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 University receives grant to coordinate national clinical and translational science programThe University has been awarded $19 million from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health to coordinate a network of more than 50 institutions across the country that aims to help researchers turn scientific discoveries into health benefits faster.
The Medical Center was one of the first 12 institutions in the nation to receive funding from the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, which was established in 2006.
In the CTSA Program’s infancy, member institutions worked largely independently and best practices or resources developed at one institution were not easily transferred to the others as was originally intended. Amid calls from Congress, NCATS established funding for a CTSA Program Coordinating Center to facilitate collaboration among awarded institutions.
“With this $19 million Coordinating Center grant, we will build upon the foundation of the original CTSA Program Coordinating Center led by Vanderbilt University to establish the Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC),” said Martin Zand, co-director of the University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, professor of medicine, and director of the Rochester Center for Health Informatics.
The CLIC will create virtual and in-person platforms on which CTSA Program institutions can share data and educational materials, track their success, communicate with one another, and develop collaborations. It will help member institutions benchmark their progress in comparison to the network as a whole and identify areas where improvement may be needed or where efforts could be reduced.
“The goal and purpose of the CTSA Program is to speed medical and population health interventions to people who need them. No single institution can do this alone, and we don’t want to reinvent the wheel at each institution, so we must create ways to easily access and leverage each other’s resources, tools, and expertise,” said Nancy M. Bennett, CTSI co-director and director of the Center for Community Health at URMC.
The CLIC will also use data visuallization to help communicate the importance and impact of the CTSA Program to government stakeholders and US taxpayers who fund the program.
Read more here.
Eye test could help diagnose autismA new study out in the European Journal of Neuroscience could herald a new tool that helps physicians identify a sub-group of people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The test, which consists of measuring rapid eye movements, may indicate deficits in an area of the brain that plays an important role in emotional and social development.
“These findings build upon a growing field of research that shows that eye movement could serve as a window into a part of the brain that plays a role in a number of neurological and development disorders, such as autism,” said John Foxe, director of the Medical Center’s Del Monte Neuroscience Institute and co-author of the study.
A densely-packed structure of neurons known as the cerebellum controls eye movement and other motor functions. It is now known to be essential to emotion and cognition via its connections to the rest of the brain. There is growing evidence that the structure of the cerebellum is altered in a sub-population of individuals with ASD.
In a series of experiments, the authors of the current study tracked the eye movements of individuals with ASD. The participants were asked to track a visual target that appeared in different locations on the screen. The experiment was designed in a manner that often caused the participant’s focus to “overshoot” the intended target. In healthy individuals, the brain would correctly adjust eye movements as the task is repeated. However, the eye movements of individuals with ASD continued to miss the target suggesting that the sensory motor controls in the cerebellum responsible for eye movement were impaired.
The inability of the brain to adjust the size of eye movement may not only be a marker for cerebellum dysfunction, but it may also help explain the communication and social interaction deficits that many individuals with ASD experience.
Read more here.
VA efforts to improve end of life care are working, study showsNew research shows that efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs to increase access to hospice care to veterans of the Armed Forces have been successful. The results of the study, which show greater growth in hospice use by beneficiaries enrolled in VA health care compared to those in Medicare, was published in the journal Health Affairs.
The data for the study was collected by the Geriatrics and Extended Care Data Analysis Center (GECDAC) centered at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center, an organization that provides planning, policy, and management guidance to the VA Office of Geriatrics and Extended Care. The GECDAC is headed by Orna Intrator, who is co-author of the study and a professor of public health sciences.
The VA launched its Comprehensive End-of-Life Care initiative in 2009. The efforts focused on expanding access for veterans to palliative and hospice care services at VA hospitals and nursing homes and through civilian health providers. Studies have shown that access to these services results in care that is more aligned with the wishes of patients and families.
The current study looked at hospice use from more than a million veterans age 65 and older between 2007 and 2014. The researchers compared this group with a demographically similar sample of Medicare beneficiaries. They found that while hospice use among Medicare patients grew by 5.6 percent over the period, veterans enrolled in VA health care witnessed a 7.6 to 7.9 percent increase.
The next step for the GECDAC, according to Intrator, is to look at hospice care rates across the VA’s 141 medical centers and examine which medical centers demonstrated higher rates compared to Medicare beneficiaries in their communities. Findings from this study can help identify effective strategies that can be applied across the VA health system.
Read more here.
Grant will help train older adults as partners in geriatric health researchA $250,000 grant to the Warner School of Education will allow University researchers to recruit and train older adults (age 55+) from urban Rochester to actively participate in research projects with geriatrics health researchers.
The Warner School will collaborate with the School of Nursing to use the Eugene Washington Engagement Award funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to support a new two-year training program called Engaging Older Adult Learners as Health Researchers (ENGOAL).
The goal of the program is to instruct older adults to become educated consumers of research and to partner with geriatrics researchers in developing community relevant research questions. The program will also develop participants’ health literacy, enabling them to advocate for themselves and members of their communities. Finally, the researchers hope to increase older adults’ engagement in their health care and foster their communication with health professionals.
Over the past several years, the team of researchers and stakeholders for the new PCORI award has worked in underserved communities characterized by high levels of chronic disease, lack of access to healthcare, and low health literacy. They have observed that underserved seniors are usually “subjects” in research, but rarely included as research partners. As a result, they concluded that geriatric research findings may be less meaningful to seniors and new findings may be less useful for geriatrics practitioners.
Read more here.
