Carlos Grijalva, M.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Grijalva is a Professor in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, Departments of Health Policy and Biomedical Informatics. He has appointments as faculty, scholar and/or investigator at the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, the Vanderbilt Center for Data Science, the Vanderbilt Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX) and the Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC).

Dr. Grijalva’s research interests include the study of acute respiratory infections, the evaluation of medications and vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, and mother-child health. He is experienced in the conduct of observational studies of influenza, pneumococcal infections, SARS-CoV-2, pneumonia, infection transmission, vaccine effectiveness and the impact of medications on mother-child health. He is the Co-Principal Investigator for a new large prospective cohort study of viral infections among adult essential workers in middle Tennessee. He is also the VUMC Co-Principal Investigator for a prospective multicenter case-ascertained study designed to assess the transmission of influenza within households. In collaboration with International investigators, he has designed and conducted prospective cohort studies to examine the activity and interactions of common respiratory viruses and colonizing bacteria in Peru. He was also the project lead for a new Vanderbilt Trans-Institutional Program (TIPs), focused on the study of environmental drivers of antimicrobial resistance. He also conducts and supports research on the influence of medications on mother-child health in underserved populations, especially during the pregnancy and perinatal periods. These projects include examinations of the use and effects of opioid analgesics, psychotropics, antidiabetics, among other medications.

Dr. Grijalva has published more than 315 peer-reviewed articles, many of those in high-impact journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, among others. As of September 2023, his publications have accrued more than 25.4 thousand citations, with an H-index of 71 and an i10-index of 210 (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DGPe_5sAAAAJ&hl=en). According to Semantic Scholar, his work has resulted in 638 highly influential citations (https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Carlos-Gabriel-Grijalva/4918860). His current work is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other sources.

Dr. Grijalva also maintains an active portfolio of teaching and mentoring activities. He serves as the Course Director for Epidemiology I, Protocol Development and Thesis Research in the Vanderbilt Master of Public Health (MPH) program. He is the Principal Investigator for a new NIH K24 grant that supports mentoring on transmission of viral infections in households. He is also Co-Principal Investigator for the Vanderbilt PROgRESS (Patient/ Practice Outcomes And Research In Effectiveness And Systems Science) post-doctoral T32 training program, the new Vanderbilt-Peru PREVENT (PREvention through VacciNation Training) T32 program, and he also serves as Area Director for the Vanderbilt Learning Health Systems Scholars (LHSS) K12 training program. During the last 10 years, he has had the opportunity to mentor several talented students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. Almost all of them have remained in academia and launched their independent careers. Dr. Grijalva was elected a Vanderbilt University Chancellor Faculty Fellow in 2017 and into the Vanderbilt Academy for Excellence in Education and Mentorship in 2018. He received the Vanderbilt University John S. Sergent Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2019. He was elected  Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) in 2019, and he was elected a Member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2020. In 2022, he received a Special ISPE Award  for contributions to public health associated with the COVID-19 pandemic from the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology, and the Marie Griffin Award for Excellence in Mentoring from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and the Master of Public Health program.

Recent & Highlighted Research

Antoon JW, Sarker J, Abdelaziz A, Lien PW, Williams DJ, Lee TA, Grijalva CG. Trends in Outpatient Influenza Antiviral Use Among Children and Adolescents in the United States. Pediatrics. 2023 November 13. doi:10.1542/peds.2023-061960.  PubMed PMID: 37953658 Citation in REDCap

Antoon JW, Williams DJ, Bruce J, Sekmen M, Zhu Y, Edwards KM, Grijalva CG. Population-Based Incidence of Influenza-Associated Serious Neuropsychiatric Events in Children and Adolescents. JAMA Pediatr. 2023 July 24. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.2304.  PubMed PMID: 37486679 Citation in REDCap PMC10366945.

Howard LM, Huang X, Chen W, Liu Y, Edwards KM, Griffin MR, Zhu Y, Vidal JE, Klugman KP, Gil AI, Soper NR, Thomsen IP, Gould K, Hinds J, Lanata CF, Grijalva CG. Association between nasopharyngeal colonization with multiple pneumococcal serotypes and total pneumococcal colonization density in young Peruvian children. Int J Infect Dis. 2023 July 12.  PubMed PMID: 37451394 Citation in REDCap

Williams DJ, Martin JM, Nian H, Weitkamp AO, Slagle J, Turer RW, Suresh S, Johnson J, Stassun J, Just SL, Reale C, Beebe R, Arnold DH, Antoon JW, Rixe NS, Sartori LF, Freundlich RE, Ampofo K, Pavia AT, Smith JC, Weinger MB, Zhu Y, Grijalva CG. Antibiotic clinical decision support for pneumonia in the ED: A randomized trial. J Hosp Med. 2023 April 12. doi:10.1002/jhm.13101.  PubMed PMID: 37042682 Citation in REDCap PMC10247532.

Rolfes MA, Talbot HK, McLean HQ, Stockwell MS, Ellingson KD, Lutrick K, Bowman NM, Bendall EE, Bullock A, Chappell JD, Deyoe JE, Gilbert J, Halasa NB, Hart KE, Johnson S, Kim A, Lauring AS, Lin JT, Lindsell CJ, McLaren SH, Meece JK, Mellis AM, Moreno Zivanovich M, Ogokeh CE, Rodriguez M, Sano E, Silverio Francisco RA, Schmitz JE, Vargas CY, Yang A, Zhu Y, Belongia EA, Reed C, Grijalva CG. Household Transmission of Influenza A Viruses in 2021-2022. JAMA. 2023 February 14; 329(6):482-489. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.0064.  PubMed PMID: 36701144 Citation in REDCap PMC9880862.

Wiese AD, Mitchel E, Ndi D, Markus TM, Talbot HK, Schaffner W, Grijalva CG. The risk of acute myocardial infarction among patients with laboratory-confirmed invasive pneumococcal disease: a self-controlled case series study. Clin Infect Dis. 2023 February 08. doi:10.1093/cid/ciad065.  PubMed PMID: 36751004 Citation in REDCap

Wiese AD, Grijalva CG. Burden of all-cause and organism-specific parapneumonic empyema hospitalization rates prior to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the United States. Respir Med. 2023 February; 207:107111. doi:10.1016/j.rmed.2022.107111.  PubMed PMID: 36592639 Citation in REDCap PMC9803378.

Dantuluri KL, Bonnet KR, Schlundt DG, Schulte RJ, Griffith HG, Luu A, Charnogursky C, Perkins JM, Whitmore CC, Banerjee R, Howard LM, Grijalva CG. Antibiotic perceptions, adherence, and disposal practices among parents of pediatric patients. PLoS One. 2023 January; 18(2):e0281660. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0281660.  PubMed PMID: 36758043 Citation in REDCap PMC9910628.