麻豆原创 Associate Professor Keith Brazendale believes society is overlooking a simple intervention that could be a major game-changer for kids everywhere, so much so that the National Institutes of Health awarded him a $453,000 funding grant to move forward with his study.

The solution? Free summer camp for kids.

鈥淭his won鈥檛 require 20 years in a lab,鈥� Brazendale says of his study over the next two summers. 鈥淓verything is already in place to impact childhood obesity. I think that鈥檚 what raised so much curiosity from my proposal. Can it really be this simple?鈥�

Why Summer Camp?

鈥淢y ultimate goal is to shift our mindset about how we improve the health of kids,鈥� Brazendale says from his office in 麻豆原创鈥檚 College of Health Professions and Sciences, 鈥渂ecause up until now, I believe we鈥檝e gotten it all wrong.鈥�

Getting it right has inspired Brazendale鈥檚 research across two decades, including his next project on combatting childhood obesity.

Brazendale鈥檚 project will bring together community pediatricians, organizers of summer day camps, and low-income families. Before the summers of 2026 and 2027 begin, the pediatricians will provide camp vouchers to 40 kids who meet certain weight and body mass index (BMI) criteria. Data collected before camp and after camp will build upon Brazendale鈥檚 Structured Day Hypothesis.

鈥淚t鈥檚 clear that structure is enough to mitigate much of the weight gain we鈥檙e observing in American children. I鈥檓 hopeful a study like this will affect change in public health policy.鈥�
鈥� Keith Brazendale, 麻豆原创 associate professor

鈥淲e know what happens when kids have no structure,鈥� says Brazendale, a father of two. 鈥淲hen schools closed during COVID, it became our largest experiment of unstructured days. Children鈥檚 obesity levels went through the roof. It鈥檚 clear that structure is enough to mitigate much of the weight gain we鈥檙e observing in American children. I鈥檓 hopeful a study like this will affect change in public health policy.鈥�

If this is true, then it raises the question, 鈥淲hy have we overlooked a structured summer as a solution to childhood obesity?鈥�

Consider that more than 90% of past studies have taken place during the school year 鈥� the most convenient time to find kids for research. The timing has led to a repetitive focus on school lunch programs and physical education. Brazendale, however, draws upon his own experiences with kids from low-income communities and believes that studies on schools may be occurring where a natural intervention is already happening.

鈥淪chools actually do a great job because of structure built into each day鈥� he says. 鈥淢eanwhile, we鈥檝e ignored 20 years of evidence showing weight gain and loss of fitness occurring during summer.鈥�

He鈥檚 referring to evidence which had become 鈥渂ricks buried in a brickyard.鈥� It happens with a lot of studies. They鈥檙e filed away, waiting for another researcher to come along and dig them up years later. That鈥檚 how Brazendale began to learn about the link between summer breaks and childhood obesity.

鈥淧ediatricians have reported for years that children are heavier toward the end of summer,鈥� he says. 鈥淧eople my age think of summer as an active time when it really isn鈥檛, especially for kids whose families can鈥檛 afford pricey camps and club sports. So, let鈥檚 see what happens when we help them fill those empty weeks with free and fun structured activity.鈥�

Community Buy-In

If Brazendale鈥檚 hypothesis is correct, it could cultivate the kind of healthy long-term lifestyle Brazendale experienced while growing up in Scotland. His intrigue about children鈥檚 health brought him to study in the U.S., where his research momentum eventually landed at 麻豆原创. Among his first action items upon arriving was to contact pediatricians at Nemours and leaders of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida.

鈥淲hen I mentioned bringing all of us together as a potential health intervention for kids, they said, 鈥榃e鈥檙e in,鈥� 鈥� Brazendale says. 鈥淗aving them involved means we have trusted people in the community to create bridges rather than hoping families respond to a researcher out of nowhere asking them to sign up for a study.鈥�

The research side will include experts from 麻豆原创鈥檚 College of Nursing, a statistician, a pediatrician and consultants from the University of South Carolina. They鈥檒l compare health markers for the 40 kids who attend summer camp with 40 kids who spend summer at home. Then they鈥檒l do it again with two more groups the following summer.

With additional funding, a second research phase would include hundreds of children nationwide. The results鈥� ripple effects would be monumental.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 鈥渋n 2019, the estimated annual medical cost of obesity among U.S. children was $1.3 billion. Medical costs for children with obesity were $116 higher per person per year than for children with healthy weight. Medical costs for children with severe obesity were $310 higher per person per year than for children with healthy weight.鈥�

鈥淚magine where this could lead,鈥� Brazendale says. 鈥淧ediatricians would prescribe summer camp as medicine. The health of children would not be limited by family incomes. The research findings would encourage public policy to subsidize camp enrollment the way we do with Head Start. There would be relief on our medical practitioners and on our healthcare system. Childhood obesity rates would decline and long-term health would improve.鈥�

Since 2015, at least five states have passed laws requiring emergency departments to provide additional support for opioid overdose patients, such as initiating MOUD treatment. Over the next five years, and her research team will examine whether state policies that mandate evidence-based treatments for opioid use disorder ultimately save lives.

Opioid use disorder is a life-threatening health condition that affects more than 2 million people in the U.S.

