Experts from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development are joining efforts to establish a Policies for Action (P4A) Research Hub at Vanderbilt to better understand and develop recommendations to address the needs of some of Tennessee’s most vulnerable children, including those in immigrant families and with prenatal exposure to opioids.

Vanderbilt researchers have published findings indicating that regardless of whether a woman delivers a child by cesarean section or by vaginal birth, if they fill prescriptions for opioid pain medications early in the postpartum period, they are at increased risk of developing persistent opioid use.

Children and young adults without psychosis who are prescribed high-dose antipsychotic medications are at increased risk of unexpected death, despite the availability of other medications to treat their conditions, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study published today in JAMA Psychiatry. Unexpected death includes deaths due to unintentional drug overdose or cardiovascular/metabolic causes.

William Schaffner, MD, professor of Preventive Medicine in the Department of Health Policy and professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, is the recipient of the 2018 D.A. Henderson Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Health.

A Vanderbilt University Medical Center study published this week in JAMA shows that patients already at higher risk for gastrointestinal bleeding gain a marked protection from this risk when they take a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) in combination with an oral anticoagulant.

Reining in the nation’s opioid epidemic will require diverse and innovative strategies ranging from drug discovery to “policy translation,” according to speakers at a recent Vanderbilt Faculty Cutting-edge Discovery Lecture.

Katherine Swartz, PhD, a nationally known leader in health policy research, encouraged others conducting investigations in the field to move beyond the data and into local communities to gather the stories behind the data during last week’s Research into Policy and Practice Lecture hosted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Health Policy.