Tulane will launch an outreach initiative to reach ethnic and racial minority communities in Louisiana that are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Louisiana Community Engagement Alliance, of which Tulane is a part, is working with residents, community leaders, health centers, faith-based organizations, pharmacies and the Louisiana Department of Health. The work is being funded by a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Work on a new COVID-19 drug by a Tulane researcher is getting fast-tracked. Dr. Jay Kolls, a professor of medicine and pediatrics, the John W. Deming Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine, and director of the Center for Translational Research in Infection and Inflammation, has received a $100,000 Fast Grant for his research to create a drug that prevents the COVID-19 virus from entering healthy cells.

Researchers at Tulane, Harvard, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have learned that subjects who were older with higher body mass indexes and an increasing degree of COVID-19 infection had three times the number of exhaled respiratory droplets — key spreaders of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — as others in the study groups. The increase in exhaled aerosols occurred even among those with asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, said Chad Roy, corresponding author and director of infectious disease aerobiology at the Tulane National Primate Research Center.

Tulane will recruit and train community health workers to implement a comprehensive health and lifestyle coaching program for congregants in predominantly African American churches in New Orleans and Bogalusa, Louisiana, to help eliminate cardiovascular health disparities among African Americans. This work will be funded by a $8.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The program will focus on healthy eating, exercise, weight loss, improving cholesterol numbers, addressing high blood pressure and controlling other risk factors.

To spread the word about Tulane research during the coronavirus crisis, Tulanian Now was inaugurated in the spring. It’s a digital newsletter with stories about work being done by researchers and in the community to address the global COVID-19 pandemic. An archive of past issues is available.

Dr. Joshua Denson, assistant professor of medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine physician, led a study that found that COVID-19 patients who have metabolic syndrome are three times more likely to die from the virus. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of at least three of five conditions: hypertension, high blood sugar, obesity, high triglycerides and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Microbiologist Lisa Morici and immunologist James McLachlan at the School of Medicine were awarded a $150,000 Fast Grant for a project to make next-generation COVID-19 vaccines more effective. The team will test whether they can produce a better immune response in tissues most vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection by adding bacteria-based adjuvants to vaccines in development. Fast Grants are awarded within 48 hours of researchers applying.

Samendra Sherchan, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is lead investigator of a study that revealed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater in Louisiana. Scientists collected wastewater samples in Southern Louisiana over a period of four months and monitored SARS-CoV-2 using an ultrafiltration method.