CUIMC Update - February 14, 2024

February 14, 2024

Share this page

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

CUIMC Hosts First Well-Being Fair for Employees
At the CUIMC Well-Being Fair, employees participated in well-being activities and received information and resources related to heart health, mindfulness, and relaxation. Read more and watch a video.

How Charles Drew Transformed Medicine
Surgeon and researcher Charles R. Drew, MD, MSD, the first Black researcher to receive a doctor of medical science degree at VP&S (and in the United States), pioneered the modern blood bank and overcame racial barriers to advance the education of Black surgeons. Learn more about Drew's legacy in an interview with his daughter, Sylvia Drew Ivie.

CUIMC DEI Leader Alade McKen Shares Priorities for 2024
Alade McKen, PhD, chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer for staff at CUIMC, discusses the office's top priorities for 2024 including the development of DEI trainings, establishing mentorship programs and support systems for staff, and the role DEI plays during times of upheaval. 

How to Protect Children Who Feel Excluded on Valentine’s Day
When people around you receive candy, flowers, or gifts and nothing comes your way, it can sting, especially for children. Columbia pediatrician Dina Romo, MD, shares how Valentine's Day can exacerbate feelings of exclusion and ways to support and protect kids.

Afternoon of Science Series: Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
The Afternoon of Science series, which highlights the work of VP&S basic science departments and centers, continued Feb. 5 with presentations by faculty from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics. The next event on March 5 will feature the Department of Biomedical Informatics. 

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Melissa DuPont-Reyes, PhD, Sociomedical Sciences
    $472,988 over two years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Leveraging Latinx Adolescents, Photovoice, and Longitudinal Data to Disentangle the Bidirectional Effects of Social Media and Mental Health."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Jiheum Park, PhD, Medicine
    $893,050 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Early Detection of Pancreatic Cancer with Human-in-the-Loop Deep Learning."
  • Wolfgang Pernice, PhD, Neurology
    $725,848 over three years from the National Human Genome Research Institute for "Integrated morphological and transcriptomic single-cell profiling of patient-derived cells as a platform for genomic and translational medicine."
  • Jae Sevelius, PhD, Psychiatry
    $375,342 over two years from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for "Mentoring clinical investigators in patient-oriented research on substance use and HIV."
  • Mark Stein, MD, Medicine
    $576,707 over four years for a subaward from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for "Targeted Therapies."
  • Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Systems Biology
    $3,040,120 over four years from the National Human Genome Research Institute for "Mapping proximal and distal splicing-regulatory elements."

Honors

Columbia University

School of Nursing

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia Medicine on Instagram: "They’re #ColumbiaMed cardiologists, of course they had to hop on this trend! 😉

In the News Highlights

  • Black Women Are Less Likely to Receive Epidurals During Labor. Here’s Why.
    Feb 2, 2024
    Yahoo! Life
    Even though Black women are impacted more, Dr. Jean Guglielminotti, lead author of the study and assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said in a statement that a notable finding of the research is that both Black and white women are affected by poor pain management in childbirth, suggesting that inequities negatively impact everyone in the health care system “because the system is not operating at an optimal level when racism undermines policies, practices, and procedures.”
  • An Estimated 5.8 Million Children Have Had Symptoms of Long COVID, Study Shows
    Feb 7, 2024
    Newsday
    An estimated 5.8 million children nationwide have dealt with the effects of long COVID, from common symptoms such as fatigue and cough to neurological and autoimmune conditions, according to a new report from Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “We're behind in people understanding and really recognizing that [long COVID] does actually happen in children,” said Dr. Melissa Stockwell, a pediatrician and chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Health at Columbia, who co-authored the report.
  • Do You Self-Sabotage? Here’s How to Stop.
    Feb 8, 2024
    The Washington Post
    We need to recognize the role we play in our lives, said Ryan Sultan, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry and director of mental health informatics and integrative psych at Columbia University. “We have to be open to the idea that sometimes we make mistakes. I think that’s a prerequisite to understanding one’s self-sabotage,” he said. “And some of us struggle to acknowledge and take ownership in any way of our own actions.”