For those experiencing opioid overdose, MOUDs like buprenorphine and methadone can reduce the risk of death by 50%.

An associate professor in the College of Community Innovation and Education鈥檚 , Andraka-Christou focuses much of her research efforts on expanding access to life-saving medications for substance use disorder.

Expanding Life-Saving Care

Funded by a five-year, $3.5 million NIH grant, Andraka-Christou is collaborating with University of Michigan health economist and multiple principal investigator Thuy Nguyen on this legal epidemiology project. Using policy surveillance and difference-in-difference analyses, they鈥檒l assess how state emergency department laws affect patient health outcomes. The findings could inform broader development, refinement and implementation of similar policies, ultimately improving care for people experiencing overdose and helping prevent future overdoses.

She adds that the specific requirements of each law may make a difference. For example, an overdose patient who鈥檚 handed a phone number for an addiction clinic may be less likely to connect and continue receiving treatments than someone who鈥檚 provided with an MOUD in the emergency department and guided through setting up an appointment in the community, she says.

鈥淚t’s one thing to start someone on MOUDs, but an emergency department is a unique setting,鈥� Andraka-Christou says. 鈥淲e don’t want people to have to repeat the cycle and keep going back to the emergency room. There needs to be an intermediary step 鈥� perhaps a warm handoff to a primary care doctor, an addiction clinic or a methadone clinic 鈥� so that they can continue to see that person after initial treatment. That鈥檚 currently a big gray area, and outcomes can potentially depend on how prescriptive these laws are.鈥�

Building a First-Of-Its-Kind Database

Andraka-Christou and her team are creating a longitudinal database of all state statutes, regulations and executive orders effective between 2014 and 2024 related to facilitating MOUD use after emergency department visits for opioid overdose. This requires assessing thousands of laws for relevance before interpreting legal jargon, summarizing and transforming them into a quantitative policy dataset.

The team will then use three sets of claims data 鈥� Medicaid, Medicare and commercial insurance 鈥� to describe trends in MOUD initiation and retention rates after emergency department visits, examining the effects of different policies. Researchers will also comb through the data to find and describe key patient, provider, geographic and demographic characteristics associated with treatment after these visits. Such factors include rurality, income level and covariates like age or co-occurring conditions.

鈥淲ith overdoses, there are so many claim codes that are relevant, such as poisoning, intoxication and overdose,鈥� Andraka-Christou says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e also divided by the type of opioid. Within all of these, we will also examine the type of medication that they’re receiving 鈥� such as methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone 鈥� and how any legal issues surrounding them influence retention. We’ll need to look at differences in effects of the law by type of poisoning, and there might also be variation in the effects of these laws depending on each population of insurance.鈥�

Shifting How Standards of Care Are Enforced

Andraka-Christou says that at a higher level, the project should provide an interesting analysis of what happens when state law requires specific action in medicine. Instead, best practices may not occur until patients or their families initiate malpractice lawsuits for violation of the standard of care 鈥� something that also requires health literacy and legal knowledge to do. If top-down state laws in this study are found to be effective at increasing the use of evidence-based treatment, they could serve as catalysts for a paradigm shift in how quality of care is enforced in hospitals.

鈥淚f we find that the states that implemented a law requiring MOUD provision see more opioid-use disorder patients staying on the medications, that bodes well and could have massive implications for public health,鈥� she says. 鈥淎t that point, there鈥檚 a good argument to be made that, for this situation and population, we may need to take a more top-down approach to enforce the standard of care.鈥�

Researcher Credentials

Andraka-Christou received both her juris doctorate and Doctor of Philosophy in law and social science from Indiana University Bloomington. She is a licensed attorney. She joined 麻豆原创鈥檚 School of Global Health Management and Informatics in 2017 and holds a joint secondary appointment in the College of Medicine. Her areas of expertise include health services, health policy and substance use disorder treatment. Andraka-Christou also leads 麻豆原创鈥檚聽聽research team.

For what he lacks in limb and brain, 鈥淧illbert,鈥� the automatic vial-dispensing robot, makes up for in efficiency and intelligence. In about 30 seconds, he can count and label a student鈥檚 prescription with precision, choosing from 108 different medications stored within his sturdy frame and dispensing through nine windows.

Pillbert frees pharmacists to spend more time with patients, educating them on how to take their medications properly, outlining special directions and precautions, and explaining how the medications can improve their health.

Located on the first floor of the Student Health Services building on 麻豆原创鈥檚 main campus, the pharmacy allows聽 students to conveniently obtain prescribed medications during the same visit with their doctor. Last year, pharmacists filled almost 40,000 student prescriptions.

For his efforts, Pillbert earned an 鈥渙utstanding鈥� performance review in his first year, says Hetal Patel, pharmacy manager at Student Health Services.

鈥淚t is accurate, and it streamlines the workflow for us,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t has not failed or been inaccurate at all in a year and a half. Pillbert contributes to our efficiency and enhances the quality of care we provide 鈥� all with zero undercounts, overcounts or instances of mislabeling. Ultimately, that makes us more available to the students, and we can engage in more meaningful interactions with them.鈥�

The six-foot-tall robot has 54 compartments on each side stocked with the pharmacy鈥檚 most prescribed drugs, including antibiotics. 聽To help pharmacists, Pillbert聽first creates a label, then uses a camera to identify each medication and an internal mechanical arm to count and dispense the correct number of pills into a bottle.

