TRI is inviting applications for pilot grants to support a range of translational research projects. 

Budgets up to $25,000 for a one-year project will be considered.

TRI is accepting applications that will employ novel approaches in or address any of the following focus areas: Health concerns and challenges of rural and underrepresented populations; implementation science to incorporate new research findings into the health care system, including rural practices; biomedical informatics approaches that examine unique state data resources; team science approaches to address health challenges in Arkansas or overcome barriers to translational science; and/or community and/or stakeholder-partnered research.

Full-time UAMS faculty, including at Arkansas Children’s and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, are invited to apply.

Letters of Intent are due Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, by 5 p.m. (CT)
Invited full applications will be due by Monday, April 3, 2023.

Read the Request for Applications.

Questions? Contact Crystal Sparks, csparks@uams.edu.

The Translational Research Institute (TRI) is pleased to invite Letters of Intent (LOIs) for the 2023 KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Awards.

The TRI Mentored Research Career Development Scholars Program provides support for early-career UAMS faculty with a professional degree (M.D., Ph.D., Pharm.D., D.N.P., Dr.PH., D.O., etc.) who are committed to an academic career in multidisciplinary clinical or translational research.

Successful applicants will begin the two-year program July 1, 2023. The KL2 program combines an innovative educational program with mentored clinical/translational science research. KL2 Scholars receive:

Salary support/stipend of up to $95,000 (including fringe) per year.

Up to $25,000 of non-salary support per year, which can be used for research, tuition, travel expenses, educational materials and other costs related to the scholar’s research.

The deadline for submitting LOIs is Friday, Jan. 27, 2023, 5 p.m. (CT).

See attached LOI Cover Page.

View the Request for Applications.

The KL2 program is supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program of the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Contact: Chaz England, CEngland@uams.edu.

All are invited to TRI Research Day on Tuesday, April 4, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Heifer International in Little Rock.

Our keynote speaker is Duane Mitchell, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of Florida Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI). He is also assistant vice president for Research and associate dean for Clinical and Translational Sciences at the UF College of Medicine.

The event will showcase TRI-supported research with oral presentations from select TRI-supported investigators. A poster session (with prizes!) will include an array of TRI-supported projects across its range of funding and training programs.

Please mark your calendars and stay tuned for registration and other details.

Contact: Robin Liston, rliston@uams.edu.

TRI’s Community Engagement Program is seeking researchers and community organizations interested in partnering, training and working on a funded research project.

The Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Scholars Program will provide successful applicants up to $25,000 or up to $50,000 in pilot funding. Applications are due Feb. 1, 2023, and the program begins in March 2023.

If interested, please email the TRI Community Engagement team at triceteam@uams.edu, or call/text 501-291-7301.

More information is available here.

View the flyer.

Two UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) researchers are co-authors on work published in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science about developing and testing a diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum for use in higher education.

The research team co-authors from the College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) includes Tremaine B. Williams, Ed.D., assistant professor, and Mathias Brochhausen, Ph.D., professor and vice chair for Academic Programs and Faculty Development. They joined DBMI Ph.D. student Cilia Zayas, first author, on the paper, “Experiences with Developing and Implementing a Courageous Conversations Pilot Classroom through Synchronous Meetings via Zoom.”

Brochhausen is TRI’s director of Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies Program. Williams became a TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Program scholar in 2021.

The paper details the development of the pilot course curriculum in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. The course was implemented as a pilot program at the University of Florida, where Zayas and Brochhausen were employed at the time. The model curriculum takes a collaborative approach and can be used with students, staff and faculty.

Zayas and Brochhausen met with participants at the end of the semester to gain feedback about their experience and found that many reported valuing listening to others talk about their own personal lived experiences.

“We all benefit from learning from each other, but often those conversations are difficult to have. Facilitators encouraged the participants to stay engaged, expect to feel discomfort, speak their truth, and accept non-closure,” said Zayas, who chairs DBMI’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. “These ground rules enabled the groups to have real discussions about diversity, equity and inclusion by establishing a safe framework in which to share and explore – even under stressful circumstances. Participants found these discussions valuable, and many reported they would either re-take the course or recommend it to a colleague.”

To learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion research and efforts at DBMI, visit its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee website.

The Consortium of Rural States (CORES) Multi-institutional Pilot Program will fund translational science projects aiming to identify and overcome barriers to the performance of translational research.

Awards of up to $25,000 per institution will go to the collaborators for projects involving two or more of the six CORES institutions.

View a recording of the CORES Information Session.

The CORES pilot opportunity includes four emphasis areas: 

• Climate Change and Environmental Health
• Health Equity for Underrepresented Populations
• Rural Health 
• Maternal Health

All UAMS-affiliated faculty are invited to apply.

Letters of Intent are due Jan. 18, 2023.

