LITTLE ROCK — UAMS researchers and their community partners across Arkansas are studying the causes behind COVID-19’s devastating impact on minorities and developing plans to help increase vaccination rates.

Supporting the one-year project is a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities. UAMS was one of 11 teams selected as part of the national alliance.

Last year, Arkansas was identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a national hot spot for COVID-19 disparities among Marshallese and Hispanic populations. The disparities in percentage of cases, hospitalizations and deaths among these populations were so severe that CDC and NIH officials visited Northwest Arkansas to investigate.

Black/African American and rural communities across the state have been struck hard, too, said Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., MPH, one of three principal investigators on the study.

“Aggressive steps are needed to protect Black/African American communities from COVID-19 because their life expectancy declined by nearly three years since 2019. This is alarming,” said Fagan, professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco at the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health. She is also director of Research for the Office of Health Initiatives and Disparities Research in the College of Medicine’s Department of Surgery and Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

Also co-leading the study are:

• Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute, associate vice chancellor for Clinical and Translational Research, and a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics
• Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., MBA, director of the UAMS Office of Community Health and Research and associate director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. She is the outgoing vice chancellor for the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus. She also leads the Special Populations Core for the Translational Research Institute.

The UAMS CEAL Team project is titled, “COVID-19 PREVENT (Partnership for Rapid Engagement to Enhance Vaccine uptake for Everyone: Neighbors Working Together) Project.”

Critical to the project’s success will be leveraging a network of UAMS community partners representing more than 150 health clinics, community groups and faith-based organizations, McElfish said.

“UAMS has built broad grassroots community partnerships, and we’ll use that to develop and deploy effective strategies to help people better understand the virus and vaccines,” she said. “We’ll also develop methods for improving both trust and access to vaccines.” 

“The entire CEAL team is very happy that we have longstanding relationships with many partners who are ready to ramp up existing efforts so that we can reduce COVID-19 related illnesses, disability and deaths,” Fagan said.

Researchers will use a survey of Arkansans to aid the development of their intervention strategies.

“We need to better understand and address the factors contributing to the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 in minority communities,” James said. “We expect the information we gather, as part of a broad collaboration with our community partners, will help produce strategies for minority and underserved communities to better cope with future pandemics.”

“We want to make sure that Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino and Marshallese, and rural residents have access to trustworthy information to inform their decision-making about getting a vaccine,” Fagan said. “We want to make sure they receive equitable health care treatment and have easy access to a vaccine today and five years from now.”

Other UAMS researchers involved in the project are:

• Keneshia Bryant-Moore, Ph.D., FNP-BC, associate professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health
• Carol E. Cornell, Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, College of Public Health
• Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy; director, Center for Implementation Research
• Margarete Kulik, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, College of Public Health
• T. Elaine Prewitt, Dr.P.H., associate professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health
• Sheldon Riklon, M.D., associate professor, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine
• James Selig, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biostatistics, College of Medicine
• Kate Stewart, M.D., professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health; director, Office of Community-Based Public Health; director, Community Engagement, Translational Research Institute
• Mark Williams, Ph.D., professor and dean, College of Public Health

TRI’s Career Development Scholars Program has selected four early-career researchers to receive two years of funded support and mentored translational research training. 

The program, which selects scholars through a competitive application process, provides 75% salary support and up to $25,000 per year for research, tuition, travel and education.

The KL2 Career Development Scholars (funded by TRI’s Clinical and Translational Science Award) are:

Maryam Y. Garza, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.M.Ci., Instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics
Project Title: Innovative Solutions to Streamline Data Collection, Exchange, and Utilization in Translational Research

Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics
Project Title: Quantifying Clinical Team Social Network Influences on Care of Medically Complex Patients Using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Adam Wolfe, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology- Project Title: “Targeting Homologous Repair to Overcome Genotoxic Therapy Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer”

The Institutional Career Development Scholar (funded by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute) is:

Yong-Chen “William” Lu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology
Project Title: A pilot study of developing T cell-based cancer immunotherapies for African American and Hispanic populations

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Postdoctoral Training Program has named six postdoctoral scholars for its class of 2023. The scholars, selected in a competitive application process, will begin two years of mentored entrepreneurship training July 1.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

The HSIE Postdoctoral Scholars – all from the UAMS College of Medicine – their research project plans and mentors are:

Laura Ewing, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Her project will focus on identifying predictors of the development, progression or recurrence of different types of ovarian cancer.
Mentor: Michael Birrer, M.D., Ph.D.

