Temte awarded national grant by family physicians group

Jonathan L. Temte, a physician in the Department of Family Medicine, is one of eight doctors nationwide selected to receive an Advanced Research Training Grant from the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).

The Leawood, Kansas-based AAFP’s primary mission is to strengthen the role of research in family medicine.

Temte received a two-year grant worth approximately $100,000. He plans to use the money to strengthen his professional training in the study and surveillance of infectious diseases, focusing particularly on common viruses such as influenza, rhinovirus and RSV.

Temte plans to take methods-based courses through the Program in Population Health at UW–Madison as well as summer sessions at the University of Michigan.

In addition to training, the AAFP grant will also provide the support necessary to allow Temte to continue several ongoing projects, including infectious-disease surveillance work in the community, performed in conjunction with Peter Shult and the virology unit at the State Laboratory of Hygiene.

Other projects include an examination of the prevalence of colds and flu in airline passengers leaving the Madison area and a study of the connection between clinical symptoms and causative viral agents gleaned from patient cultures.

The goal of each project is to further educate physicians about the nature and frequency of respiratory viruses and the best methods to treat them.

“The nice thing for this particular area of research and training is that the best place for me to see people with these types of illness is in a primary-care setting,” explained Temte, who works in such a setting at the UW Wingra Family Clinic on Park Street. “People with colds and the flu don’t tend to go to a specialist — they go to urgent-care centers or primary-care doctors.”