On average, it takes about three minutes to count, label and verify each medication. Pillbert saves pharmacists nearly 40 hours of labor a week, according to a Student Health Services analysis, and assists with 80-100 prescriptions a day.

鈥淚t used to be a bottleneck if someone had five prescriptions,鈥� Patel says. 鈥淏efore Pillbert, dispensing multiple prescriptions may have slowed services for others who were waiting to receive a smaller order, such as simple antibiotic prescriptions. Now it can be processed promptly as Pillbert can process multiple prescriptions simultaneously and deliver through one of the nine windows.鈥�

While Pillbert handles the mechanics of counting and labelling prescriptions, Patel says that he and his colleagues remain responsible for checking for patient allergies, interactions between drugs and other contraindications and precautions for overall patient safety.

鈥淔or routine medication refills, he takes away inefficiencies, time-consuming tasks and human error,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e get more time to check refill histories and ask patients questions like, 鈥楬ow is the medication working for you? Do you have any questions or concerns about the medications?鈥� Those details make a big difference.鈥�

As 麻豆原创 grew and Student Health’s patient load increased, Patel saw the need to make the pharmacy more efficient. However, the technology, cost and capabilities for robotic systems weren’t aligned with the pharmacy’s needs until 2023. That鈥檚 when Patel and his colleagues were inspired to purchase the Kirby-Lester KL-108 automatic vial dispensing robot the following year.

To celebrate the new technology, Student Health Services held a naming contest for the robot and even made him his own 麻豆原创 ID card and cartoon photo.

Pharmacists perform routine maintenance on the robot when the pharmacy is closed.

鈥淭aking care of him is pretty easy,鈥� says Binita Patel, a Student Health Services pharmacist. 鈥淚t takes seconds to refill and replace the cassettes.鈥�

Patel says that although Pillbert is a machine, he has integrated smoothly into the team and is an essential part of the pharmacy.

鈥淗e鈥檚 a great addition to our team,鈥� she says. 鈥淗e never complains, and he always shows up.鈥�

Although the representatives from these nations may seem culturally dissimilar, the students and faculty in attendance united to find common ground by identifying key opportunities to advance public health for all and establish the framework for future summits and student exchange programs.

麻豆原创 partnered with the University of Malta to host the summit, which was themed 鈥淗arnessing Data and Multilateral Collaborations to Advance Population Health.鈥� Nearly 60 people from Peru, Ghana and American universities attended, including three 麻豆原创 medical students who presented research results and data analyses that may eventually inform public health interventions or policy.

鈥淒ata is the lifeblood of modern innovation,鈥� says Elena Cyrus, a College of Medicine Population Health Sciences faculty member, in her opening remarks at the summit. 鈥淚n global health, it empowers us to uncover patterns, predict outbreaks, personalize treatments and allocate resources where they are needed most. From tracking infectious diseases to optimizing healthcare delivery, data is not just a tool 鈥� it is a catalyst for change.鈥�

Big Data in a Small Nation

The summit materialized after a digital health conference where Cyrus and Eric Schrimshaw, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences, spoke with Maltese faculty and discovered many similarities.

鈥淲e both have the economic benefit of tourism, but that also comes with the burden of tourism and risk of infectious disease,鈥� Schrimshaw says. 鈥淲e’re both semi-tropical warm countries that could have both tropical diseases that are emerging or transported to this area.鈥�

Malta is 10 times smaller than Rhode Island, and it has a single-payer healthcare system. These factors can make for streamlined public health research and expose the 麻豆原创 students to new healthcare systems.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really important for our med students to see how other healthcare systems work,鈥� Schrimshaw says. 鈥淲ith the single-payer system in Malta, they have medical records for everyone in the country. That means that they have what we would call population-level data. This is really useful from a research standpoint to better understand public health.鈥�

The summit was not a traditional large conference with keynote speakers and minimal interaction, Cyrus says. Instead, small groups came together to share strategies and build upon central themes, including big data innovations and gaps in clinical care.

The experts determined that paramount issues in public health worldwide include mental health and the growing need to harness precision medicine.

Cyrus says she and her colleagues are working on a paper in anticipation of publishing their findings for a wider academic audience.

Reflecting on the summit, she says it was both informative and productive, and the faculty and health care experts representing multiple international universities and institutions were eager to continue advancing global health.

鈥淲hen we concluded, there was a certain level of energy from the delegates,鈥� Cyrus says. 鈥淓veryone asked if 麻豆原创 would be willing to co-host again.鈥�

鈥淭his global conference is a natural extension of our mission to train 鈥楾he Good Doctors鈥� who are prepared to address health challenges across a variety of settings,鈥� 鈥� Omar Martinez, 麻豆原创 professor of 聽population health.

鈥淭he Good Doctor鈥� at Home and Abroad

The summit also helped to guide the next generation of 麻豆原创 doctors in their pursuit of becoming 鈥淭he Good Doctor,鈥� by blending their classroom and clinical experiences with research conducted over three weeks preceding the summit.

