September Faculty and Staff Features

Jerome Strauss III, M.D., Ph.D., Dean, VCU School of Medicine

As part of an international research team, Strauss has received the 2012 Nestle Foundation Prize for Investigation in Nutrition for research of a simple intervention that may reduce the incidence of preeclampsia.

The award recognizes scientific and academic research in health and nutrition while strengthening education and preparation of medical specialists in Mexico and Latin America.  

The team, led by Felipe Vadillo-Ortega, M.D., Ph.D., and researchers at the School of Medicine from National Autonomous University of Mexico, included Strauss and colleagues at the Instituto Nacional de Perinatologia Isidro Espinosa de los Reyes, Mexico; Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, Mexico; Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas, UNAM, Mexico; Washington University in St. Louis; and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.  

In 2011, the team reported that food bars containing a semi-essential amino acid and antioxidant vitamins may offer a simple intervention that could reduce the incidence of preeclampsia, a condition that can occur during pregnancy that can affect both mother and unborn infant. These findings were published in the British Journal of Medicine. Funding for this research was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health  and Fondo de Salud, CONACyT.
Through a randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled clinical study, the team found that pregnant women at risk for developing preeclampsia who consumed food bars containing the amino acid L-arginine and antioxidant vitamins experienced a reduced incidence of preeclampsia.
Preeclampsia is characterized by high-blood pressure and an excess of protein in the urine. Previous studies have reported a deficiency of arginine during pregnancy. Arginine is metabolized into the gas, nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessel smooth muscles.

Jeffrey Kreutzer, Ph.D., VCU School of Medicine

Kreutzer, professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Traumatic Brain Injury Model System of Care at the VCU School of Medicine, is the recipient of the Patricia McCollom Research Award from the Foundation for Life Care Planning Research.

The award recognizes Kreutzer’s significant contributions to research in life care planning and compassionate care he provides to patients with disabilities.  

For more than two decades, Kreutzer has served as a brain injury rehabilitation specialist at the VCU Medical Center. His clinical specialties include neuropsychology, rehabilitation psychology, disability and family and individual psychotherapy.  

Kreutzer has co-authored more than 150 publications in the field of TBI and rehabilitation and serves as co-editor-in-chief of two international journals. He has published more than a dozen books aimed at topics that include vocational rehabilitation, community reintegration, behavior management and cognitive rehabilitation.  

The award was presented on Saturday, Sept. 22 at the International Symposium on Life Care Planning in Denver, Co.

The Foundation for Life Care Planning Research was established as a nonprofit research group with a primary focus on life care planning validation studies and rehabilitation research.

Nicole Rankins, M.D., School of Medicine
Syndi Seinfeld, D.O., School of Medicine

Nicole Rankins, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Syndi Seinfeld, D.O., assistant professor in the Department of Neurology, have been selected as the inaugural cohort of clinical faculty scholars in the Research and Education Training Core component of VCU’s National Institute for Minority Health Disparities (NIMHD) Comprehensive Center for Excellence for Health Disparities.

This work is part of a five-year grant renewal totaling $6.2 million from the National Institute of Health’s Institute on Minority Health Disparities for research, research training and community outreach in the area of preterm birth. The award was received by VCU earlier this year.

Rankins and Seinfeld will gain multidisciplinary training in research methodology and the science of population health and health disparities through a specialized curriculum and intensive mentoring. The training core will combine Rankins’ and Seinfeld’s clinical strengths with training in quantitative and qualitative methods from a variety of disciplines - health services research, social and behavioral health, epidemiology, biostatistics and economics — approaches that will allow them to address research questions in a creative, systematic manner.  

Rankins, an obstetrician/gynecologist, plans to utilize a community-based participatory research approach to evaluate the effectiveness of group prenatal and group well-woman/baby care on reducing disparities in infant mortality in vulnerable populations. In addition, she plans to examine the cost and sustainability of these models of care delivery with the goal of producing results that may be applicable to many different communities.

Seinfeld, a child neurologist, will use data from a multi-center prospective study of pediatric epilepsy patients to address issues surrounding delayed and inadequate treatment, particularly among disadvantaged groups. She hopes to use her findings to change policy and practice guidelines for the treatment of epilepsy among children.

They also will gain awareness of the non-medical determinants of health that contribute to producing difference in health outcomes. Their resulting research will be critical to informing and advancing clinical policy and practice on a local and national level.

The Training Core is housed in the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research in the VCU School of Medicine. The program is led by Cathy Bradley, Ph.D., program director and professor and chair of healthcare policy and research, and Tiffany Green, Ph.D, program coordinator and assistant professor.

Susan Kornstein, M.D., VCU School of Medicine

Kornstein, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology and executive director of the VCU Institute for Women's Health, was named founding president of the Academy of Women's Health, a newly established organization with a focus on women’s health.

Kornstein is an internationally recognized researcher and thought leader with expertise in women’s mental health and depression. She has been a principal investigator on more than 70 research studies in the areas of depression, anxiety disorders, premenstrual syndrome and sexual dysfunction. She was an investigator in the STAR*D depression project funded by the National Institute for Mental Health and was a regional center director for the NIH Depression Trials Network. She edited the first comprehensive textbook on women's mental health, has authored more than 200 articles, chapters and abstracts and has given many invited presentations at national and international meetings.

Kornstein has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Women's Health since 2005. She is also chair of the Annual Congress on Women’s Health held in Washington DC, presented by the VCU Institute for Women's Health, the Journal of Women’s Health and the Academy of Women’s Health, and co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health and the Society for Women's Health Research. Last year's congress, which celebrated its 20th anniversary, drew 1,000 attendees from 40 states and 23 countries.
 
Kornstein is also immediate past president of the International Association for Women's Mental Health and immediate past president of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology, and she recently chaired the 4th World Congress on Women's Mental Health in Madrid.

The Academy of Women’s Health is an interdisciplinary, international association of physicians, nurses and other health professionals who work across the broad field of women’s health, providing its members with up-to-date advances and options in clinical care that will enable the best outcomes for their women patients. The academy’s focus includes the dissemination of translational research and evidence-based practices for disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment for women across the lifespan.
 
The VCU Institute for Women’s Health, established in 1999, seeks to improve the health of women through research, clinical care, education, community outreach and leadership development. The institute was designated a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Tiffany L. Green, Ph.D., VCU School of Medicine

Green, assistant professor in the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research in the VCU School of Medicine, is one of five recipients of the 2012 Foundation for Child Development Young Scholars Program grant award.

The award supports the work of early career researchers examining the education and health of young children living in low-income immigrant families.

Green will receive nearly $150,000 to support her project titled, “Prenatal Insurance, Prenatal Care and Early Life Health Among the Children of Black Immigrants.” Green’s proposed research will employ administrative data from the State of Florida to explore the roles of public and private insurance on prenatal care utilization and birth outcomes among black immigrant women.

The Foundation for Child Development is a national private philanthropy in New York City dedicated to promoting a new beginning for American education from pre-kindergarten through third grade (PreK-3rd). The foundation promotes the well-being of children, and believes that families, schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses and government at all levels share complementary responsibilities in the critical task of raising new generations.