topic-free check in (where are we in our work) and reflection on learning experiences (what's worked well for each of us re: CROW in the past, what other learning experiences have supported us well in developing our research skills that we might want to replicate). Kairn

b.       At some point would like to share presentation I am preparing for a conference on motor learning in autism as well as "scoping review" article on same topic.  2) rather not present this week. October would be great.  Liliane

c.       I would like to start coming to these meetings- but often have clinics scheduled on Friday afternoons.  Am particularly interested in autism research so please let me know the date so I can attend then if possible. Will plan to come this Friday afternoon.  Deborah Hirtz M.D.

Recorder: Connie van Eeghen