Charles Frank joins BARDA to support sepsis research
MARCH 2021
Charles E. Frank, MD, has been named a medical advisor to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) — part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA). BARDA provides an integrated, systematic approach to the development of vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies. Dr. Frank is an Emory general surgery resident in his second year of a two-year research sabbatical under the mentorship of Emory critical care specialist Timothy G. Buchman, PhD, MD, who also serves as a medical advisor IPA to BARDA.
Dr. Frank will be working with BARDA's Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) supporting the Solving Sepsis Team. DRIVe focuses on accelerating the development and availability of transformative technologies and approaches for strengthening our nation's health security. The Solving Sepsis Program is evaluating the entire continuum of infection severity in patients, seeking novel interventions to enable early identification of severe outcomes, including sepsis, in order to improve patient management and reduce the morbidity, mortality, and economic burden caused by sepsis.
In support of a collaboration between ASPR and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Dr. Frank will primarily assess the cost and disease burden of sepsis in Medicare beneficiaries in an effort to inform potential interventions and solutions to sepsis.
"By studying national Medicare databases, I hope to better understand the burden of sepsis within this patient population in order to generate predictive models on its impact and extrapolate my findings to national outcomes and costs," he says. "Sepsis is costly in lives and in dollars, and I hope to illuminate pathways to save both."
Dr. Frank is also earning his MBA with an emphasis on strategy and healthcare management at Emory's Goizueta Business School, and will apply the experience he's gaining in evaluating cost structures and their implications to this project.
"This kind of analysis is often not a part of traditional biomedical research, though much of the data we analyze has cost components," he says. "With cost modeling, we can demonstrate the economic impact of sepsis, estimated to exceed $62 billion annually in 2018 based on BARDA research, and utilize this framework to understand other disease processes."
Dr. Frank's federal service with BARDA is not limited in scope to this one project, and he will be able to provide subject matter expertise to additional DRIVe programs, including the development of emerging technology platforms.
"In contrast to the time-honored approach of participating in federally supported laboratory training, this opportunity to integrate federal service while in residency training is essentially unexplored," he says. "It complements my interest in the business of healthcare, affords me the opportunity to see how the strategies of medical countermeasures are developed and implemented, how federal policy is created and operationalized, and lets me use what I have learned at Emory in ways that I hope will ultimately protect Americans and save lives."