Consuelo H. Wilkins is the Executive Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and has a joint appointment as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Meharry Medical College. She additionally serves as Co-Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core (CTSA).
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As the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance's Executive Director, Dr. Wilkins develops and supports collaborative initiatives and programs in biomedical research, community engagement and interprofessional learning.
Background
Dr. Wilkins attended Howard University in Washington, D.C.; Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC; and Washington University in St. Louis, MO. She received a bachelor's degree in microbiology, M.D. from Howard University and a master's degree in clinical investigation at Washington University.
She was an associate professor of medicine, psychiatry and surgery at Washington University until 2012 when she was named Executive Director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance in Nashville, TN. She was also director of the Institute for Public Health's Center for Community Health and Partnerships at Washington University and co-director of the Center for Community Engaged Research in the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science.
Since joining the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, she became co-chair of the Community Partners Integration Workgroup of the CTSA Consortium’s Community Engagement Key Function Committee in 2012. Several initiatives, including a Consortium-wide inventory of community members’ involvement in CTSA activities, resulted from this workgroup.
Her experience in the healthcare field includes clinical and translational research like clinical trials, secondary data analyses and community-engaged research. In 2013, she received a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Research Award for her proposal "Improving Patient Engagement and Understanding Its Impact on Research Through Community Review Boards." One year later, in 2014, she became a member of the PCORnet Patient & Consumer Engagement (PCE) Task Force and the PCORI Advisory Panel on Clinical Trials (CTAP), Subcommittee on Recruitment, Accrual and Retention (RAR).
Awards and Honors
Dr. Wilkins is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges as part of the Research on Care Community (ROCC) and has been designated a ROCC Star. She is also ranked among the Fifty Most Innovative People in Healthcare by Healthcare Administration Degree Programs.
In 2008, she received the Kopolow Award for Excellence in Geriatrics, Neurology or Psychiatry and the Distinguished Community Service Award from Washington University.
In 2013, she was named a Norman R. Seay Lecturer for the Knight’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and she received the Association of American Medical Colleges Learning Health System Challenge Award.
She is also a graduate of the 2014-15 class of the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women.