Kindann Fawcett, Ph.D., Department of Pediatric Neurology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH). Her project will focus on development of a tool to assess risk and best practices in regards to nutrition and its role in the standard care provided for patients at ACH and UAMS. Secondly, she will focus on the creation of a digital media and virtual, interactive learning platform for nutrition and exercise curriculum to educate the youth of Arkansas.
Mentor: Aravindhan Veerapandiyan, M.D.

Tiffany Miles, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences.
Her project will focus on hormonal deficiencies related to obesity and then establishing a platform to educate Arkansans on the impact of maternal nutrition in offspring development.
Mentor: Angus MacNicol, Ph.D.

Thomas Nienaber, M.D., Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. His project will address improving the neonatal mechanical ventilation by optimizing the endotracheal tube.
Mentor: Kevin Sexton, M.D.

Megan Reed, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her project will focus on the use of comparative transcriptomics pipeline to generate and validate patient-specific treatment options for glioblastoma tumors.
Mentors: Alan Tackett, Ph.D., and Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.

Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Her project will focus on the development of new treatments for opioid use disorder in pregnancy.
Mentor: Lisa Brents, Ph.D.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

It is supported by the NRSA Training Core (TL1) component of the UAMS Clinical and Translational Science Award, grant TL1 TR003109.

“Our program goal is to accelerate biomedical discoveries to improve health and health outcomes,” said Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., who co-directs the program for the UAMS Translational Research Institute. “I am very enthusiastic about this group of scholars. They all have exceptional talent and they are pursuing projects than can make a real difference.”

The HSIE Postdoctoral Training Program has traditionally provided support annually for eight postdoctoral fellows (four in each year of the two-year program).  However, this year the program was able to admit a clinical fellow in addition to five postdoctoral fellows. The expansion relied on postdoctoral stipends provided by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, and the Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. The program curriculum represents a partnership between the UAMS Translational Research Institute and the Entrepreneurship Graduate Program in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

In addition to Rusch, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and executive associate dean for research in the College of Medicine, the program’s leadership team includes co-director Kevin Sexton, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Surgery, and Nancy Gray, Ph.D., president of BioVentures and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Pamela Kahler is program manager. 

The first group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2019, who will be graduating from the program this spring are: Melody Greer, Ph.D. (mentor, Fred Prior, Ph.D.), Samir Jenkins, Ph.D. (mentor, Robert Griffin, Ph.D.), Astha Malhotra, Ph.D. (mentors, Amanda Stolarz, Pharm.D., Ph.D.; and Jawahar Mehta, M.D., Ph.D.), and Aaron Storey, Ph.D. (mentor, Rick Edmondson, Ph.D.).  The second group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2020 are: Emilie Darrigues, Ph.D. (mentor, Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.), Shana Owens, Ph.D. (mentor, Craig Forrest, Ph.D.), John Sherrill, M.P.H., Ph.D. (mentor, David Bumpass, M.D.), and Zachary Waldrip, Ph.D. (mentor, Marie Burdine, Ph.D.)

The April-May TRIbune tells the story of the response to COVID-19 by TRI and our UAMS researchers. UAMS clinicians stepped forward and the TRI team rallied to support 92 COVID-19-related research projects. 

This issue also highlights the life-saving role played by the Implementation Science Scholars program in helping Kapil Arya, M.D., quickly set up a statewide newborn screening process for spinal muscular atrophy.

You’ll also read about utilization of the UAMS Rural Research Network to help a new COVID-19 study led by Wendy Nembhard, Ph.D., M.P.H., and the TRI-supported COVID-19 ACTIV-4 ACUTE trial, led by Srikanth Vallurupalli, M.D.  Read The TRIbune.

