The Duke-Margolis community congratulates Duke faculty member and alumnus Rob Califf, who was confirmed as the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by a vote of the full U.S. Senate and sworn into his post by HHS Secretary Becerra on February 22^nd. Center Director Mark McClellan, along with five other former FDA Commissioners, actively supported his nomination in a letter to the US Senate HELP Committee. Mark, together with Scott Gottlieb, Margaret Hamburg and Andy Slavitt, penned an op-ed in The Hill detailing the myriad of important issues with which the FDA is currently dealing including the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the full op-ed here.

Former Duke-Margolis Senior Policy Fellow Susan Dentzer has been named the new President and CEO of America’s Physician Groups (APG). When ask about this new opportunity, Susan noted that she is “honored to take the helm at APG at this critically important time in the transition to value-based care.” Susan has been involved with the Center since its inception and will continue as a member of the e Duke-Margolis Advisory Board. We wish you the best of luck, Susan!

HEALTH POLICY IN ACTION

Director Mark McClellan joined a Duke University Media Briefing to discuss the future of COVID-19, future variants, and what may have to happen to stay safe in the event of another COVID surge similar to Omicron. Watch the full briefing here.

In an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, Director Mark McClellan discussed the Omicron surge while sharing optimism that better days are possible. “If we’re able to continue the decline in the surge at the rate that’s been happening the past week, I do see some real opportunities for relaxing mask mandates, for relaxing our activities, just within the next month, not too far off at all,” he said. He also discussed that less than a third of the five to 11-year old children has been vaccinated, and underscored that the data shows that vaccines can prevent serious illness and long-term complications from COVID in kids. Read the full article here.

Duke-Margolis, through the efforts of its Biomedical Innovation team, responded to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed decision memo regarding the use of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against amyloid for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The Center provided recommendations to CMS to refine their proposed coverage decision in light of the evolving body of evidence for mAb treatments and to address the priorities of patient access, equity, and further needed evidence development. Read the Center’s response here.

Duke-Margolis sent substantive comments to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on its discussion draft of the bipartisan legislation, “Prepare for and Respond to Existing Viruses, Emerging New Threats, and Pandemics Act (PREVENT Pandemics Act”). While the Center commended the committee’s efforts to move forward a critical set of pandemic preparedness and response measures, it also proposed a number of revisions, refinements, or additions to other proposals found throughout PREVENT. These recommendations reflect two years of the Center’s COVID-19 work focused on response policies, vaccine and therapeutic development, testing strategies, and health sector resilience, including more than 50 white papers, policy briefs, and commentaries; multiple Congressional testimonies; and over 20+ public events. Click here to read the Center’s full response.

RESEARCH

Center Core Faculty Member Charlene Wong co-authored an article in JAMA Pediatrics entitled “Screening for Health-Related Social Needs in Pediatric Value-Based Care,” that describes how health-related social needs are critical factors in children’s health that can be assessed through informal questioning or use of formal screening instruments. Read the article here.

For more information and to register visit our event website. This webinar is partially supported by The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Duke-Margolis hosted a public webinar to discuss opportunities to expand home-based care for people with complex health and social needs. Home-based care is an untapped resource to provide care to millions of people in the United States who are unable to access or have difficulty obtaining care. This webinar explored immediate policy opportunities to increase home-based care at both the federal and state level, including pathways to use value-based payment models to further expand access to home-based care services.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced that Duke-Margolis Core Faculty Member Charlene Wong has been named Assistant Secretary for Children and Families for the newly launched, Division of Child and Family Well-Being. Former Margolis Scholar Madhu Vulimiri will serve as the department’s Deputy Director. Read more about the announcement from NCHHS and Duke School of Medicine.

Center Director Mark McClellan joined a bipartisan group of former FDA Commissioners in a letter supporting the nomination Dr. Califf’s to return as Commissioner of Food and Drugs ahead of his confirmation hearing in the Senate HELP Committee. On January 14^th, Dr. Califf’s nomination passed the Senate HELP Committee and will now be taken up for a vote by the full Senate. A date for the Senate’s vote on confirmation has not been set.

Sanford School of Public Policy announced that Duke-Margolis Core Faculty Member Nathan Boucher will become the school’s new director of undergraduate studies on July 1, 2022. Read more from the Sanford announcement here.

