Six faculty members selected to receive the 2021 FAME grant

The Department of Medicine has selected six faculty members as the 2021 Fostering the Academic Mission in the Emory Department of Medicine (FAME) grant recipients. For more than a decade, the FAME grant has enabled Department of Medicine clinician faculty to dedicate up to 20 percent of their professional time to scholarly activities, including research, education, quality improvement projects, and mentoring.

This was the largest FAME grant funding year in the history of the program! In addition to DOM funding, three grant recipients were funded by Cardiology, one recipient was funded by Infectious Diseases, and one recipient was funded by the Emory Health Services Research Center (HSR). The DOM would like to extend special thanks to Jim Hills, a philanthropic Cardiology patient who supported awardee Neal Bhatia’s FAME project.

Please join us in congratulating the below awardees:

Neal Bhatia, MD, Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology
(Supported by a Cardiology funded grant from Jim Hills)  

Through his FAME project, “A pilot study to evaluate deep learning approaches for prediction of ventricular arrhythmias using upstream electrograms from intracardiac devices,” Bhatia aims to leverage the vast amount of data in patients with intracardiac devices and digitize them for analysis.

“We hope to identify novel digital signatures within these electrical signals prior to defibrillator shocks using deep learning methods. The FAME grant will be steppingstone to develop these algorithms and pursue other novel treatments to prevent defibrillator treatments.”

Kunal Bhatt, MD, Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology
(Supported by an HSR funded grant)

Bhatt’s FAME project “Improving care for patients with hereditary transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis: An urgent health equity issue,” will establish a clinical and research database to better characterize a growing cohort of patients. It will also implement specific clinical interventions aimed at improving rates of screening, diagnosis, and treatment of hereditary transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis patients within the Emory system.

“I am honored and grateful to receive this FAME grant. This project will be a crucial step in the creation of research infrastructure needed for innovation and care delivery to patients with hereditary cardiac amyloidosis. Improving our ability to detect and diagnose this hereditary disease has the potential for generational impact on the health of our patients’ families. I am especially excited to add a research component to our established cardiac amyloidosis clinic, which is uniquely positioned to help Emory become a leader in this field.”

Danny Eapen, MD, Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology
(Supported by a Cardiology funded grant)

Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) is a genetic condition that is prevalent in our society, affecting 1 in 250 individuals. Those who have this condition have a 10-to-20-fold increased risk of developing premature coronary heart disease. Unfortunately, up to 80 percent of cases are not diagnosed or under recognized. The purpose of Eapen’s project “Chasing cholesterol: Investigating the utility of a machine learning algorithmic approach to flag, identify, network and deliver patients with familial hypercholesterolemia within the Emory Healthcare System,” is to apply a validated machine learning algorithm (MLA) to the EEMR system to identify these vulnerable individuals and engage with them for clinical screening, initiation, and optimization of therapy.

“I am excited to partner with both the FH Foundation and our Emory Primary Care Center colleagues to raise awareness regarding the diagnosis of FH in both our local and medical communities. Furthermore, we hope to provide a use case for MLA screening of commonly missed medical conditions using the EEMR platform, thereby leading to more expeditious clinical diagnoses and initiation of medical care.”

Soroosh Kiani, MD, Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology
(Supported by a Cardiology funded grant)

Kiani’s FAME project, “Examining the overlapping syndromes of frailty and congestive heart failure in older patients undergoing cardiac resynchronization therapy,” seeks to leverage the cardiac-specific nature of CRT therapy to tease out the overlapping manifestations of frailty and congestive heart failure. At the same time, the study will examine the role of frailty in effecting outcomes after cardiac procedures in patients with heart failure.

“I’m honored to receive a FAME grant. This project will provide the basis for work that will continue to elucidate the nature frailty and its interplay with cardiac disease, while helping sharpen patient-centered decision making in order to achieve better outcomes for geriatric patients at our institution.”

Jason Linefsky, MD, Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiology
(Supported by a DOM funded grant) 

Through his FAME project, “Temporal trends in the incidence and prognosis of aortic stenosis: A nationwide longitudinal cohort study of US veterans,” Linefsky seeks to develop an epidemiologic database of US veterans with aortic stenosis using the VA electronic health record. The study will attempt to overcome previous limitations of epidemiologic cohort studies on aortic stenosis by leveraging a nationwide sample of veterans over the age of 65 that were regular users of the VA between 2002-2018. The study will establish the feasibility of the database for future study on the impact of cardiovascular risk factor control for aortic stenosis events.

“I want to thank the Emory Department of Medicine for their support for this project. I have had this study in mind since 2008 during my VA Health Services Research and Development Fellowship. However, it was not until my time with Emory and the Atlanta VA that the pieces for such a project have now come together. I am excited that with this support and collaboration from my VA co-investigators/mentors, we will be able to leverage the benefit of the electronic health record to address epidemiologic questions on aortic stenosis that could not otherwise be feasibly answered using traditional cardiovascular cohort studies. I hope this serves as a resource for continued collaboration with other interested investigators and provides opportunities for conducting further VA research.”

Marcos Coutinho Schechter, MD, Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases
(Supported by an Infectious Diseases funded grant)

Schechter’s FAME grant project “Mobile clinics and patient navigation to prevent diabetes-related amputations: a Grady Health System feasibility study,” aims to assess the impact of mobile clinics and patient navigators, singly or together, on post-hospital discharge diabetic foot ulcer care at Grady. This study will generate key data to seek external funding for a clinical trial of mobile clinics and patient navigation for diabetic foot ulcer care.

“This FAME grant will allow me to develop as a physician-scientist devoted to amputation prevention. I am particularly excited to expand the collaboration between our Grady Limb Salvage Team and School of Public Health faculty. We hope this study will be a steppingstone to obtain funding for projects aimed at preventing diabetes-related amputations at Grady.”

Click here to learn more about the FAME Grant.