The 鈥淕ood Doctor鈥� is introduced to all 麻豆原创 students on the first day of medical school by Deborah German, vice president for health affairs and the College of Medicine鈥檚 founding dean. She asks new students to visualize the traits of a doctor they would want caring for the person they love most. Students call out traits that German writes on a blackboard, which is displayed at the med school year-round. Those characteristics are the students鈥� contract with their faculty, patients and each other as they become 鈥淭he Good Doctor.鈥�

鈥淭his global conference is a natural extension of our mission to train 鈥楾he Good Doctors鈥� who are prepared to address health challenges across a variety of settings,鈥� says Omar Martinez, a 麻豆原创 professor of population health, who attended the summit. 鈥淪uch experiences not only deepen cultural awareness but also sharpen research skills and foster adaptability, qualities essential for delivering effective care and advancing health in an interconnected world.鈥�

Nolan Kline, an associate professor of population health, also participated in the summit and says he was most impressed with how the students conducted and presented meaningful research on a compressed timeline.

鈥淪eeing students鈥� high-quality work underscores the value of providing multiple training and research opportunities to students,鈥澛爃e says. 鈥淭he conference showed ample opportunity for cross-cultural collaboration on urgent medical and population health topics that are common in both the U.S. and Malta, including traveler health, preventing infectious disease and understanding the multiple determinants of communicable disease.鈥�

Student Research Endeavors

Second-year medical student Riley Nguyen analyzed Maltese mortality data to help refine and pinpoint potential interventions for specific demographics. Nguyen examined different age groups and ethnicities to find commonalities and differences and then consulted with local experts to better understand how to tailor patient care.

She says the experience helped prepare her for presenting findings in an academic setting.

鈥淚鈥檓 learning so much about not only medicine, but also the collaborative effort of people from different countries,鈥� Nguyen says. 鈥淢y project was very preliminary, but I was able to present at the conference and do an oral presentation. I want to continue working with my project and connect through different databases.鈥�

Nguyen says she believes her involvement and networking at the summit will help her further her education.

鈥淚 met people who would still work as a clinician while doing research, and it was really interesting to see so many people doing that,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 feel like I now havePubl so many connections that I can really push forward and into a career in global health.鈥�

She was inspired to pursue a career in global health after volunteering at a clinic in Nicaragua in high school. Nguyen says the trip to Malta further invigorated her interests.

鈥淲orking in global health is very humbling and humanizing and has given me a perspective that has made me want to do medicine even more than I already did,鈥� she says.

Meltem Tutar, a second-year med school student, says the three-week experience enriched her understanding of how to use data for improving health. Tutar has a background in data science and worked in Ghana for a few years, so undertaking a career in global health is a way to synthesize her interests.

Tutar鈥檚 research project examined large swaths of injury data including statistics on self-harm, occupational injuries and domestic violence. She used the information to examine specific demographics and see which groups may be most susceptible to certain risks and what opportunities may exist to prevent future injuries.

鈥淲ith this knowledge, you may have more targeted public health interventions,鈥� Tutar says. 鈥淚f you have a limited number of resources and you can only target [a certain] amount of people 鈥� and you know [some] are more at risk 鈥� you may try to personalize and target them more.鈥�

The variety of topics explored at the summit and the optimism of those in attendance helped to create a sense of unity in addressing global health challenges for everyone, she added.

鈥淚t can be overwhelming thinking about all kinds of problems around the world that can affect global health,鈥� Tutar says. 鈥淏ut I saw big groups of people at this conference organizing and coming together to find creative solutions to these problems.鈥�

For future summits and educational experiences, Martinez envisions expanding the program to include even more 麻豆原创 students and welcome Maltese students.

鈥淥ur vision is for this initiative to grow into a platform that catalyzes collaborative research, advances population health and drives innovative solutions to pressing health challenges,鈥� he says.

All medical students interested in being a part of the next cohort of international students are invited to attend an informational meeting on global health exchange programs at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 7, in COM 116. Students may .

Excessive growths of blue-green algae, known as cyanobacteria, and Karenia brevis, which creates red tide, release toxins into the surrounding air and water that can negatively impact the environment and human health.

A team of researchers led by 麻豆原创 is studying the relationships between these harmful algal blooms in Florida and how they impact human health, potentially causing respiratory, gastrointestinal, skin and liver issues.

鈥淭his study is about making it safe to enjoy our waterways,鈥� says Rebecca Koszalinski, College of Nursing associate professor who leads 麻豆原创鈥檚 Human Health Outcomes of Exposure to Environmental Toxins Lab.

Koszalinski is using a One Health approach that examines how humans influence the environment and how the environment influences human health. The multidisciplinary research team includes experts from other universities as well as veterinarians, immunologists, clinical research nurses, water and air researchers, and epidemiologists.

The study focuses on Florida, where harmful algal blooms are common occurrences and found in all waterways. Florida is also where the blooms have the potential to impact the health of a large number of people, as the state is a top destination for outdoor enthusiasts, especially those who enjoy boating and fishing.

Koszalinski and her team are sampling both air and water to determine the presence of toxins throughout Florida鈥檚 beaches and waterways. Air particles are absorbed using a nine-layer cascade impactor to predict how deeply toxins could go into the human respiratory tract.

