ACCORDS News and Stories

The strength of the CU Anschutz Medical Campus is built in part on the ties between practitioners and researchers — field experts working regularly in hospitals or clinics using what they have seen in their practice to inform their research. This is where innovation and truly life-altering discoveries are made.

The Surgical/subspecialists Clinical Outcomes Research (SCORE) Fellowship at ACCORDS is a one-of-a-kind opportunity allowing physicians to gain skills and begin their work in outcomes-based research. The fellowship is designed to train outstanding physician-researchers in clinical translational and outcomes research. Since 2014, SCORE has primarily focused on surgeons and subspecialists interested in research training.

Laura Veith - ACCORDS Writer | March 02, 2022

While most conversations about vaccinations concern the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Amy Feldman is focusing on vaccinations of a different kind. The standard kind.

A staggering number of pediatric transplant patients, one in six to be specific, are hospitalized within the first five years post-transplant with a potentially vaccine-preventable illness. Understanding this phenomenon and increasing standard vaccinations among pediatric transplant patients is the focus of Dr. Feldman’s research. She is currently in the third year of a five-year K08 Career Development Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality entitled Improving Immunization Rates in Transplant Candidates Through the Use of a Health Information Technology Tool. Dr. Allison Kempe, director of ACCORDS, and Dr. Ronald Sokol, Chief of the Section of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, serve as her primary co-mentors.

Laura Veith - ACCORDS Writer | January 24, 2022

In 2005, Dr. Stanley Szefler began a project in the way many ACCORDS members do—out of a desire to make research impactful. While working in pediatrics at National Jewish Health, Szefler felt there needed to be a program to give back to the community. “So often in research, we do studies and invite patients to participate, and they benefit from the studies… but I wanted to give something back to the community on a larger scale, which gave way to this idea,” says Szefler.

Laura Veith - ACCORDS Writer | August 04, 2021

There is a strong thread that ties every core or program within ACCORDS together. While each team addresses research in one facet or another, their disciplines span a wide range of academic specialties, some with almost no visible relation to one another. But the primary goal that unifies each member of ACCORDS, and truly, the entire CU Anschutz community, is the desire to improve people’s lives through scientific research and practice.

Laura Veith - ACCORDS Writer | July 01, 2021

The percentage of parents who refuse all vaccines for their children is small, roughly about 3%. There is, however, an increasing number of parents who refuse or want to defer individual vaccines or use an immunization schedule for their child that is not recommended. That’s according to Children’s Hospital Colorado’s primary care pediatrician and health services researcher Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, and pediatric infectious disease specialist Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH, who’ve been working on vaccine research related to hesitancy for over two decades.

Together with Children’s Colorado, the Anschutz Medical Campus, and a myriad of local, regional and national organizations, Drs. Kempe and O’Leary are using their research to educate parents and inform providers on how best to address a debate that, at least according to nearly everyone in the medical community, really shouldn’t exist — but does.

Children's Hospital Colorado | May 01, 2021