From the moment COVID-19 began to turn the world upside down, we knew this virus would prove one of the greatest health challenges in recent history. We marshalled all our resources—the expertise of our six schools, the knowledge and skills of the many faces of UTHealth, and our partnerships within the Texas Medical Center—to tackle this monumental problem.
We created the UTHealth COVID-19 Center of Excellence to channel our proficiency in adult and pediatric care, public health, biomedical research, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence into the pursuit of one purpose: saving lives and advancing our understanding of the virus.
This broad range of expertise uniquely positions the COVID-19 Center of Excellence to provide patients with the highest quality care, lead translational and clinical research that optimize treatments for the virus, and develop preventative protocols that help keep our communities safe.
Some highlights of our work include:
- Innovative treatment protocols including one of the world’s first double-lung transplants in a patient with coronavirus. We are also engaged in some of the largest national clinical trials to help heal COVID-19 patients, with goals ranging from preventing disease progression to finding effective treatments for those who are critically ill.
- Our robust public health initiatives to contain the virus and understand its impact on populations. These include guiding local and state officials on how best to respond to the pandemic using data-driven research and modeling, as well as our COVID-19+ Cohort Study, which works with regional partners to assess the virus's long-term consequences and determine factors that contribute to severe outcomes.
- The work of our experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning to organize and capitalize on the vast amount of COVID-19 data collected; our COVID-19 Data Index contains over 6,000 datasets from large repositories, research papers, and individual sources, which enables researchers around the world to access this data to make timely scientific discoveries.
Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic will require the ongoing dedication of the many faces of UTHealth, our philanthropic partners, and the entire community.
Your gift of any size to the COVID-19 Center of Excellence will strengthen our work to make a difference in countless lives around the world, from patients in dire need of better treatments to communities struggling with the indirect effects of the pandemic—bringing us closer to the day when we can truly turn the page on COVID-19.