Invited full applications are due March 8, 2023. 

In addition to UAMS, the collaborative includes the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, University of Kansas Medical Center, University of Kentucky, University of Iowa and University of Utah Health.

If you have questions about this pilot project award, please contact TRI’s Crystal Sparks, csparks@uams.edu.

Read the Request for Applications.

In this issue of The TRIbune, we feature the achievements of researchers who participated in our Strategies for Training and Advancing underrepresented Researchers (STARs) program in fall 2021. Participants described the program as “invaluable” and “fantastic” and have since secured career development awards, supplemental grants and internal funding. In addition:

We highlight Britni Ayers, Ph.D., a former TRI KL2 scholar, who received a $420,750 NIH grant for her research involving pregnant Marshallese women.

We introduce the four community groups selected to TRI’s Community Partners Educated as Arkansas Research Leaders (CPEARL) Program.

And our TRI Study of the Month features Kyle Kalkwarf, M.D., a TRI Implementation Science Scholars Program awardee, for his leadership on a clinical trial involving traumatic brain injury patients.

Read The TRIbune.

The UAMS Office of Institutional Compliance recognizes Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week each year during the first week of November. 

This year, Tracy Thurman, B.S., CCRP, clinical research finance manager for the UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI), is UAMS’ Clinical Billing Compliance Champion. She was selected for going above and beyond in her adherence to compliance and maintaining positive, supportive relationships with compliance office employees and other members of Team UAMS.

Below is the narrative submitted with her nomination:

“Tracy Thurman is the Clinical Research Finance Manager in TRI. Tracy and the TRI team provide vital services for clinical research areas, such as Medicare Coverage Analysis, building budgets, negotiating budgets with sponsors, and reviewing billing charges for clinical research studies out of TRI.

Tracy has an invaluable depth of knowledge in her field and always strives to help ensure that billing for clinical research studies is set up to ensure compliance. Tracy and her fellow team members work with many areas on campus such as the UAMS Billing Offices, the Value Analysis Office and the UAMS Compliance Office.

Tracy is well respected by her peers. She is always kind, professional and respectful. She is one of the many employees in TRI who help to foster compliance in clinical research that allows UAMS to continue to offer ground-breaking clinical research opportunities for our community. UAMS is very fortunate to have Tracy on TEAM UAMS!”

As part of this awareness, recognition, and reinforcement campaign, each division within Compliance selected Team UAMS members who demonstrate outstanding support to UAMS compliance programs.

Read more here about other 2022 Compliance Champions.

A University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) research team in Northwest Arkansas will study a potential way to improve health outcomes of pregnant Marshallese women using group-based care and health care navigators.

Led by former UAMS Translational Research Institute KL2 Scholar Britni Ayers, Ph.D., the study of maternal health care involving small groups of women, known as CenteringPregnancy, is funded by a two-year, $420,750 grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Pacific Islanders/Marshallese living in the United States have almost twice the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites. Arkansas is home to the country’s largest population of Marshallese, about 14,000 residents.

Ayers’ preliminary research has found that 15% of Marshallese women in Arkansas received no prenatal care (compared to 1.6% women nationally); more than 50% do not attend the recommended number of prenatal care visits; 19% of Marshallese infants were born preterm (compared to 9.6% nationally); and 15% of Marshallese infants were low birthweight (compared to 8.3% nationally).

Marshallese women face a number of barriers to medical care, including language, transportation and lack of information to help navigate the medical system and access resources.

“They are fearful of the medical system,” said Ayers, an assistant professor at UAMS Office of Community Health & Research in Springdale. “It’s ubiquitious — Marshellese women have expressed fear of the prenatal care process in all of our focus group interviews.”

Ayers hopes her CenteringPregnancy research will show that it is effective and can be used on a larger scale.

“Pregnant Marshallese women in Arkansas are experiencing urgent health needs, and we have the potential to move the needle tremendously with this type of concept,” she said.

CenteringPregnancy programs have proved effective in other areas of the United States, but it has not been tried with Pacific Islanders/Marshallese women. It should be a good fit for the population, Ayers said.

“The Marshallese culture is collectivist. They value the group more than the individual, so I think any sort of group health care will be a better way to reach this population,” she said.

Ayers will recruit 40 Marshallese women to take part in 90-minute small-group sessions. The sessions will include a bilingual CenteringPregnancy-trained Marshallese registered nurse and other prenatal health professionals providing brief one-on-one examinations and leading discussion of pregnancy topics at each of the 10 prenatal sessions. Additionally, all participants will be provided a bilingual Marshallese care navigator to aid in assessment and enrollment in social support services.

Over the last two years, Ayers used research pilot funding and training from a UAMS Translational Research Institute KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award to help secure the NIH grant.

The Translational Research Institute is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, grant UL1 TR003107.