Community Engagement

Vaccinations have begun in a first-in-human trial of an experimental live, attenuated Zika virus vaccine developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The trial will enroll a total of 28 healthy, non-pregnant adults ages 18 to 50 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Immunization Research in Baltimore, Md., and at the Vaccine Testing Center at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

The University of Vermont Center on Aging and UVM Geriatric Medicine program will host a presentation, titled “Caring for Caregivers and Transitions from Hospital to Home,” by international experts Horst Vollmar, M.D., M.P.H., and Mary Austrom, Ph.D., on August 3, 2018.

On July 18, 2018, UVM Larner College of Medicine clinical department chairs issued a letter to the community.

The University of Vermont and Polly Parsons, M.D., professor and chair of medicine at the UVM Larner College of Medicine, were recognized with the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) Patriot Award, the Above and Beyond Award, and the Pro Patria Award, respectively, at an annual ESGR awards ceremony held May 23, 2018.

Class of 2021 students and Social Justice Coalition leaders Raghav Goyal, Nina Dawson, and Samuel Epstein joined four hundred medical professionals, students, organizers, and activists from all around the world at the Social Medicine Consortium in Churchrock, New Mexico at the end of April.

(APRIL 10, 2019) Community Medical School is a health and healthcare focused public lecture series that occurs on the first Tuesday of each month from March through May and September through November. The series, which is designed to share the medical learning experience with community members in and around Vermont, features faculty, staff and student experts from the UVM Larner College of Medicine, the UVM Medical Center, and local community organizations. Last Tuesday, Eli Goldberg, a medical student in the class of 2020 joined panelists A. Evan Eyler, M.D., a UVM professor of psychiatry and family medicine, Kate Jerman, M.P.H., the director of the LGBTQA Center at UVM, and Lola Houston, a UVM standardized patient and Burlington-based relationship coach for a special panel presentation, "Transgender Health & Healthcare: Transitioning to Affirmative Care." The topic is one that Goldberg is an expert on both as a medical student and as a member of the transgender community.

Two years after it's creation, Robinson's dream of having "Here to Help" become a self-sustaining entity has come true. Last Spring, Robinson transitioned the leadership of the "Here to Help Clinic" to Schweitzer Fellows and second-year medical students Erin Hunt '20 and Rachael Munoz '20. Shortly thereafter, the "Here to Help" began to host a monthly clinic on the third Saturday of every month.

An evaluation of Vermont’s Hub and Spoke system of care led by University of Vermont Research Professor of Psychiatry Richard Rawson, Ph.D., shows that people in treatment for opioid addiction reported a 96 percent decrease in opioid use and a 100 percent drop in overdose incidences.