Congratulations to . . .Jeff Kaczorowski, professor of pediatrics at Golisano Children’s Hospital, who will serve as vice-chair of a new state initiative that focuses on improving health and educational outcomes in the first three years of a child’s life. The “First 1000 Days on Medicaid” initiative aims to improve access to high-quality health care and community resources, such as home visitation, early intervention, developmental screening, and educational programs. In New York State, 59 percent of children up to 3 years old are covered by Medicaid. “Traditionally, we’ve considered young children as if what’s needed for health and education is different,” said Kaczorowski. “But rather than saying ‘This area is part of health, and this other area is part of education,’ this initiative is about taking away those categories and all working together to make sure kids get the right, healthy start in life and are ready for kindergarten and future success.” Read more here.
B. Paige Lawrence, who has been named the new chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine. Lawrence, who has been a faculty member in the department for 11 years and has directed the Rochester Toxicology Program for the past 6 years, will officially begin her post on August 1. Lawrence, a professor of environmental medicine and of microbiology and immunology, is a widely recognized expert on how environmental factors influence the development and function of the immune system. Her lab has implicated certain chemicals in dampening infants’ responses to vaccines, and has shown that maternal exposures to certain chemicals have enduring effects on the immune system, such as a poorer ability to fight infections, and a greater likelihood of developing autoimmune and allergic diseases. The Department of Environmental Medicine administers several nationally regarded, interdisciplinary programs, including the Environmental Health Sciences Center, Toxicology Program, Lung Biology and Disease Program, Life Sciences Learning Center, and two clinical programs in occupational medicine. Read more here.
Course offered on recruiting participants for health research studiesThe Department of Public Health Sciences will offer a three-credit course this fall on participant recruitment and retention. Any investigator, student, or staff member who is involved in recruiting people for health research studies should consider registering for the course. The course will be held every Thursday beginning August 31. Instructors are Ann Dozier and Carrie Dykes.
This course focuses on strategies to recruit and retain subjects including groups known to be ‘hard to recruit,’ such as individuals from disenfranchised communities (racial/ethnic minorities, homeless) and other groups such as the elderly. The course combines on-line work with in-class discussions and presentations from individuals responsible for clinical research recruitment and retention.
Participants will critique and design recruitment strategies from published reports and local research, develop feasibility assessments, and draft a recruitment plan.
Registration opens August 1 and runs through August 29. For more information, contact the instructors or Pattie Kolomic, Graduate Programs Administrator, 275-7882. Contact the Graduate Education Office for instructions on how to register.
The Public Health Sciences fall courses list is found here.
PhD dissertation defensesJonathan Bennett, Political Science, “Three Papers on Diplomacy.” 10 a.m., Aug. 1, 2017. Harkness 329. Advisor: Randall Stone.
Tanya Malhotra, Physics, “Interferometric Spatial Modal Analysis in Optics.” 2 p.m., Aug. 1, 2017. Bausch and Lomb 106. Advisor: Nick Vamivakas.
Zachary DeSantis, Optics, “Image Reconstruction for Interferometric Imaging of Geosynchronous Satellites.” 10 a.m. Aug. 2, 2017. Bausch and Lomb 106. Advisor: Jim Fienup.
Justin Tian, Physics, “Theory of Strong-Field Atomic Ionizations.” 2 p.m. Aug. 2, 2017. Bausch and Lomb 106. Advisor: Joseph Eberly.
Brett Peters, Psychology, Social-Personality, “The Consequences of Having an Insecure Partner: A Pre-Emptive Buffering Model.” 4 p.m., Aug. 2, 2017. Meliora 366. Advisor: Jeremy Jamieson.
Kevin Lin, Mathematics, “Hitting Properties of a Stochastic PDE.” 3 p.m., Aug. 3, 2017. Hylan 1106A. Advisor: Carl Mueller.
Erica Kaminski, Physics and Astronomy, “The Formation of Stars: From Clouds to Cores.” 10 a.m. Aug. 4, 2017. Bausch and Lomb 109. Advisor: Adam Frank.
Keturah Bixby, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, “Production Effects on Perception: How Learning to Produce Sound Changes Auditory Perception.” 1 p.m. Aug. 4, 2017. 269 Meliora Hall. Advisor: Richard Aslin.
Mark your calendarToday: Orthopaedic Research Society’s Upstate New York and Northeast Regional Symposium. Class of ’62 Auditorium and Goergen Hall. Click here for information.
Today: Kearns Center Research Symposium, showcasing undergraduate summer research projects by McNair Scholars, Xerox Engineering Research Fellows, and students participating in the Advancing Human Health, and the Music, Media, and Minds REU programs. Oral presentations 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; poster session, 1-3 p.m. Feldman Ballroom, Douglass Commons.
Aug. 10: Deadline to file applications for mini-grants from the Center for Community Health. Click here to apply, or contact Mary McDonald at 585-224-3062 or by emailing Mary_McDonald@urmc.rochester.edu.
Aug. 29: Registration deadline for Department of Public Health Sciences three-credit course on participant recruitment and retention for health research studies. For more information, contact the instructors or Pattie Kolomic, Graduate Programs Administrator, 275-7882. Contact the Graduate Education Office for instructions on how to register.
Sept. 1: Deadline to apply for pilot funding from The Rochester Aging Research Center for projects in basic or geriatric aging research. Contact Dirk Bohmann or Anne Reed for more information.
Sept. 4: Honoring Joel Seiferis, professor emeritus of computer science. Series of talks by leading computer science theoreticians. Click here for more details and to register by Aug. 22.
Sept. 25 to 29: Early Stage Faculty Boot Camp to help senior instructors and assistant professors identify the skills they need for successful career advancement. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit the CTSI website for more details. Registration deadline is September 1.
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