Additionally, the team is collecting nasal swabs and small blood samples from residents and visitors in the area to determine if there has been any potential exposure.

The study is funded by the Florida Department of Health, and its first five-year phase showed an increase in dry cough, wheezing, nausea and abdominal pain among residents exposed to the blooms.

Now in its second phase, researchers are continuing to collect samples from previous participants in Lee County to examine potential health impacts over time and any long-term outcomes such as worsening pre-existing conditions.

Researchers are currently who live, visit or work in Florida.

By better understanding the implications of harmful algal blooms in Florida, the team hopes to better advise residents and visitors on when to exercise caution.

鈥淔or example, if you know you鈥檙e going to be in the sun, you take precautions and put on sunscreen,” Koszalinski says. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e going to be out on a boat and there鈥檚 red tide nearby, what does that mean and what do our residents and visitors need to do for safety?鈥�

鈥淔lorida is my home,鈥� Koszalinski continues, 鈥渁nd I want all our residents and visitors to continue to enjoy the wonderful outdoor recreational activities here.鈥�

About This Research

Health Outcomes Associated with Algal Blooms of Cyanobacteria and Red Tide in Florida: Long-Term Health Impacts of Harmful Algal Bloom Exposure, Phase 2. 麻豆原创 and Florida Gulf Coast University. Florida Department of Health. Key Personnel: Koszalinski, R. (PI), McFarland, M. (Co-PI), Parsons, M. (Co-I), Reif, J. (epidemiologist).

APIC is the leading professional association for infection preventionists, with more than 15,000 members. Prins is one of just 39 fellows selected worldwide this year.

鈥淔ellow is a signifier of your commitment, not just to APIC, but to infection prevention as a profession,鈥� says Marie Wilson, a fellow of APIC and infection preventionist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle who served on the APIC Communications Committee with Prins. 鈥淚nfection prevention is a young profession and every fellow that carries that distinction is a part of getting us to where we are today.鈥�

Prins began her career as a virologist, before a passion for public health inspired her to transition to epidemiology, studying healthcare-associated infections and how to prevent them from spreading.

鈥淚 was really interested in the transmission and spread of these tiny microbes that can wreak so much havoc on a person and how we can prevent that,鈥� Prins says.

Her first role was in hospital infection control at University of Florida Shands Hospital in 2006 before shifting toward education and research as a UF Department of Epidemiology faculty member in 2010. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she was found herself practicing infection prevention again.

鈥淒uring the pandemic, I was the infection preventionist for the whole campus, which brought me back into that applied infection prevention role that I was doing before, but in a very different setting,鈥� Prins says. 鈥淚 think that sparked my interest again in being able to work with people to communicate how to prevent these infections.鈥�

As the pandemic began to subside, Prins began exploring ways to continue to support infection prevention beyond her local community. She joined the APIC Communications Committee, which provides infection prevention information and materials to medical professionals, hospitals and the public.

鈥淒r. Prins has a depth of knowledge and expertise that I truly valued working with her on the Communications Committee,鈥� Wilson says. 鈥淪he was very calm, reliable and kind in a way that I really appreciated as a colleague.鈥�

Prins joined the 麻豆原创 College of Medicine鈥檚 population health sciences department as an associate professor of medicine in 2023, where she is working to improve infection prevention in nursing homes, both through her own research and mentoring 麻豆原创 medical students researching infection prevention.

鈥淚n nursing homes, you have people who have frequent encounters with hospitals and are very ill and also may have medical devices or non-healing wounds that make them sicker and really susceptible to infection,鈥� she says.

To fight this, Prins is working with a company to test a shoe insert to provide contact tracing in nursing homes. If an infectious disease outbreak begins, nursing home staff attempt to track who has had contact with other people to find who may be infected. But patients with Alzheimer鈥檚 disease or dementia may not be able to recall who they have been in contact with or where they have been. This new technology hopes to tackle that.

Prins also serves as a mentor for the 麻豆原创 College of Medicine鈥檚 Focused Inquiry and Research Experience module, which requires medical students to complete a research project during their first two years of medical school.

This year, Prins is working with a student who is analyzing the effectiveness of new Centers for Disease Control and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services protocols designed to reduce the spread of infectious diseases. These precautions, implemented last year, require nursing home personnel to wear gowns or gloves for high-contact care with patients at a high risk for multidrug-resistant organisms. Together, the student and faculty mentor hope to understand how the protocols are being implemented and if they are improving patient safety.

鈥淲hen infection prevention is being done well, you don鈥檛 see it at all,鈥� Prins says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about preventing harm and keeping people safe.鈥�

This includes using AI to assist in collecting and deciphering diagnostic data among medical professionals.

One such model, 鈥淏ioMedGPT,鈥� has shown great potential to expand patient access to healthcare. The new model has been detailed in a study in Nature Medicine.

The AI tool was developed by a collaborative team of researchers that was led by Lehigh University and included Chen Chen, an associate professor at 麻豆原创鈥檚 (CRCV).

Chen says there are many existing examples of AI used for healthcare, but many are highly specialized and may only perform limited tasks.

