December 20, 2022
On October 25, 2022, John E. Ultmann Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago Everett Vokes, MD, welcomed attendees of the Center for Chronic Disease Research and Policy’s 10th Annual Symposium, The Art and Science of Public Health Communication, with a video address. In his speech, Vokes commended the leadership of CDRP founding director Elbert Huang, MD, MPH, FACP, and recognized milestones achieved by the CDRP in its first decade.
Transcript of Dr. Vokes’s welcome speech:
I’m Dr. Everett Vokes, Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the Center for Chronic Disease Research and Policy’s 10th annual symposium, The Art and Science of Public Health Communication.
I was present as the idea of the CDRP was first developed and it has been a pleasure to watch the center evolve and expand under the leadership of Dr. Elbert Huang.
The global challenges of addressing non-communicable diseases is greater than ever and magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, we need research like that supported by the CDRP to reduce the health and economic burdens of these conditions.
The CDRP is a nationally recognized center for research and policy on chronic diseases with a unique range of research that includes the development of innovations for preventing and treating chronic diseases, evaluations of the economic and policy implications of those innovations, and the linkages of these findings to the study of broader health care policies.
I want to highlight some accomplishments over the past 10 years.
Recently, through a twenty million dollar grant funded by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, Dr. Huang and colleagues at Rush University Medical Center have created the new Chicago Chronic Condition Equity Network (or C3EN for short) to find community-focused solutions to reduce health disparities in populations with multiple chronic conditions.
Additionally, the Center has been instrumental in acquiring, storing, and analyzing national data dating back over a decade from Medicare and Medicaid, an incredible resource that benefits investigators across the University. This data has allowed CDRP researchers to use national insurance claims data to study healthcare delivery across the United States for a series of studies evaluating the performance of the Health Resources and Service Administration’s Health Center Program to help inform its future decisions.
The Center has also launched a training program, the PITCH Fellowship, to nurture the next generation of primary care clinical investigators to improve health outcomes and access to care for patients with chronic diseases from underserved backgrounds. Funded by HRSA through a grant acquired by Dr. Neda Laiteerapong, the program mentors a small cohort of four fellows from diverse backgrounds each year, and offers them the opportunity to complete a Master of Science in Public Health Sciences for Clinical Professionals through the University of Chicago Department of Public Health.
Through targeted studies, such as Dr. Laiteerapong’s 2018 publication on diabetes and aging, researchers at the Center have demonstrated how crucial it is for patients to receive care early and often, and have been committed to using their research to shape the policy that can improve health broadly across the public. And through Senate testimony, media interactions, and advisory panels, Dr. Tamara Konetzka has been a leading voice on the evidence behind nursing home COVID-19 cases and how this research can translate to policy.
The Center is now focused on three main research cores—a practice-based research network founded in 2018, which partners with UChicago Medicine to bring the newest research directly to patients and the communities where they live, a claims data research core that synthesizes Medicaid and Medicare data to improve policy and thus care for individuals with low incomes, and a cost-effectiveness analysis and medical decision making core that evaluates existing programs and forecasts future spending on chronic diseases to guide policy decisions.
It has been thrilling to witness the ongoing research and milestone achievements of the CDRP—congratulations on ten years, and welcome to all who have convened here today.
Read a recap of the 10th Annual Symposium
Watch the presentations from the 10th Annual Symposium