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Tag: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Accenture Federal Services lands $189M CDC contract

Arlington-based Accenture Federal Services has received a $189 million contract to help speed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s migration to the cloud.

According to a news release Thursday, AFS will work with the CDC modernize its portfolio of information technology systems, examine enhancing functionality of those systems, and move systems into a secured cloud environment. The contract’s length is three years.

“We are excited for the opportunity to help modernize public health systems and improve access to data that is essential to CDC’s work,” Jill Olmstead, AFS’ managing director and health consulting lead, said in a statement. “We look forward to introducing innovative ways to achieve CDC’s cloud adoption goals through our public health experience, cloud-first capabilities, and innovation investments, to help advance their mission to protect people from health, safety and security threats.”

Accenture Federal Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture LLP, part of Irish Fortune Global 500 company Accenture PLC. Accenture has more than 710,000 employees across 120 countries and reported $50.5 billion in fiscal year 2021 revenue.

GMU appoints dean for health, human services college

George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services has named epidemiologist Melissa J. Perry as its new dean.

Perry has chaired The George Washington University’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health since 2011. She is expected to start her new position August 1 after completing a Fulbright fellowship in Albania, GMU said in a news release Thursday. During her time at GWU, Perry has also served as interim associate dean for research at the university’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and serves on the faculty within its Department of Epidemiology. She is also a faculty member in GWU’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences’ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine.

“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Perry to the leadership of our university. She is internationally respected for her work as an educator, researcher and administrator,” GMU Provost Mark R. Ginsberg said in a statement. “Her research has been well-funded by both federal agencies and foundations, she has published more than 150 manuscripts, technical reports, book chapters, commentaries and book reviews, and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences. I look forward to her leading our College of Health and Human Services during its next era.”

Perry’s research includes the impact of climate change on the properties of pesticides and other chemicals, as well as the mutagenic and hormonal effects of pesticide exposure on farming communities, agricultural workers and the public. She has also developed engineering and behavioral interventions to address risks to workers at meat packing plants, construction sites  and agricultural operations.  Her laboratory at the Milken Institute focuses on reproductive epidemiology and hormone disruptors and in she teaches students how to research the connections between climate change and health.

“This is a fantastic opportunity and I am delighted to join George Mason University,” Perry said.  “The College of Health and Human Services  is making a real impact in health promotion and disease prevention, and I am looking forward to leading the college to the next level of national and international accomplishments and prominence.”

Before joining GWU in 2011, Perry was a faculty member of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as well as the Medical College of Wisconsin.  She earned master’s of health science and doctor of science degrees from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School Public Health, as well as a bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont. She is also working on a master’s of business administration at GWU.

Perry is a former president and a current fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, chairs the Health Effects Institute’s review committee and is co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s emerging science committee. She also chaired the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s board of scientific counselors from 2014 to 2019.

 

Carilion Clinic, Richmond firm part of $3.5M concussion grant

Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic and Richmond’s BRAINBox Solutions Inc. are part of a $3.5 million National Institutes of Health grant to research and develop a new way to diagnose brain injuries in the elderly.

The research will include enrolling 300 patients with head trauma and 70 patients as controls. Patients will be followed for a year and the study will run for 3.5 years. The University of Pennsylvania is also included in the award, according to a Carilion news release Monday.

Researchers will design a panel of blood markers and cognitive tests to identify brain injuries, including those with cognitive impairment like dementia. A second phase will determine the tests’ accuracy.

There were more than 64,000 deaths related to traumatic brain injuries — which include concussions — in the United States in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Falls lead to more than half of hospitalizations for brain injuries.  People aged 75 and older had the highest numbers and rates of brain injury-related hospitalizations and deaths, accounting for 32% and 28% respectively. The injuries can often be overlooked or misdiagnosed because symptoms may overlap with other medical conditions. According to Carilion and BRAINBox, an accurate tool does not currently exist to diagnose the injuries rapidly.

“I think the surprising piece when I talk to not only patients, but the community about the type of research we are doing is, most people don’t know that it hasn’t been solved yet,” said Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine for Carilion Clinic Dr. Damon Kuehl, who is also a co-principal investigator. “Elderly patients requiring acute care visits after evidence of suspected head trauma commonly undergo a computed tomography (CT) scan. Despite most geriatric patients receiving this test, CT is very limited as a diagnostic or predictive tool in those TBI patients.”

BRAINBox has already been working on another project, with Carilion Clinic and Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, to determine if blood biomarkers can more accurately diagnose and treat mild traumatic brain injuries through the use of a single, bedside device. While that study is not directly connected to the one announced Monday, it will build on its findings. BRAINBox CEO Donna Edmonds said the company plans to also launch a pediatric study in the first half of this year.

“We are grateful for this additional funding, which provides us the opportunity to expand our technology, clinical and scientific evidence to this important population,” Edmonds said. “With this grant, we are one step closer to our goal of developing TBI tests for all patient groups.”