However, BiomedGPT can perform multiple tasks, including image classification, report generation and visual question answering, and is designed to be computationally efficient and open-sourced to foster collaboration, according to the study.

BiomedGPT could find a niche in providing easily accessible data to bolster hospitals that may not have a robust number of personnel, so relying on shared knowledge from medical networks via BiomedGPT could be of great help, he says.

鈥淚n these hospitals, they may not a lot of physicians or clinicians that can address a case immediately or they don’t have enough resources to diagnosis,鈥� Chen says. 鈥淭his powerful AI tool is able to provide that knowledge to help to reduce [challenges] in healthcare.鈥�

The model is open source, which means practitioners can use the framework and plug in their own data to collaborate and review amongst themselves in a community network.

BiomedGPT also aims to be generalist, meaning it can be more comprehensive and thorough so that it may be applied to a wider breadth of medical data and analysis, Chen says.

鈥淏iomedGPT is a unified AI model that is able to process a variety of data and perform multiple tasks,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o, this is useful, because it can be potentially can streamline the healthcare workflow, improve the diagnosis accuracy and reduce the need of multiple specialized systems. This model can even generate reasonable results on tasks or data that hadn’t been trained on before.鈥�

Leveraging 麻豆原创鈥檚 Expertise in Computer Vision

Chen used his computer vision and machine learning expertise to develop the AI model to understand medical images.

鈥淢y role was to figure out how we can extract useful information from visual data, especially for medical imaging and how can we integrate this information with other types of data modalities like text,鈥� Chen says. 鈥淚maging modalities are a big part of this because in healthcare, we have a lot of imaging data such as X-rays, CT scans and MRI.鈥�

BiomedGPT can perform multiple tasks, including image classification, report generation and visual question answering, and is designed to be computationally efficient and open-sourced to foster collaboration, the researchers state in their study. A clinician can upload an image and enter queries into BiomedGPT such as 鈥淲hat disease does this image depict?鈥� or 鈥淧lease determine the patient鈥檚 eligibility by comparing the given patient note and clinical trial details鈥� and receive feedback based on an existing set of provided data integrated into the AI model鈥檚 framework.

According to the study, BiomedGPT exhibits robust prediction ability with a low error rate of 3.8% in question answering and a satisfactory performance with an error rate of 8.3% in writing complex radiology reports, and competitive summarization ability with a nearly equivalent preference score to human experts.

Chen emphasizes though that clinicians and experts ultimately are responsible for reviewing the accuracy AI predications and supplementing the data.

鈥淲e are not trying to replace the clinician, but rather to enhance or make their workflow more efficient,鈥� Chen says. 鈥淎 physician can look at an AI report and perhaps for some of the less complex cases they can quickly check to see if it is correct. The human will still be involved and with their expertise, they can make the correct prediction or the diagnosis.鈥�

He says the model is designed to be computation friendly and also fully open sourced.

鈥淭his is trying to foster the collaborations with research institute hospitals to use this and also improve the model over the time,鈥� he says.

Next Steps

The study and analysis of BiomedGPT are promising, but there is still much to refine, Chen says.

New datasets and imaging could be integrated while there also remains more evaluations for the platform鈥檚 consideration of safety, equity and bias.

鈥淥ne thing is that we are looking to incorporate is more or [varied] data and modalities,鈥� he says. 鈥淔or example, we can include more video data and physiological signals like EKGs and heart rate monitoring. Another direction is we want to address are some of the most important issues in healthcare AI in general, like the privacy.”

The University of Georgia, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Pennsylvania, Children鈥檚 Hospital of Philadelphia, University of California, Santa Cruz, The Mayo Clinic, Samsung Research America, Stanford University and UTHealth (University of Texas) also contributed to this research.

The BiomedGPT open source model is available .

Researcher鈥檚 Credentials:

Chen is an associate professor at 麻豆原创鈥檚 CRCV and previously served as a postdoctoral scholar for the center from 2016 to 2018. His main research interests are computer vision, image and video processing, and machine learning. In 2016 Chen earned his doctoral degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

This year鈥檚 Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences Graduate Research Symposium featured more than 50 research projects. Students shared their findings with faculty and competed for cash prizes for the top research.

The symposium provides young researchers with the opportunity to analyze their data and create compelling presentations that can ultimately get support from research funding organizations, says Jackie Zhao, a Burnett School professor and symposium chair.

鈥淚t takes a lot of effort and hard work to … get the data for these presentations. Without that, you cannot have a presentation,鈥� he says. 鈥淪tudents also need to … pull that together into a good story that they can continue to work on 鈥� from the bench, into clinical trials and potentially into a new drug.鈥�

Second-year doctoral student Aaron Beaird joined the Burnett School with a passion for understanding infectious diseases. He discovered a mentor in Tara Strutt, associate professor and College of Medicine immunology researcher.

Beaird’s research focuses on better understanding influenza so medicine can develop one complete vaccine, rather than changing the flu vaccine every year based on the disease鈥檚 newest strain.

Current vaccines are designed to attack influenza鈥檚 surface proteins, which change constantly. Beaird is looking at ways to attack the virus鈥� internal, more stable proteins to create a superpowered vaccine patients might only have to take once.

