Vanderbilt University has received a contract from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for up to $28 million over four years to help more than 4,000 clinicians in the Southeast transform their clinical practices in ways that improve quality of patient care and hold down costs.

Reduced-nicotine cigarettes were beneficial in reducing nicotine exposure and dependence, and also the number of cigarettes smoked per day, when compared with standard-nicotine cigarettes in a six-week study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network, led by Vanderbilt University’s Russell Rothman, M.D., M.P.P., has been approved for a three-year, $8.5 million funding award from the independent Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to expand its efforts to improve healthcare throughout the Southeast.

Russell Rothman, M.D., MPP, professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy, chief of the Section of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research, has been named assistant vice chancellor for Population Health Research.

The question of what’s different about pragmatic research was aired in a well-attended panel discussion last week in Light Hall sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research and the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network (CDRN).

November is well-known as Lung Cancer Awareness Month. It is also the month that highlights awareness of less publicized forms of cancer including pancreatic cancer and stomach cancer.

In an observational study by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, adults with type 2 diabetes who take insulin in addition to the recommended first-line drug therapy, metformin, had a 30 percent higher risk of heart attack, stroke or death when compared to similar patients who instead augment their metformin regimen with a sulfonylurea.