C. KENNETH AND DIANNE WRIGHT CENTER FOR CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH VCU BLOG

Zakia McKensey struggled to find doctors who would treat her. The Richmond native came out to her mother at 16 years old and was kicked out of the house. She found a family in the LGBTQIA+ community, but health care for transgender people like herself was almost nonexistant, and patients were subjected to frequent discrimination. […]

Emergency departments across the United States experienced a surge in opioid overdose cases during the pandemic. Now, a program at VCU Health aims to help those patients receive the treatment they need after they leave the emergency department. The new VCU Health Virtual Bridge Clinic creates a direct link between the emergency department and treatment […]

The Wright Center has awarded three VCU researchers grants from the CCTR Endowment grant program for health sciences research. The awards support preliminary studies that enable researchers to develop hypotheses, collect preliminary data and establish methods necessary for successful external funding. Rebecca Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, was awarded […]

Tyrah Vann worked in health care for seven years and holds a Master’s degree in public health. She knew about the health disparities for women of color during pregnancy, birth and post-birth. “However, I still fell victim to it,” she said. “Twice.” Her first baby spent two days in intensive care after Vann’s extreme pre-birth […]

In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, there were no approved treatments or vaccines for COVID-19. A little more than a year later, much of the world is being vaccinated, and fewer people with COVID-19 are dying — kept alive and off ventilators with the help of approved treatments. None of that would be possible […]

The 2021 VCU Science Communication Award was awarded to Sean Koebley, Ph.D., for his presentation: “Goodbye, P-value: Practical Bayesian Statistics To Replace Frequentist Statistics.” Koebley is a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department at VCU where he works with Jason Reed, Ph.D., studying novel methods for detecting genetic mutations using biophysics. This talk is the third Koebley […]

Health care is generally one-size-fits-all. When you visit the doctor, your treatments are often the same as everyone else’s. Wouldn’t it be great if your health care were tailored specifically to you? This is called precision medicine. Precision medicine takes into account: Environment — where you live Lifestyle — for example, what you eat Biology […]

The hormone prolactin has long been understood to play a vital role in breast growth and development and the production of milk during pregnancy. But a pair of recent studies conducted at VCU Massey Cancer Center finds strong evidence that prolactin also acts as a major contributor to breast cancer development and that the hormone […]

Every day, millions of people in health care, from oncologists to rehabilitation specialists to dentists, use the tools at their disposal to help patients get better. “And everyone runs into times when they say, what if?” said L. Franklin Bost, MBA. “What if I had something better? What if I could give someone better treatment? […]

How would you react if someone started a conversation by saying what was wrong with you and your family? Probably not well. And that’s exactly what health researchers often do, when they try to talk to community members, said Maghboeba Mosavel, Ph.D, an associate professor at the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Health Behavior […]