Generally, vaccines work by introducing a weak or inactive version of a virus to the body. This allows the immune system to recognize the virus as a threat and remember how to fight it when you鈥檙e exposed to the flu.

However, not all of the body鈥檚 memory cells are created equal. Beaird鈥檚 research is examining the makeup of the strongest memory cells to see how future vaccines can be developed that program these cells to help the body create superpowered defenses against the flu.

Beaird says that the conference gave him experience on the best ways to present his scientific discoveries.

鈥淗aving the opportunity to talk with my peers and faculty who understand this research and are contributing to the advancement of science is super exciting,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen we go to conferences, we are going to have to present posters, and you don鈥檛 want that to be your first time doing it, so you need practice presenting.鈥�

The event also allows undergraduates and new graduate students to experience the variety of research happening at the Burnet School of Biomedical Sciences. Its faculty researchers are focused on finding cures and treatments for the diseases that plague humanity 鈥� including infectious, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

“The Burnett research symposium is a great opportunity for our students and postdocs to showcase their research work to their peers and faculty,鈥� says Saleh Naser, the Burnett School鈥檚 associate director of graduate studies. 鈥淚t also allows our new students to be introduced to the ongoing research at the Burnett labs.鈥�

Congratulations to this year’s winners in each of the categories:

Best Ph.D. poster

Anamaria Morales-Alvarez from Hung Nguyen’s lab

Poster: Metabolic Reprogramming of T Cells via GPR84 Inhibition Improves Cancer Immunotherapy

Best Postdoc poster

Jichao Ma from Zixi Jack Cheng’s lab

Poster: Identification of Spinal Afferent Innervation in the Rat Heart: Atria and Ventricles: Anterograde Tracing

Best M.S. poster

Erika A. Serravalle from William Self’s lab

Poster: Evaluating the Antimicrobial Properties of Fungus-Derived Xanthoquinodins against Clostridioides difficile

麻豆原创 researcher Sudipta Seal joined the fight by collaborating with Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center to provide a key component for a targeted medicine that combats the most common kind of pediatric brain tumor.

Seal, who is a professor and Chair of the within the , along with his postdoctoral researcher Elayaraja Kolanthai, created a solution containing therapeutic cerium oxide nanoparticles that acts as a protective vehicle to deliver a combination of cancer therapies through the body and to a patient鈥檚 brain. Their work was recently published in the journal .

A Targeted Approach

The intravenous mixture of therapies attacks medulloblastomas 鈥� or tumors 鈥� on all fronts. Ranjan Perera, director of the Center for RNA Biology at Johns Hopkins All Children鈥檚 Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, and his team developed the medicine that targets a specific part of RNA that 鈥渞eprograms鈥� a region of our DNA to hinder cancer causing genes.

A specific, long non-coding RNA, lncRNA, was identified as a potential bullseye target that accumulates and promotes cancerous growth. Johns Hopkins assembled a sequence of nucleotides 鈥� the building blocks of RNA 鈥� that can bind to the specific parts of the cancer-promoting portion of the RNA and destroy it.

Perera and his team paired the genetic treatment with cisplatin, a common intravenous chemotherapy medication that disrupts cancer cells and prevents them from replication.

The treatment was tested in mice and results showed that it inhibits tumor growth by 40-50%. The intravenous method may have an advantage as an alternative therapy to craniospinal irradiation as it may have less long-term side effects and risk of relapse.

The hope is once this specific genetic expression is identified and this treatment is administered, the malignant tumor growth can be halted and even eliminated in human patients.

Safe Delivery

Protecting the combination of promising treatments, bolstering therapeutic value and ensuring they reach their target is precisely what the cerium oxide was intended to do, Seal says.

鈥淲e can attach various drugs to the nanoparticles and deliver them to a specific site for medical intervention,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he medication on its own already has its own applications, so when you combine them, their role in intervention becomes quite significant. We are quite excited about this.鈥�

Seal and Perera previously had worked together and were familiar with each other鈥檚 work. After a few conversations between the two, a collaboration on this pediatric cancer research seemed like a good fit.

鈥淭his medication can be very difficult to deliver to sites,鈥� Seal says. 鈥淒r. Perera and I knew each other and so there was mutual interest between us both. I spoke with Dr. Perera, and he said that he had microorganisms to deliver, and that we鈥檝e been studying oxides for a long time. They鈥檙e very well known in medicine, and here we are at 麻豆原创 we鈥檙e well known for our oxide vector delivery.鈥�

Seal鈥檚 cerium oxide has been used in a variety of biomedical and therapeutic applications even before it was used in the Johns Hopkins study. The cerium oxide nanoparticles previously were shown to aid in healing diabetic wounds and to maintain bone strength during cancer treatments.

What makes these specific nanoparticles so useful is that because they are oxides, they can bond with such a varied spectrum of other compounds at the molecular level, Seal says.

鈥淥xides are omnipresent in nature, and so they can be fairly compatible with many things,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost like a LEGO block. You鈥檝e got many anchors to attach to on it and many different kinds to attach to.鈥�

For this instance, the cerium oxide ensures the genetic therapy and chemotherapy successfully travels to the site of the brain tumor rather than taking any pit stops along the way, Seal says.