Oliver Hurst owes his life to a luckily timed move across the country. His father and mother, who was then three months pregnant with Oliver, arrived in Vilonia from California in March 2020.

At the time, UAMS’ Kapil Arya, M.D., was developing strategies as a UAMS Translational Research Institute Implementation Science Scholar to establish statewide newborn screenings for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare disease that can disable a newborn within months.

The only effective treatment for SMA is a single-dose $2.1 million gene editing therapy – the most expensive one-time treatment in the world, Arya said. It must be provided within a few weeks of birth to counter the most severe form of SMA, which can be fatal in the first few years of life. Less severe forms can cause a lifetime of disability.

Arya, an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neurology, is part of the 2020 Implementation Science Scholar class, which is conducted by the UAMS Center for Implementation Research. He saw the program as an opportunity to learn skills that would help him implement the statewide SMA screening.

“Implementation science is the science of teaching you how to do a particular thing in the best way possible,” said Arya, who treats patients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “I knew the goals we wanted to achieve with the newborn screening, and implementation science taught me how to achieve those goals.”

The Arkansas SMA screening law was enacted in 2019, but a complex system was still necessary to make the screening routine across the state. Arya helped facilitate the purchase and validation of sophisticated testing equipment, developed training programs and created materials to reach all corners of the state. He also worked with insurers to secure coverage of the treatment cost, and persuaded them to accelerate their approval timeline by several months.

By the time Oliver was born at Conway Regional Medical Center in August, the screenings were being conducted statewide.

The scholars program may have given him the skills to implement the screening, but Arya’s tireless commitment also played a role, said Sara Landes, Ph.D., his primary mentor as a core faculty member at the Center for Implementation Research.

“To go from legislation to full implementation so fast sounds made-up – it just doesn’t usually work that way,” said Landes, an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. “He has engaged with stakeholders at all levels – patients, providers, health systems, payers and policymakers. It’s really impressive.”

With about 1 in 10,000 newborns diagnosed with SMA, Arkansas will have an estimated three to four cases each year.

Oliver happened to be one of them in 2020. His mother, Elaine Hurst, said she and her husband Darrell were “wrecked” by the news but hopeful the proposed treatment would work.

Oliver received the single dose infusion of Zolgensma, which uses a common virus to carry the gene-editing tools that should cure him of SMA. 

So far so good, Hurst said, and she is thankful for her family’s good fortune. California, they learned later, did not have the SMA screening when Oliver was born.  

“Moving to Arkansas saved Ollie’s life,” she said.

The March TRIbune newsletter arrived with a timely update on the work of UAMS early career researchers in the Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Scholars program for postdoctoral fellows.

Check out how this innovative new program is affecting UAMS’ research enterprise and the progress of the talented scholars who are wrapping up the second and final year of the program.

Read The TRIbune.

Through a partnership with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Hendrix College students have a unique opportunity to address a critical human health issue in the new Clinical and Translational Research Immersion (CTRI) Program.

Andres Caro, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at Hendrix, is leading the educational components of the program in collaboration with the UAMS-administered Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (Arkansas INBRE) and the UAMS Translational Research Institute. It is supported by a $165,326 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The program began in the fall 2020 semester with three students interested in biomedical science careers; three additional students joined this semester, and three more will participate this summer. Caro noted that there are few opportunities for undergraduate students to conduct translational research, which includes human study participants. Translational research is the process of rapidly applying new knowledge and discoveries to deliver treatments or practices that improve health.

“Translational medicine is the future of therapy, and the CTRI Program will introduce Hendrix students to this cutting-edge field,” Caro said.
The program is providing the students with a team-based translational research experience as part of an ongoing opioid study that involves eight UAMS researchers.

Arkansas INBRE’s mission is to build biomedical research capacity across the state. Lawrence Cornett, Ph.D., director, said the CTRI program is a great addition to INBRE’s efforts.

Increasing the number of future researchers is also a focus of the Translational Research Institute.

“We’re excited to be part of this collaboration,” said Laura James, M.D., director of the institute. “It allows us a unique opportunity to teach the principles of translational research beyond UAMS. This is crucial to expanding the research education pipeline and developing future translational scientists.”

