Excellence in Research
The Excellence in Research awardee is a clinical health services researcher with a federally funded research program aimed at improving care delivery and outcomes for children with pneumonia and other acute respiratory illnesses.
Derek Williams, MD, MPH, associate professor of pediatrics and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Dr. Williams is a clinical and health services researcher with a federally funded research program centered on improving care delivery and outcomes for children with pneumonia and other acute respiratory illnesses. He has contributed substantially to numerous studies that have advanced the field, including the landmark CDC Etiology of Pneumonia in the Community (EPIC) Study. This study was the largest prospective investigation of pediatric pneumonia hospitalizations ever conducted in the U.S. and fundamentally altered how we think about pneumonia etiology in the era of highly effective pneumococcal vaccines.
Currently, his research team is focused on the conduct of two NIH-funded pragmatic randomized trials testing the effectiveness of predictive analytics and clinical decision support to optimize antibiotic utilization and inform disease severity assessments in childhood pneumonia. In total, Dr. Williams has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals. He is an active research mentor, with nine current trainees and junior faculty, including two K awardees. He also serves on the Executive Council for the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings (PRIS) Network, an independent, hospital-based research network that has garnered more than $32 million in federal grants to conduct innovative research.
