Can understanding vitamin D deficiency and supplementation inform efforts to reduce the incidence and burden of COVID-19 and future pandemics?

David Meltzer, Ph.D.
The University of Chicago

Robert Gibbons, Ph.D.
The University of Chicago

ABSTRACT:
Vitamin D is a hormone that has well known roles in bone health and lesser appreciated and well understood roles in the immune system. This talk will review existing evidence on the role of vitamin D in affecting the immune system with a focus on its role in viral respiratory infections and COVID-19 in particular. The talk will review new findings from several observational analyses examining the association of vitamin D with COVID-19 risk and influenza risk. It will also describe early findings and rationale for 3 clinical studies of vitamin D and COVID-19 risk that are now in progress.

Applying lessons learned from global mental health to the opioid crisis

Jessica Magidson, Phd
Department of Psychology
University of Maryland

ABSTRACT:
The current opioid crisis in the United States has been considered an “epidemic of poor access to care”. Similar to the shortage of trained providers to prescribe medications to treat opioid use disorder (OUD), there is a severe shortage of trained providers to meet the behavioral health needs of patients with OUD. This talk will draw from global mental health models of “task sharing” to discuss how lessons learned from scaling up evidence-based interventions with lay health workers in low and middle-income countries can inform efforts to increase access to behavioral health care for patients with OUD in the US. Research will be presented using peer recovery coach models to integrate substance use treatment into HIV care in South Africa and to promote linkage and retention in OUD care locally.