VCOM 2024 Annual Report

VCOM’s 10th Annual Research Retreat Integrative Health (NCCIH), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Pfizer; and Hughston Clinic in Columbus, Georgia; among others. The agenda featured a number of workshops and sessions with CME

T en years ago, when Gunnar Brolinson, DO, launched VCOM’s first research retreat, he didn’t know that the retreat would continue to grow—just as the College itself has. Yet, with the help of many hands across the last decade, the College hosted its 10th retreat in 2024, welcoming researchers from all four campuses, plus partners including government agencies, universities, and more. In the beginning, Dr. Brolinson says he was just trying to get folks together to “foster research partnerships amongst our schools and amongst our partners.” He continues: “The kind of grants that are successful on the national level are multidisciplinary and multi-institutional. Every year, we have several new collaborations that come out of people sitting down at the same table and chatting about their research ideas.” This year’s retreat had more than 120 participants from all four VCOM campuses and 12 partner organizations, including the National Center for Complementary and

opportunities as well as talks on projects happening across the four campuses.

Matt Gevaert, PhD, VCOM’s new chief innovation officer spoke about the importance of innovating new treatments for cancer, but also the challenges of developing those treatments in terms of cost of high failure rates. Other sessions included how a mobile app is expanding the reach of mental health education, novel treatments for pain, integrating radiomics and musculoskeletal sonography, short “MedX” talks on a variety of topics, and much more. In addition, there was ample time for social interaction and networking, helping to build the strong relationships that are so necessary to successful research collaborations.

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