People who quit smoking see their risk of cardiovascular disease immediately begin to drop, but it may take up to 16 years for their health to reach the level of someone who has never smoked, according to a new Vanderbilt study.

Sarah Rohde long had an interest in treating cancer, and her research during her undergraduate and medical school years at the University of Virginia underscored that. What she didn’t expect was to become a surgeon.

The American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) has awarded the Bronze Level Beacon Award to the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. The award is given to nursing units that distinguish themselves by excellence and a commitment to improve patient care.

Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, MA, has joined the Department of Thoracic Surgery as an associate professor and the surgical director of a new respiratory institute at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that will be launched soon.

Anne Marie Tharpe, PhD, might not have become a worldwide authority on pediatric hearing loss if she hadn’t been looking for something to do during study hall in her high school years in Memphis. One day, she and a friend volunteered to work in a classroom with deaf children.

Reyna Gordon, PhD, assistant professor of Otolaryngology and director of the Music Cognition Lab in the Department of Otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award of $2.3 million in total costs for her project, “Biomarkers of Rhythmic Communication: Integrating Foundational and Translational Approaches.”