School of Medicine to host town hall on COVID-19 vaccines
Tulane University School of Medicine will virtually host “COVID-19 Vaccines: A Community Town Hall” Monday, Dec. 14, at 5:30 p.m. CT to discuss the COVID-19 vaccines.
A panel of experts including Senior Vice President and School of Medicine Dean Lee Hamm, MD; Executive Dean Patrick Delafontaine, MD; Professor and Gerald S. Berenson Chair in Preventative Cardiology Keith Ferdinand, MD; Associate Professor Lisa Morici, PhD; Associate Professor Dave Mushatt, MD; Associate Professor John Schieffelin, MD; and Professor Bob Garry, PhD, will discuss current and upcoming vaccines and topics related to the vaccines.
“We anticipate the first wave of approved vaccines to reach our hospitals next week and be available to frontline providers. We hope that more vaccines will be available more widely in the weeks ahead,” said Dean Hamm. “To provide accurate information and answer your questions, we will assemble some of our experts so that you hear directly from the most trusted sources.”
In the United States, the historic first doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be available in December, coinciding with dramatic increases in COVID-19 cases nationwide.
Tulane’s medical faculty offer a range of expertise about the vaccines and include frontline physicians who have treated COVID-19 patients, representatives on both city and state COVID-19 task forces, and researchers. Tulane is also the site of the Janssen vaccine Phase 3 trial, for which results are expected next month. Executive Dean Patrick Delafontaine is the principal investigator for the New Orleans site.
Delafontaine said that the School of Medicine conducted a town hall centering on the vaccines earlier in December for medical students and residents. The panel discussion was valuable, he added, but the questions were plentiful. That event gave rise to Monday’s town hall, which is open to the public.
Questions about COVID-19 vaccines will be accepted in the Zoom chat during the town hall, but viewers can also submit questions for consideration beforehand to medquestions@tulane.edu.
The live stream of the town hall will be available via Zoom and also Facebook Live. For more information and to access the links to the town hall, click here.