Mark McClellan took part in the virtual event “A Path to Improving Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes in the US: Lessons Learned from a Public Health Crisis” tackling the rise of cardiovascular disease (CVD) burden in the US & how we can reduce CVD morbidity and mortality & contribute to meaningful, enduring change for generations to come. Click here to watch the event.

Duke Global Health Institute featured Margolis Intern Elaijah Lapay as part of their Student Stories series. In the article, Elaijah details why studying how well health care systems communicate with patients from other cultures is of particular interest to him, an interest shaped by the experience of his immigrant grandmother. Read the full piece here.

Duke-Margolis Intern Sophie Hurewitz published two blog posts in The Medical Care Blog. The blog topics are closely tied to her own prior research experiences with the Center and the Center’s ongoing work to address health equity and healthcare transformation. The blogs detail the work of the Children's Complex Care Coalition of North Carolina (Path-4CNC), a Duke and UNC collaborative working to improve the systems of care for children with complex health needs in North Carolina. Read more about Sophie’s research here and here.

Health Equity Policy Fellow Andrea Thoumi and Policy Analyst Kamaria Kaalund presented at Duke GI Grand Rounds, a weekly educational conference with a focus on clinical and research topics, as part of the Joanne A. P. Wilson Lecture Series and Black History Month Grand Rounds. Learn more about their session, Leveraging Community Engagement and Health Policy to Address Health Equity Gaps, here.

Dure Kim, PharmD, is an Assistant Research Director for the Biomedical Innovation portfolio, focusing on the Center’s Cooperative Agreement with the FDA in the advancement of regulatory science and health policy research. Prior to joining Duke-Margolis, he was a Research Scientist at the National Evaluation System for health Technology Coordinating Center, where he helped manage and develop Real-World Evidence studies with medical device stakeholders and researchers. Dure received his Doctor of Pharmacy from Mercer University in 2016 and completed a fellowship in Comparative Effectiveness Research and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 2018.

Samantha (Sam) Repka is a Research Associate who supports work across the Center’s health care transformation team. Sam comes to Duke-Margolis from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she served as a Director of Public Policy. Prior to her time in NYC, she was a Senior Manager at AcademyHealth and a Teach for America Corps Member. She holds a Master of Science in Public Health and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sarah Dunn Phillips, MA, has taken on the role of Associate Director of Education. Since starting at Duke-Margolis in the Fall of 2019, Sarah has been helping to develop and manage our rapidly growing portfolio of educational programs and working closely with myself, our Faculty Directors, and our staff team to conceptualize and execute educational initiatives to further our mission of training future health policy leaders. As our Center matures and our educational programs grow, so do the roles and responsibilities needed to lead and support these programs and initiatives. In Sarah’s expanded role as Associate Director, she collaborates with the Faculty Directors to provide oversight on all academic and experiential programs, supervises the program coordinators supporting our educational initiatives, furthers our student engagement and mentorship as well as faculty engagement, and serves as a liaison for our education programs both within the Center and across campus.

Kamaria Kaalund, BA, has been promoted to Policy Analyst, Health Equity. Since starting at Duke-Margolis in June 2020, Kamaria has served as a key research team member on multiple projects including the COVID-19 Health Equity Learning Network, Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP), COVID-19 Testing Strategies Team, and Lancet Commission for Hearing Loss. She was awarded the 2021 Duke-Margolis Leadership Award for her valuable contributions to the Center.

Through her current work, Kamaria has served in a critical role to advance the Center’s health equity agenda. She has worked closely with senior researchers to publish multiple issue briefs related to mitigating COVID-19 health inequities including Hyperlocal COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Strategies and Championing Health Equity: Experiences from COVID-19 Health Equity Taskforces. She has also coordinated a Bass Connections class associated with the Lancet Commission on Hearing Loss and has collaborated with faculty, staff, and students to advance core competencies for health equity in health policy in the Center’s academic programming. Lastly, she has assumed a leadership role on the Center’s Anti-Racism and Equity Committee, leading the writing of the Center’s Health Equity Language Guide and Health Equity and Policy Toolkit for Educators.

Do you want to be part of health policy in action? Do you want to work on the leading health policy issues confronting cities, states, the nation, and the globe? The Duke-Margolis team is a dynamic, high impact national leader in leveraging policy to ensure high quality, affordable care for all. Multiple positions are currently available and new positions have been posted this week! Click here to view all of our career opportunities.