Thursday, November 21, 2019
12:00-1:00pm
UNC Hospital Starbucks (upstairs)
Catherine A. Staton, MD, MScGH
Assistant Professor, Surgery and Global Health
Duke University Medical Center
When practicing Emergency Medicine in both developing countries and at home, Dr. Staton has witnessed the burden of injury on patients, families and communities. In 2011, she completed an ARRA NIH Post-doctoral Fellowship in Mozambique, conducting a Preventable Death Project at Maputo Central Hospital. After her transition to Tanzania and Duke, her team started a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Clinical Registry at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), to improve clinical care administered to TBI patients and to continue to build research capacity on the ground. This registry identified alcohol as a leading risk factor for injury. Dr. Staton is currently finishing a Fogarty K01 Career Development Award ‘Addressing Alcohol Amongst High Risk Injury Patients in Tanzania’. Through this award, Dr. Staton has adapted and culturalized an Emergency Department-based intervention, a brief intervention, to be used in Tanzania. Similarly, her team described the current culture surrounding alcohol use, gauged healthcare providers’ interest in conducting an intervention and laid the groundwork for future studies by validating necessary tools to the Tanzanian Swahili language and context. Dr. Staton and her team are planning an adaptive clinical trial to test the effectiveness of this intervention with NIAAA R01 funding. While working with this population they have also discovered a need for a multi-prongued health system intervention to improve access to treatment during and after the acute hospitalization- this intervention development is now funded by a Fogarty R21.