Reporter

VUMC was one of several area hospitals and federal, state and local agencies participating in in last week’s 2013 Regional Hospitals Fall Severe Weather Exercise.

John F. Brock III, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, his wife, Mary, and their three children have established an endowment to support an oncology fellowship at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. The Brock Family Fellowship will provide financial assistance long into the future for young physicians, postdoctoral students and medical investigators who are furthering their training in cancer research.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center staff and faculty are preparing for a new health care landscape, one shaped by a lowered payment regime, greater outside scrutiny of health care quality, new rewards and penalties for hospital and provider safety and quality, and the transfer of financial risk for health outcomes from payers to newly affiliated hospitals and providers.

Women with chronic autoimmune diseases who take immunosuppressive medications during their first trimester of pregnancy are not putting their babies at significantly increased risk of adverse outcomes, according to a Vanderbilt study released online by the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism.

As never before, large employers and regional health care providers have opportunity — and incentive — to work together to tame unsustainable health benefit cost inflation while improving health and health care outcomes.

Vanderbilt researchers have used bioinformatics analysis of gene expression data to describe molecular “circuits” that drive ovarian cancer.

Amish populations are valuable for genetic research because of their isolation, shared ancestry and homogeneous lifestyles.