Community Engagement

(MAY 8, 2024) The UVM Medical Center has been running a food bank for qualifying patients in the Children’s Specialty Center since 2016, and they say they’ve seen a huge increase in the number of patients and families who end up needing the service, according to WCAX-TV.

(MAY 2, 2024) UVMMC President and COO Stephen Leffler, M.D., professor of emergency medicine, penned an opinion piece in VT Digger advocating for construction of a proposed outpatient surgery center in South Burlington as a solution to improve timely access to health care.

(APRIL 17, 2024) Randall Holcombe, M.D., M.B.A., director of the University of Vermont Cancer Center, discussed colorectal cancer in a Vermont Public interview.

(APRIL 12, 2024) UVM Cancer Center director Randall Holcombe, M.D., M.B.A., welcomed more than 75 students from five Burlington-area high schools to the second Careers in Cancer event at the UVM Cancer Center on April 12, WCAX-TV reported.

Medical students, faculty, physicians, and hospital staff stepped up to the microphone on January 18 to tell true stories about their most humbling moments at the sixth annual StorySlamRx: Voices in Medicine. Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism Honor Society members organized and hosted the event, held in the Hoehl Gallery. Inspired by The Moth live storytelling, story slam provides a safe space to share personal experiences and connect with others over shared emotions. For people in the medical community, telling and listening to each other’s stories facilitates wellness and quells burnout.

Elizabeth Blasberg, M.D., a 2014 graduate of the Larner College of Medicine, and her colleague, former UVMMC general surgery resident Ryan Kunkel, M.D., both facial plastic surgeons, are gearing up for a medical mission to the Ruth Paz Foundation Hospital for Burned Children and Pediatric Surgery in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in Fall 2024. The mission, sponsored by the Angeles Para Honduras (APH) foundation, aims to address cleft palates and other childhood disfiguring conditions.

This semester, 28 first-year Larner College of Medicine students are learning about culinary medicine, which pairs nutritional science with preventative health care. Medical class of 2026 students Sarah Krumholz and Molly Hurd developed an extracurricular course that teaches classmates about lifestyle interventions for chronic disease.

A new collaboration between Vermont Medicaid and UVM Medical Center’s Comprehensive Pain Program allows Medicaid members with chronic pain to participate in complementary therapies including health coaching, massage, yoga, nutrition, acupuncture, and meditation. This pilot is an important step toward eliminating disparities in access to effective, integrative care for pain.

There are currently no approved vaccines available to prevent Lyme disease in humans, but one may be on the way. UVM’s Vaccine Testing Center recently launched a clinical study to investigate the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of a Lyme disease vaccine.