鈥淚t has the power to be like a GPS system,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can program it to go to a specific address, or maybe it鈥檒l make a stop or bypass a stop. That is the power of what we can do with nanotechnology.鈥�

Studying and tweaking the particles (which are less than 10 nanometers in length) in water allows them to be highly customizable and to fit like a block or travel to the correct site.

Seal is greatly encouraged by the promise of the study and is excited to continue pursuing other ways to utilize his cerium oxide.

He invites other researchers to collaborate and see if he and his nanoparticles make a good fit.

鈥淲e鈥檙e open to opportunities,鈥� Seal says. 鈥淚 think this nano oxide vector can really help, and it opens a whole door of other biomedical opportunities that needs to be explored. We can modulate our nano vector in a way that it can sense and intervene in many ways. We鈥檙e happy to see if any other drugs can be attached to our molecules.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute and various other sources.

The researchers plan to study the therapy in humans to further test its safety and efficacy in hopes of triumphing over pediatric cancer and providing relief for children with cancer.

Researcher鈥檚 Credentials:

Seal joined 麻豆原创鈥檚 Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the聽, which is part of 麻豆原创鈥檚聽College of Engineering and Computer Science, in 1997. He has an appointment at the聽College of Medicine聽and is a member of 麻豆原创鈥檚听叠颈颈辞苍颈虫聽faculty cluster initiative. He is the former director of 麻豆原创鈥檚聽聽and Advanced Materials Processing Analysis Center. He received his doctorate in materials engineering with a minor in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley.

The new technology, a plasmonic platform that significantly improves the detection of the chirality of molecules, was developed by 麻豆原创 Professor Debashis Chanda. The work is detailed in a new study published in Science Advances.

Chiral molecules are like pairs of molecules that are similar in structure but are twisted differently (left or right), similar to how a person鈥檚 left and right hands are mirror images of each other.

Understanding the nature of chiral molecules is central to biological and pharmaceutical research because the mirror image pairs 鈥� known as enantiomers 鈥� can each have different effects in the body or in chemical reactions.

Nearly 56% of all modern drugs and medicine are chiral in nature and about 90% of those are a mixture containing equal amounts of two enantiomers of a chiral compound.

Researchers often face the challenge of separating enantiomers or synthesizing only the desired enantiomer to ensure optimal therapeutic outcomes and minimize adverse effects.

Chanda says accuracy in determining the purity of a sample of chiral molecules is paramount.

鈥淚n some cases, one enantiomer is the active ingredient while the other is dormant, leading to an overall reduction in the potency of the drug,鈥� he says. 鈥淎s a result, the need for enantiomeric identification and purification is in crucial demand in the field of medical and pharmaceutical research.鈥�

He says his platform鈥檚 simplicity, tunability and sensitivity could be a game changer.

鈥淪uch a system has great potential in pharmaceutical and drug industries where high-sensitive, high-throughput and low-cost enantiomeric purity determination is critically important,鈥� he says.

How the Technology Works

The sensor is composed of a symmetric achiral (nonmirrored) nanoscale gold hole-disk pattern on top of an optical cavity. When illuminated with a rotating polarized light, it produces a densely chiral light with a strong, concentrated swirling motion, called superchiral light, on top of the sensor surface. This occurs due to the strong, nanoscale coupling created between the electron (plasmon) resonances on the gold pattern and the resonances in the optical cavity.

When a chiral molecule is added on top of the sensor, it produces differential reflection between a right circularly polarized light and a left circularly polarized light, which enables the detection ability. Unlike other similar sensors that add their own 鈥渢wist鈥� to the light, the symmetric achiral nature of the 麻豆原创 sensor suppresses chiral response from the sensor itself, which ensures chiral response solely from the target molecule.聽 Hence, this novel approach enables precise identification of subtle molecular differences, marking a significant advancement in the field.

Chanda鈥檚 platform can quantify the purity of chiral enantiomers with a sensitivity nearly 13 orders of magnitude greater than the current method and provides cost savings due to the nanoimprinting based low-cost sensor fabrication, significantly lower concentrations and fewer molecules needed for accurate detection.

Next Steps

Chanda hopes to see his platform and research applied in a way that increases the accuracy and efficiency of subsequent research and development.

鈥淲e aim to contribute towards the development of inexpensive and fast drug identification methods for photonics and pharmaceutical research, fabrication of novel devices exhibiting superior light-matter interaction and demonstrate a real and reliable product that is commercially viable,鈥� Chanda says.

In addition to Chanda, the study鈥檚 research team included Aritra Biswas with 麻豆原创鈥檚 NanoScience Technology Center and the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL); and Pablo Cencillo-Abad, Muhammed Shabbir, and Manobina Karmakar with 麻豆原创鈥檚 NanoScience Technology Center.

For more information on the technology, including licensing opportunities, please visit the .

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Researcher鈥檚 Credentials

Chanda has joint appointments in 麻豆原创鈥檚 NanoScience Technology Center,聽Department of Physics聽and聽CREOL. He also leads the university鈥檚 . He received his doctorate in photonics from the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined 麻豆原创 in Fall 2012.

Study Title: Tunable plasmonic superchiral light for ultrasensitive detection of chiral molecules