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Duke Interdisciplinary Studies highlights how collaboratory grants help Duke faculty grow ideas and build a foundation for larger external grants. One of the projects featured is a digital app designed to increase the accuracy of autism screening for young children—an interdisciplinary endeavor between the Duke Center for Autism & Brain Development and Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. This fall, the center was awarded a $12 million grant to develop AI tools for detecting autism during infancy and identifying biomarkers in the brain.

Courtney Gardner, MSN, a pediatric nurse practitioner in Marion, North Carolina, has seen a tremendous increase in depression and anxiety among her patients in the past few years. However, there are very few pediatric mental health specialists in rural McDowell County or nearby counties — certainly not enough to meet demand. That’s why she is grateful for the support of NC-PAL, a telephone consultation and continuing education program for primary care providers who treat pediatric or perinatal patients with mental health concerns.

All Babies and Children Thrive (ABC Thrive), an initiative of Bass Connections, has awarded follow-on grants to two interdisciplinary teams addressing barriers to services and supporting well-being for young children. One of these grants went to a team at the Duke Center for Autism & Brain Development, to integrate digital autism caregiver coaching into their screening and outcome monitoring tool, the SenseToKnow app. The app will provide information about best practices for early intervention and allow caregivers to track the child’s developmental progress.

Whether Duke Psychiatry's Angela Tunno, PhD, MS, is working with young patients at Duke or helping community-level systems serve trauma survivors with the Center for Child & Family Health, Dr. Tunno works to help children and families find healing. In recognition of her excellent and impactful work, she was named Blue Devil of the Week by Working@Duke this week.

Chronic pain is one of the most common reasons adults in the U.S. seek medical care. Opiates are often used as a pharmacological intervention, but they present a risk of substance use disorder. In an effort to develop an alternative form of treatment, Duke Psychiatry's Eric Elbogen, PhD, and his team turned to “neurofeedback,” or electroencephalograph (EEG) biofeedback treatment. 

Community psychiatrists serve multiple institutional roles, and at times these roles may include the review of grant proposals from nonprofit organizations. In this column published in "Psychiatric Services," the authors, including Duke Psychiatry's Marvin Swartz, MD, argue that privilege and social capital can easily become concentrated among a small group of centralized model organizations and influence the grant review process. By applying a structural lens to this problem, funding entities can identify approaches that more effectively promote equity throughout the grant life cycle.

Carla Wall, PhD, a postdoctoral associate and an alumna of the Duke Psychiatry Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship, was selected as one of two 2022 Outstanding Postdocs at Duke. She was nominated by her faculty mentor, Jill Howard, PhD, as well as other research team members.

The $3.5 million award will adapt a cell-linker protein in humans that improves crosstalk between brain regions in hopes of rewiring circuits that go awry in psychiatric disorders. The NIH has recognized Dzirasa as one of just eight scholars for the 2022 Director’s Pioneer Award, which specifically funds promising and often paradigm-shifting projects by exceptional researchers.

Several Duke experts, including Jane Gagliardi, MD, MHS, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, share some strategies for balancing ambitions with available time and energy.

Duke’s Internal Medicine-Psychiatry (Med-Psych) program had a strong showing at the 2022 Association of Medicine and Psychiatry (AMP) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, on September 29 to October 1.