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Dr. Vincent Marconi
Dr. Vincent Marconi, director of the Infectious Diseases Research Program at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and Dr. Jean Beckham, Senior Research Career Scientist at VA Durham Health Care System have each been awarded the John Blair Barnwell Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Science Research and Development.
As a U.S. Air Force Veteran who was called to active duty in 2005, Dr. Marconi is a shining example of how Veterans who have already given so much to this country continue to serve in VA. During his four years of active duty, Dr. Marconi served as the Director of the HIV Medical Evaluation program for the Air Force and site principal investigator for the Department of Defense HIV cohort. His pioneering studies on anti-retro-viral therapy for HIV revealed the mechanisms of the infection, leading to new interventions to reduce inflammation in people with HIV…. AND those with COVID-19. In fact, Dr. Marconi’s research on infectious diseases has significantly advanced our understanding of both these viruses.
Dr. Marconi’s research focuses on uncovering the role of viral infection in the aging process and improving treatment and care for over 31,000 Veterans living with HIV. But at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Marconi realized patients were experiencing a more severe form of infection-related inflammation that could benefit from a targeted treatment called JAK inhibitors. Medications that block the activity of Janus kinase enzymes, or JAK for short, is commonly used to treat conditions such as arthritis or even cancer. Dr. Marconi was the first to use JAK inhibitors to treat infectious diseases, launching numerous clinical trials around the world, changing practice guidelines, and saving countless lives.
His work with the medication baricitinib led to four international clinical trials that demonstrated the largest mortality reduction of any medication used to treat hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Over 3 million people have received baricitinib for treatment of COVID-19, and it is one of only two medications approved by the FDA for treating patients hospitalized with the disease.
Dr. Marconi’s research has substantially improved the quality of life and care for Veterans with HIV with respect to treatment, aging, alcohol use disorder, telemedicine, and exercise interventions. His work also led to the creation of the VA Science and Health Initiative to Combat Infectious and Emerging Life-Threatening Diseases, or VA SHIELD, which is focused on the study of infectious and non-communicable diseases relevant to Veterans.
But for all that, he says he is most proud to have provided clinical care for nearly 25 years and served as a mentor to students and trainees. Dr. Marconi’s innovative and dynamic research program is a prime example of how a dedicated VA physician-scientist can change the world.
Dr. Beckham’s work researching the physiological and psychological mechanisms that underlie human behavior has changed the lives of Veterans in multiple ways, from helping those with posttraumatic stress disorder to quit smoking to predicting and preventing suicide.
Dr. Jean Beckham
Dr. Beckham began her VA career as a fulltime clinician in a PTSD clinic. There, she noticed many of the Veterans she treated were also suffering from smoking-related illnesses. These Veterans told her they wanted to quit smoking, but it was proving much more difficult for them than others, and the desire to help these Veterans in need launched a career in research for Dr. Beckham. Her early work helped Veterans with psychiatric disorders quit smoking by identifying the predictors and mechanisms of smoking relapse and creating new ways to increase the reach of smoking cessation programs for Veterans. She integrated smoking cessation treatment with mental health care, mobile apps, and has worked on the Tobacco Advisory Group for more than two decades to help support clinical efforts to integrate tobacco use treatment into mental health care and to expand the reach of this treatment beyond the clinic.. Her work even helped treatments for homeless Veterans.
Dr. Beckham later expanded her work to providing interventions for Veterans with PTSD who also had a cannabis use disorder, and then for those who abuse two drugs simultaneously. More recently, she worked with the Million Veteran Program to improve prediction models for suicidal ideations among Veterans by using psychiatric genetics to identify genetic markers of suicide attempts among Veterans enrolled in MVP. Now she is focusing on translating those discoveries in psychiatric genetics, along with natural language processing, social determinants of health, and geospatial analyses to improve VA’s predictive suicide prevention algorithm even more.
It’s no wonder her research has been continuously funded by VA and NIH since 1992. She has written nearly 500 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and has also mentored more than 50 young psychologists and physicians — the majority of whom have gone on to their own prestigious careers in VA.