Beatrice Boateng, Ph.D., an associate professor and director of the Office of Education in the Department of Pediatrics, has been named director of TRI’s Evaluation Program. As director, she will lead the tracking of TRI program activities and their progress.

Boateng, also an adjunct at the UAMS Office of Global Health, is a member of several national pediatrics committees and collaboratives, including the Pediatrics Milestones Assessment Collaborative (PMAC), which was created this year by the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD), and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME).

Since joining UAMS in 2007, Boateng has served on a number of education related task forces and committees in the College of Medicine. She has earned numerous awards, including Educator of the Year in 2010 and 2012 in the Department of Pediatrics, the Dean’s Educational Incentive Award in 2012 and 2013, and the 2013 UAMS Educational Technology Excellence Award.

The Translational Research Institute is offering assistance to researchers through a series of TRI Research Forums. The forums, which will include a panel of research experts, are designed to help those who may have a good research idea but aren’t sure how to proceed and those who may need assistance with grant applications. For more information and to request a forum, email TRIServices@uams.edu or call Amy Jo Jenkins, 501-686-5939.

TRI Research Forums will convene twice monthly. Forum requests must be submitted three weeks prior to the forum date. Those dates are: July 28, 9 – 11 a.m.; Aug. 14, 8:30 – 10:30 a.m.; Aug. 25, 9 – 11 a.m. View a flyer.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (UAF) on Wednesday announced a research pilot program that targets telehealth. The one-year pilot awards are up to $15,000, with an additional $5,000 for projects that include a UAF collaborator. Letters of Intent are due by 5 p.m., July 7, 2014.

Download the Request for Applications.

Telehealth uses two-way interactive video and imaging devices to deliver specialized medical services, from emergency stroke treatment to the care of premature infants. Arkansas ranks second nationally in telehealth availability, and it has the lowest ratio of rural residents to telehealth sites, according to the National Telehealth Resource Centers Report.

UAMS has more than 40 pioneering clinical telehealth programs that utilize the state’s infrastructure, but many of the programs lack the data needed to promote broader adoption, said Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

“We’re excited to offer this targeted pilot program because we believe Arkansas has the capacity to develop rigorously tested, novel models of health care delivery through telehealth,” James said. “We hope that these pilot grants will become the catalyst for larger, multi-institutional studies.”

The one-year Translational Research Institute Pilot Research Awards will fund as many as four telehealth projects. The institutions’ leaders said the collaborative funding initiative is designed to foster research between physicians engaged in telehealth programs and researchers.

“We expect to see research that tests the clinical outcomes, cost effectiveness and comparative effectiveness of these programs so that they can be more broadly adopted to meet the health care needs of Arkansans,” said Cynthia L. Sagers, Ph.D., associate vice provost for Research and Economic Development at UAF. “Collaborations between UAMS and UAF enhance our research capacity, our reputation and our service to the state.”

Every county in Arkansas has at least one telehealth site and most counties have several. All UAMS Regional Centers, most of the state’s hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and county health departments are linked through telehealth. Arkansas has 945 telehealth endpoints, 421 anchor health care institutions, and 495 interactive video units.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute’s mission is to help accelerate research that will improve the health and health care of people in Arkansas and across the country. TRI is one of 62 recipients of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).

Cliff Coleman, M.D., M.P.H., will present the next TRI Health Literacy Research Grand Rounds on July 15, 12:15 p.m., in the College of Public Health 8th floor auditorium, 8240. Coleman is a national expert in the field of health literacy. His teaching and research focus on workforce training to improve the clinical and public health response to low health literacy. A family medicine physician, he practices at the Oregon Health & Science University’s Richmond Clinic, where his clinical interests include care for the elderly for medically complex underserved patients.

View a flyer.

Are you interested in participating in TRI’s telehealth-focused pilot awards program (Letter of Intent due July 7, 2014)? The UAMS Center for Distance Health research team can help with your telehealth research by:

Providing expertise on technical requirements and existing resources for your telehealth idea
Connecting you with other telehealth researchers and experts to discuss their telehealth programs
Collaborating to disseminate findings to the scientific community through presentations and publications
Contact telemedicine@uams.edu with questions.