The project also enables the expansion of an ongoing study of neonatal opioid drug withdrawal, led by Clare Nesmith, M.D., an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology. The addition of a second clinical site at the University of Louisville will allow investigators to better understand factors that predict the development of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome in newborns. Lori Devlin, D.O., an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatal Medicine, and Janice Sullivan, M.D., a professor and vice chair for Pediatrics Research in the Department of Pediatrics, are leading the study at the University of Louisville site.

The Arkansas INBRE program involves most of the state’s universities and colleges working toward the same goal of encouraging interest in and supporting cutting-edge scientific research that, ultimately, benefits the state as a whole.

“Research experiences are widely recognized to benefit undergraduate students in a number of ways,” Caro said. “Students who conduct research are more likely to complete a baccalaureate degree, pursue additional training in either graduate school or professional school, and go on to a career in research.”

Arkansas INBRE is funded under the NIH Institutional Development Award Program, or IDeA. The UAMS-based Arkansas INBRE program manages the initiative for partners that include the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Arkansas State University, Hendrix College, Ouachita Baptist University, John Brown University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and others. Along with UAMS, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville participates as a research-intensive institution.

The Translational Research Institute is supported by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

A private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently earns recognition as one of the country’s leading liberal arts institutions, and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and rigor, innovation and value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous college guides, lists and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu.

UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute and Institute for Digital Health & Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise including its hospital, regional clinics and clinics it operates or staffs in cooperation with other providers. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. U.S. News & World Report named UAMS Medical Center the state’s Best Hospital; ranked its ear, nose and throat program among the top 50 nationwide; and named six areas as high performing — COPD, colon cancer surgery, heart failure, hip replacement, knee replacement and lung cancer surgery. UAMS has 2,876 students, 898 medical residents and four dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Community Engagement Program has selected seven teams of community members and researchers that have partnered to participate in training and jointly develop community-based participatory research projects.

The Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Scholars teams will work through learning modules and participate in online discussions and mentoring to develop health disparities research projects in competition for pilot grants up to $50,000. The teams will learn to apply the principles of CBPR, a collaborative approach that works to involve all partners throughout the research process. Starting with a health-related research topic that is important to the community, the teams will use their new knowledge to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities.

“The CBPR Scholars program marks an exciting milestone for us,” said Kate Stewart, M.D., M.P.H., director of the TRI Community Engagement Program. “It is the next big step in our years-long efforts to engage Arkansans in the research we do at UAMS. We are very excited about the diversity of the seven partnerships that are participating in the program and we look forward to working with them to develop research-based, sustainable health improvements.”

The academic/community partnership teams are:

• Academic: Gerry Ezell, M.D., Jennifer Naylor, Ph.D.
  Community: River City Ministries: Paul Wilkerson and Steven Morris                                       
• Academic: Brooke Montgomery, Ph.D.
  Community: Our House: Maureen Martin
• Academic: Sanjay Maraboyina, M.D.,  Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D., Cynthia Dillport, LCSW, and Harriet Farley, LCSW
  Community: Home for Healing: Ronnie Fehrenbach and Goodness Village: Janet Webb
• Academic: Eva Woodward, Ph.D., Jennifer Gan, and Irenia Ball
  Community: AR Freedom Fund: Rae Brown, Anthony Smith and Heather Brown
• Academic: Melissa Zielinski, Ph.D., Katy Allison, Ph.D.
  Community: AR Foundation for Suicide Prevention: Susie Reece and Wendy Thompson
• Academic:  Wendy Nembhard, Ph.D.,  Katie Brown, O.D., Kirk Leach, Ph.D. (UALR), Jennifer Gan, Leah Dawson, Ph.D., Joe Schaffner, Maria Ruvalcaba
  Community: Shepherd’s Hope: Sofia Dulanto, Amy Ford (Baptist Health)
• Academic: Deanna King, M.D., Ph.D.,  Charia Hall, Au.D., Rachel Glade, Ph.D. (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville)
  Community: AR Hands and Voices: Mandy Jay, Liana Robbins