Division News

Bill Kraus, MD, professor of medicine (Cardiology), nursing and the Richard and Pat Johnson University Professor, has been selected to serve as President-Elect of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) for 2018-19. Dr. Kraus will then serve as President of the ACSM for a year beginning in June 2019.

Department of Medicine faculty, trainees and staff received seven of 10 2018 DIHI Innovation Awards, which support high-potential care delivery innovation projects in the areas of population health and analytics, novel patient interactions, new and team-based models of care, and optimization of patient flow.

The inaugural Duke Cardiovascular Research Center (CVRC) Research Staff Appreciation Award was presented to William Darrell Capel earlier this week. Capel was nominated by his direct supervisor, Robert Lefkowitz, MD, and was recognized for his service as a mentor and teacher in the lab.

The Duke Cardiovascular Research Center is launching an Executive Seminar Series that will provide the latest thinking in cardiovascular research and clinical care.

Eric Velazquez, MD, has been appointed as chief of the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine, Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and Physician-in-Chief of the Heart and Vascular Center for the Yale-New Haven Health System, effective June 4, 2018.

7 faculty from the Department of Medicine will participate in the School of Medicine's LEADER program.

Last year in Christopher Holley’s lab, an uninstalled exhaust hood still wrapped in plastic suggested that the young investigator was just getting going.

Don’t be deceived. Holley arrived a lab-bench veteran when he joined Duke’s cardiology division faculty in 2015. But the physician-scientist is launching something very new: wide-reaching molecular studies into a new field of RNA biology with vast potential.

In clinic, cardiologist Sudarshan Rajagopal, MD, PhD, has no means to cure most patients with pulmonary hypertension, not the narrowing of blood vessels in their lungs, not damage done to their hearts.

The physician-scientist can prescribe medicines that extend the lives of many patients, but the precious gains can come with unwelcome costs.

“All these drugs help open blood vessels in the lungs and help treat heart failure. But they can have horrible side effects,” Rajagopal says, including nausea, diarrhea, weight loss and other side effects.

But help may come from complex pharmacology studies that Rajagopal first encountered at Duke in the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Robert Lefkowitz, MD.

Duke Health has announced a new class of the Duke Clinical Leadership Program (DCLP), including eight faculty from the Department of Medicine. The 26 clinicians in the 2018 class will join the ranks of the 169 fellows who completed the DCLP program during its first seven years. 

Francis Miller, MD, professor of medicine (Cardiology), will present his research at the Department's Research Seminar Series on Friday, Oct. 27, 2017, in Duke Hospital Room 2002.