Download the Request for Applications for the TRI telehealth-focused pilot awards program.

Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., has been named director of the Translational Research Institute’s (TRI) Education & Career Development Program. Rusch chairs the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Medicine. Rusch has mentored medical and graduate students, research and clinical fellows, and junior faculty for more than 25 years, and received several mentoring and teaching awards at UAMS. Graduate School Dean Bobby McGehee, Ph.D., will assist Rusch.

Mary Aitken, M.D., M.P.H., has been named director of TRI’s KL2 Career Development Awards Program. Aitken is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and director of the Center for Applied Research and Evaluation. Jonathan Dranoff, M.D., chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, will assist with the KL2 program. Aitken and Dranoff, both clinician scientists, will work together to further develop the KL2 program, which seeks to support the career development of promising clinical and basic translational researchers across UAMS.

The Translational Research Institute is offering assistance to researchers through a series of TRI Research Forums. The forums, which will include a panel of research experts, are designed to help those who may have a good research idea but aren’t sure how to proceed and those who may need assistance with grant applications. For more information and to request a forum, email TRIServices@uams.edu or call Amy Jo Jenkins, 501-686-5939.

TRI Research Forums will convene twice monthly. Forum requests must be submitted three weeks prior to the forum date. Those dates are: July 11, 10 a.m. – noon (three-week requirement does not apply to July 11 forum); July 28, 9 – 11 a.m.; Aug. 14, 8:30 – 10:30 a.m.; Aug. 25, 9 – 11 a.m.

View a flyer

This list of funding opportunities was updated June 27 and includes a tab with archived funding opportunities that remain open. It is compiled and updated every two weeks by the Division of Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Policy in the College of Pharmacy.

To help TRI better manage research-related requests and inquiries, the new Translational Research Services Center has its own email address: TRIservices@uams.edu. Overseen by Amy Jo Jenkins, M.S., C.C.R.P., C.C.R.C., C.C.R.A., this email portal will help TRI streamline some of the workflow and ensure that researchers get the help they need when they need it.

As of July 1, the Research Support Center (RSC) was officially integrated into TRI as the Translational Research Services Center, which includes all of the services of the RSC as well as other TRI services (Biostats, Health Data Unit, Clinical Research Services Core, etc.)

For general TRI inquiries not related to resources or services, please continue to use the main TRI email address: TRI@uams.edu.

Lori Frank, Ph.D., program director for Research Integration and Evaluation at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), will provide an overview of the merit review process at PCORI on June 27, 9-10 a.m., in the UAMS Wilson Education Building, Room 114 A/B.

Since its establishment as part of the Affordable Care Act, PCORI has been funding patient-centered comparative effectiveness research. Frank’s presentation will provide an overview of the merit review process at PCORI including PCORI’s unique requirements for patient-centeredness in research and engagement of patients and other health care stakeholders. Examples to illustrate PCORI’s unique funding strategy will be provided from successful applications. In addition PCORI’s recently launched PCORnet, a major research data infrastructure initiative, will be described, including ways in which PCORnet will contribute to learning healthcare systems.

Frank’s current work is focused on bringing the patient perspective to comparative effectiveness research. Prior to joining PCORI she served as senior research leader and executive director of the Center for Health Outcomes Research with MEDTAP International/ United BioSource Corporation, where she managed the scientific and financial performance of the Center. While there she initiated and served as principal investigator of the Cognition Initiative, a multi-sponsor PRO development consortium and has continued in an advisory role for that work, now part of the Critical Path Institute PRO Consortium. Her career has focused on patient-reported outcomes assessment and she has held research and teaching positions with Georgetown University Department of Psychiatry, the National Institute on Aging, Medimmune, LLC, and the Veteran’s Administration. Frank received graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Pennsylvania State University and completed postdoctoral training in health services research with the Veteran’s Administration and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).