On December 1, 2023, the Duke Department of Emergency Medicine’s Section of Translational Health Sciences will officially transition to a division. The research-focused division is the first division within the new department.
The Division of Translational Health Sciences will be dedicated to utilizing translational research methods to advance access to and quality of emergency healthcare locally, nationally, and globally.
“The division will catalyze the department’s innovative scholarship and accelerate research’s impact on clinical care and patient and population outcomes,” division chief João Vissoci, PhD, says. “We’ll measure our success by the number of collaborations facilitated both inside and outside of the department, opportunistically taking advantage of the strengths of the Duke system.”
The seed of the division began when Dr. Vissoci was hired in the then Division of Emergency. He was the first nonclinical PhD faculty member. He worked with Catherine Staton, MD, to boost global health research and with multiple other faculty members across different lines of research.
Research in the division will be led by PhD researchers working in a variety of methodological areas applied to acute care research. It will align with current initiatives across the Department of Emergency Medicine and Duke, leveraging existing resources and improving the scope of work provided.
The division will also facilitate opportunities for the exchange of knowledge within the Department of Emergency Medicine and throughout Duke, sharing clinical science expertise with faculty and trainees.
Interim department chair Charles Gerardo, MD, welcomes the new division and the impact it will have.
“I look forward to the increased research impact driven by a highly productive group of faculty and postdocs within the division in collaboration with clinicians in the Department of Emergency Medicine and more broadly within the institution,” Dr. Gerardo says.
Learn more about the Division of Translational Health Sciences.