The Project Baseline Health Study: a step towards a broader mission to map human health.
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2020-01
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The Project Baseline Health Study (PBHS) was launched to map human health through a comprehensive understanding of both the health of an individual and how it relates to the broader population. The study will contribute to the creation of a biomedical information system that accounts for the highly complex interplay of biological, behavioral, environmental, and social systems. The PBHS is a prospective, multicenter, longitudinal cohort study that aims to enroll thousands of participants with diverse backgrounds who are representative of the entire health spectrum. Enrolled participants will be evaluated serially using clinical, molecular, imaging, sensor, self-reported, behavioral, psychological, environmental, and other health-related measurements. An initial deeply phenotyped cohort will inform the development of a large, expanded virtual cohort. The PBHS will contribute to precision health and medicine by integrating state of the art testing, longitudinal monitoring and participant engagement, and by contributing to the development of an improved platform for data sharing and analysis.
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Arges, Kristine, Themistocles Assimes, Vikram Bajaj, Suresh Balu, Mustafa R Bashir, Laura Beskow, Rosalia Blanco, Robert Califf, et al. (2020). The Project Baseline Health Study: a step towards a broader mission to map human health. NPJ digital medicine, 3(1). p. 84. 10.1038/s41746-020-0290-y Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21114.
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Scholars@Duke

Mustafa Shadi Rifaat Bashir
Hepatobiliary and pancreatic imaging
Liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma)
Fatty liver, NAFLD, and NASH
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
Pancreatic cancer
Technical development in MRI
Quantitative imaging

Scott William Cousins
Scott W. Cousins, M.D. is currently the Robert Machemer, M.D. Professor of Ophthalmology and Immunology, Vice Chair for Research, and Director of the Duke Center for Macular Diseases at Duke Eye Center. As Vice Chair, he oversees all basic science research as well as the Ophthalmology Site-Based Research Group, which administrates clinical research for Duke Eye Center. Dr. Cousins is also Medical Director of Hospital-Based Imaging and Procedures for Duke Eye Center.
Dr. Cousins is a retina-trained ophthalmologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of macular diseases, especially age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and retinal vascular diseases. Dr. Cousins is active in both clinical and laboratory research. In his clinical practice, Dr. Cousins is involved in many trials and innovative therapies for the treatment of macular diseases, especially AMD and diabetic retinopathy. He has served as site PI for numerous phase1-3 clinical trials in AMD, diabetic retinopathy, and other retinal disorders. He has served as a consultant or member of data safety monitoring committees (DSMC) for numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology startup companies.
In his scientific laboratory, Dr. Cousins pursues both NIH-funded and industry-funded research in various areas of dry and wet AMD. In particular, he is studying the role of circulating bone marrow-derived progenitors (stem cells) in contributing to wet AMD. His laboratory is attempting to develop treatments for dry macular degeneration and improving vision in eyes with wet macular degeneration. His program is also developing blood tests and new imaging technologies for the identification of patients who are at high risk for progressing into complications.
Dr. Cousins has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and other publications addressing topics of research or clinical care of retinal disease, especially AMD. In 2006, Dr. Cousins was awarded the prestigious Alcon Research Foundation Clinician Scientist Award. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health invited Dr. Cousins to join the National Advisory Eye Council. Dr. Cousins is also a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Retina Specialists, the Retina Society, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the American Association of Immunologists, and the American Medical Association.
In 2010, Dr. Cousins was named one of the “Top 34 Ophthalmologists in the United States” by Becker’s ASC Review, a leading source of business and legal news for ambulatory surgery centers. They cited his leadership of the Duke Center for Macular Diseases and his ongoing research in macular degeneration as reasons for the honor.

Pamela Susan Douglas
Pamela S Douglas MD is the Ursula Geller Professor of Research in Cardiovascular Diseases in the Department of Medicine at Duke University and Director of the Multimodality Imaging Program at Duke Clinical Research Institute. During her 30+ years of experience she has led several landmark multicenter government studies and pivotal industry clinical trials along with outcomes research studies. She is renowned for her scientific and policy work in improving the quality and appropriateness of imaging in clinical care, clinical trials and registries and through development and dissemination of national standards for imaging utilization, informatics and analysis. She has been among the pioneers in a number of areas including heart disease in women, sports cardiology, and cardio-oncology. Dr. Douglas’ wealth of experience includes authorship of over 400 peer reviewed manuscripts and 30 practice guidelines, and service as the President of the American College of Cardiology, President of the American Society of Echocardiography, and Chief of Cardiology at both the University of Wisconsin and Duke University. She has also previously served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. She currently serves on the External Advisory Council of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Patient Advocate Foundation.

