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Home > Health Sciences > JHDRP > Vol. 12 (2018-2019) > Iss. 5

 

Keywords

Translation Research; Infrastructure

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

The Mountain West (MW) Clinical Translational Research Infrastructure Network (CTR- IN) Program represents a consortium of all of the 13 major public universities across seven Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) states with the overall goal of increasing and enhancing research capacity. The MW CTR-IN Program covers 1/3rd the U.S. land mass and almost 1/3rd of all IDeA states stretching across 4 time zones. The 13 major U.S. public partner universities in the 7 IDeA states are as follows: University of Alaska at Anchorage (UAA), University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), University of Montana (UM), Montana State University (MSU), University of Idaho (UI), Boise State University (BSU), University of Idaho State (UIS), University of Wyoming (UW), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), University of Nevada Reno (UNR), New Mexico State University (NMSU), University of New Mexico (UNM) - Health Science Center (HSC), and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM). The initial five-year grant was awarded to UNLV in 2013 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has been recently renewed in August 2018 to continue until June 2023. [Funded by National Institute of General Medical Services (NIGMS) – U54GM104944-02]

Over the years, the MW CTR-IN Program has supported, stimulated and facilitated collaborations to foster and enhance clinical research from many diverse disciplines. The MW CTR-IN Program has stimulated research in a spectrum of scientific disciplines (e.g., epidemiology, biostatistics, pharmacology, social and behavioral sciences, nutrition, nursing, health economics, community-based participatory research, dental health, and medicine), methodologies (e.g., observational and experimental) and health professions (e.g., nursing, public health, pharmacy, clinical psychology, sports physiology, physical therapy), including Engineering, which traditionally does not engage in clinical and translational human research. One of the important mechanisms by which the MW CTR-IN Program supports and facilitates collaborations is through our Pilot Grants Program. The Pilot Grants are designed as catalysts to help researchers lay the groundwork for larger, independent grant proposals. To date, almost $47 million in extramural grant funding has been achieved, representing a return on investment of 1013%!

The major focus of the MW CTR-IN Program is on addressing health disparities in the MW Region. Hence, our abstracts for our 6th Annual MW CTR-IN Meeting reflect our focus on health disparities. The MW CTR-IN 6th Annual Meeting showcased the health disparity research results of our 10 Pilot Grant Awardees (Table 1). These 10 Pilot Grants represented most of our University Partners involving a wide range of health disparity research areas and very diverse populations. For example, our current PG Awardees’ research areas varied from Dr. Atif Zafar’s focus on “Healthcare disparities among Hispanics, Native Americans, and Caucasians in Ischemic Stroke Patients” to Dr. Renee Robinson’s research in “Assessing the Long-Term Outcomes of Specialized Supportive Care on the Health of Infants with In-Utero Opioid Exposure”. In addition, our “Call for Abstracts” also generated a tremendous interest from our MW faculty investigators. In total, over 26 abstracts were submitted, of which only 3 were accepted for oral podium presentation and 9 were accepted for poster presentation (Table 2). These abstracts also again showed the diversity of research being conducted in the MW region.

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