Randi Smith, MD, Dabney Evans, PhD, MPH, and Amy Zeidan, MD, have received a 2020 Synergy Research Award as co-principal investigators. These awards support collaborative projects among faculty throughout the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, and reflect the WHSC Strategic Plan by bringing researchers together across organizational boundaries in order to catalyze innovation and discovery.
Dr. Smith is an assistant professor of surgery and trauma/surgical critical care at Emory School of Medicine/Grady Memorial Hospital and an assistant professor of public health at Rollins School of Public Health, Dr. Evans is an associate professor of global health at Rollins, and Dr. Zeidan is an assistant professor of surgery at the Department of Emergency Medicine.
For this round of Synergy Awards, proposals had to focus on issues related to COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2, including research leading to understanding of the virus and to the discovery and development of new COVID-19-related therapies, prevention strategies, diagnostics, and devices. Submitted projects could also seek to understand the impact of COVID-19 on providers, nursing and laboratory staff, and clinical delivery, as well as attempt to effectively link health care systems and public health in pandemics.
Drs. Smith, Evans, and Zeidan will investigate the impact of the pandemic on the incidence, injury type, and severity of trauma encountered at Grady Memorial Hospital. The three team members have a special interest in intimate partner violence (IPV), and will use their respective knowledge and expertise to dive deeper into the contextual factors that influence IPV during this time using quantitative and qualitative research methods.
The co-PIs' primary hypothesis is that restrictions on movement in the state of Georgia have resulted in a related increase in IPV. Data generated from this study will be used to inform service provisions and other prevention strategies.