Geoffrey Steven Ginsburg
Dr. Geoffrey S. Ginsburg's research interests are in the development of novel paradigms for developing and translating genomic information into medical practice and the integration of personalized medicine into health care.

Adrian Felipe Hernandez

Erich Senin Huang
Former Chief Data Officer for Quality, Duke Health
Former Director of Duke Forge
Former Director of Duke Crucible
Former Assistant Dean for Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Huang is currently Chief Science & Innovation Officer for Onduo by Verily, and Head of Clinical Informatics at Verily (Google's life sciences subsidiary), and is now adjunct faculty at Duke. Dr. Huang’s research interests span applied machine learning, research provenance and data infrastructure. Projects include building data provenance tools funded by the NIH’s Big Data to Knowledge program, regulatory science funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation. Applied machine learning applications include “Deep Care Management” a highly interdisciplinary project with Duke Connected Care, Duke’s Accountable Care Organization, that integrates claims and EHR data for predicting unplanned admissions and risk stratifying patients for case management; CALYPSO, a collaboration with the Department of Surgery for utilizing machine learning to predict surgical complications. My team is also building the data platform for the Department of Surgery's "1000 Patients Project" an intensive biospecimen and biomarker study based around patients undergoing the controlled injury of surgery.
As Director of Duke Forge, Dr. Huang is working to build a data science culture and infrastructure across Duke University that focuses on actionable health data science. The Forge emphasizes scientific rigor, awareness that technology does not supersede clinicians’ responsibilities and human relationship with their patients, and the role of data science in society.

Glenn Jay Jaffe
I have an active basic and clinical research program. I have been principal investigator on several funded clinical studies including investigations of an oral ganciclovir prodrug to treat CMV retinitis and a study to determine the safety of a cyclosporine sustained drug delivery implant in the treatment of uveitis. I am principal investigator of an ongoing multicenter trial of a fluocinolone sustained drug delivery implant to treat patients with severe uveitis and a trial of this same implant to treat diabetic macular edema. Recently, I have investigated the use of ultrasonography and optical coherence tomography to diagnose macular edema in a variety of ocular diseases. I have maintained an ongoing basic research program to test the hypothesis that cytokines are important in the development of proliferative vitreoretinopathy, an important intraocular wound healing disorder. Education: I am actively involved in resident and fellow education. I give lectures to residents and fellows on a variety of topics related to uveitis and vitreoretinal diseases and train fellows to perform vitreoretinal surgery. I train post-doctoral students and medical students to conduct clinically relevant research. I serve as a mentor for the Duke third year medical school research program. I have served on a yearly basis as course faculty at many national and international meetings.

Shannon Jones McCall
As Vice Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Pathology, I am involved in numerous translational cancer research projects that rely on the study of human biological samples. I am the director of the Duke BioRepository & Precision Pathology Center (Duke BRPC), a shared resource of the School of Medicine and the Duke Cancer Institute. I serve as the PI for the National Cancer Institute's Cooperative Human Tissue Network Southern Division (a five-year UM1 grant), which lives in the Duke BRPC. My own area of research interest is gastrointestinal tract metaplasias and their relationship to carcinogenesis, particularly in the upper GI tract.

Lawrence H. Muhlbaier
- HIPAA and other regulatory systems and their impact on Research
- Patient Privacy
- Evaluation of outcomes in cardiac surgical patients.
- Validate statistical models of short and long term outcome of patients with IHD in non-academic databases.
- Developing methods to present these evaluations so that they can be incorporated into patient care activities on an ongoing basis.
- To understand the variability in the utilization of medical care services in ischemic heart disease (IHD).
- Methods to link data from clinical and research databases to effectively use the data for both purposes.
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