Division News

Paul Lantos, MD, medical instructor (General Internal Medicine), has received a $20,000 grant from Duke University's Educational and Research Initiatives in China (ERIC) program. ERIC funding is intended to help faculty develop innovative education and research programs at the Duke Kunshan University campus and other areas in China.

A group of Duke Internal Medicine residents traveled to Washington, D.C., last week as part of the Ambulatory Care Leadership Track's focus on advocacy. Throughout the year, the ACLT residents plan and prepare for the trip, where they meet with representatives in Congress. This year the residents prepared a one-page paper on opioid safety with help from Duke University Health and State Government Relations.

David Casarett, MD, will join the Duke Health community as the chief of Palliative Care Services for Duke University Health System,  and chief of the Section of Palliative Care within Division of General Internal Medicine, effective September 1, 2016.

Three Duke medical students — Jerry Lee, the presenter, Morgan Hardy, and Julie Rivo — all mentored in the Duke Outpatient Clinic (DOC) including their co-authors Marigny Bratcher and Natasha Cunningham, gave a truly excellent presentation during an opening plenary session at SGIM 2016.

Joel Boggan, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine), will take on the role as mentor to the chief resident for quality and safety (CRQS) at the Durham VA Medical Center, announced Aimee Zaas, MD, director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program, and David Simel, MD, professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine) and vice chair for Veterans Aff

Six Department of Medicine faculty were recognized with awards at the School of Medicine's annual Spring Faculty Meeting on May 9.

New member of DGIM and DCRI, Asheley Skinner, PhD, has been conducting research in the fields of health policy, health services, and population health. She is the lead author of a new study: “Prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in US children, 1999-2014” and this publication is gaining a great deal of attention. With an Altmetrics score of 1471 (as of 5/5/16), this report has been picked up by over 175 news outlets!

In an interview with CBS News Dr. William Yancy spoke about the reality television show, “The Biggest Loser”, the problem that the series perpetuates the idea that all you need to do to lose weight is diet and exercise. Yancy discusses how it is much more complicated than that to keep the weight off for the long term.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement Open School @ Duke hosted its second annual quality symposium on April 20, 2016, showcasing the work of the 2015-2016 Quality & Innovation Scholars. These efforts were recognized with $3000 in scholarships to represent Duke at the 2016 IHI National Forum that takes place this December in Orlando, Florida. Multiple GIM members took part in this event.

Paul Lantos, MD, does quite a bit of research about tracking and identifying Lyme disease. His work was recently was published in a JAMA Diagnostic Test Interpretation, a new JAMA series in quiz format showing a  patient’s clinical presentation and test result(s).