SPOTLIGHT on Michael Durkin
The Midwest D-CFAR community is full of brilliant and inspiring people, and we want to introduce them to the world! For our October 2024 spotlight, we are featuring Michael Durkin, co-director of antimicrobial stewardship at WashU, associate hospital epidemiologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and director of our Scientific Working Group. Many thanks to Dr. Durkin for taking the time to speak with us!
Dr. Michael Durkin
Q: Could you briefly describe your career journey and research interests?
Dr. Durkin: My career started in patient safety and quality. As a resident and fellow I did a lot of work on preventing hospitalized patients from developing new problems while they were admitted. I am particularly aggressive at trying to get people out of the hospital and back to a normal routine at home.
At WashU, my work with fellows and trainees has included investigating gaps in care for patients who inject drugs. We frequently see these patients because they will develop severe bloodstream infections that require long courses of antibiotics. I used the same principles I learned from patient safety to this population for a CDC contract. Laura Marks, one of my mentees at the time, led the effort. We ended up significantly improving patient outcomes by following best practices – like making sure patients had access to treat their opioid use disorder and antibiotics to treat their infections – even if they ended up leaving the hospital early. We also managed to significantly improve screening rates for HIV and sexually transmitted infections.
This work has now started to evolve into supporting colleagues who take care of unhoused patients before they end up in the hospital. One of my current mentees, Nathan Nolan, created his own non-profit called Street Med STL to provide free medical care for people in shelters and encampments in the St. Louis area. I am very proud of Laura’s and Nathan’s work!
Q: What projects do you currently have ongoing?
Dr. Durkin: I have a diverse set of interests. A large amount of my work is outside of HIV and is still related to patient safety. We are currently evaluating if a shared decision aid to help people who use drugs will reduce internal stigma about medication treatments (e.g., methadone and buprenorphine).
I am also exploring if medication treatments for opioid use disorder cause adverse dental outcomes – like cavities and tooth loss. We care about this from an HIV standpoint because if we can get someone on treatment for their substance use, then they will be less like to contract new infections, like HIV, from using injection drugs. Some interesting pending grants include exploring shared decision aids about hepatitis C treatment in pregnancy (NIH R21 PI: Laura Marks) and exploring the impact of integrating mobile pharmacy services into street medicine programs (NIH R01 PI: Michael Durkin). The latter was the result of a Translational HIV Science Studio between the Scientific Working Group (SWG) and Clinical Science Core, co-directed by Rachel Presti.
Q: Could you talk briefly about the SWG and specifically the community collaborative? How can people outside of academia get involved in the work of the D-CFAR?
Dr. Durkin: A lot of academic researchers feel like they have superior skills and can address longstanding healthcare problems with simple solutions. In my experience, this type of approach often fails. In fact, many of the best solutions to problems come from community members with personal insights into longstanding problems.
The goals of the community collaborative are twofold. First, we want community members to tell researchers what problems need to be addressed to help end the HIV epidemic in Missouri – not the other way around. Second, we want to help foster collaborations between community organizations and academic researchers to work as true partners on grant submissions. If we are successful, community members will determine the research agenda, co-lead the grants with a researcher, and most importantly receive fair treatment for their contributions to the work. This will involve receiving research grant funding and serving as authors on publications.
Researchers and members of the public who want to participate in our community collaborative can start the process by filling out a brief form.
Q: You certainly have a lot going on with your work! What do you do in your free time?
Dr. Durkin: I run or ride my bicycle to work every day. I love incorporating exercise into my commutes. I also try to assemble a relay race team every year as well. Our team “One Strep at a Time” has been running from Creve Coeur to Hermann, Missouri since 2018. Outside of exercising, I enjoy reading random articles on Wikipedia. I tend to gravitate towards astronomy and history; I will read any articles that are completely unrelated to medicine (I like learning new things).
Edited by April Houston and Jacaranda van Rheenen.