The Society of Hospital Medicine Honors Derek Williams, MD, MPH, With 2022 Award of Excellence: Excellence in Research

Dr. Williams Is a Clinical and Health Services Researcher with Federally Funded Research Program Centered on Improving Care Delivery

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) recently announced the recipients of its 2022 Awards of Excellence, honoring hospitalists who exemplify hospital medicine best practices in areas such as clinical leadership, teaching, teamwork, research, and humanitarian services, among others.

“Hospitalists have always been known as innovators in medicine and contribute to improving patient care at their institutions in unique ways,” explains Eric E. Howell, MD, MHM, Chief Executive Officer of SHM. “This year’s Awards of Excellence winners exemplify what it means to be leaders in the field and showcase the many ways that hospitalists are positively impacting the future of healthcare.”

Derek Williams, MD, MPH, is this year’s recipient in the “Excellence in Research” category. He is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In addition, 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 the medical community thinks about pneumonia etiology in the era of highly effective pneumococcal vaccines.

Currently, his research team is focused on 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 >$32 million in federal grants to conduct innovative research.

Dr. Williams has been a member of the Society of Hospital Medicine since 2013.

Awards of Excellence winners were recognized at SHM’s annual conference, SHM Converge, which was held from April 7-10, 2022, in Nashville, TN. For more information on SHM’s Awards of Excellence, visit https://hospitalmedicine.org/awards.