Research Day 2024 drew enthusiastic applause from the 109 attendees who soaked in illuminating keynote presentations by Susan Emmett, M.D., MPH, and Al Richmond, MSW, as well as novel research discussed in oral presentations and at the poster session featuring TRI-supported researchers.

“This is really a day of celebration where we just show you the tip of the iceberg on many many things that are being accomplished throughout our state in translational research and translational science, ultimately toward improving health outcomes for the citizens of Arkansas,” said TRI Director Laura James, M.D., who welcomed attendees to the third annual event on March 26.

Richmond is executive director of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, which was founded in 1998 to promote health equity and social justice through partnerships between communities and academic institutions. He is co-principal investigator of the North Carolina Community Engagement Alliance Project and the Community Engagement Alliance Consultative Resource.

He encouraged attendees to seek out transformative experiences, meaningful outcomes in their research, and health equity.

“I want you throughout the day and long after I’m gone to just hold on to that vision for equity in your work,” Richmond said. “Work with your teams and ask yourself this question: ‘If you don’t do anything else, how are we advancing equity or how are we hindering or not achieving equity?’”

‘The Extra Mile’
Emmett’s work is an exemplar of Richmond’s vision.

As founder and director of the UAMS Center for Hearing Health Equity – the first of its kind in the world – she is leading a large-scale implementation project that will bring hearing care to rural Arkansas and other states. The project is built on years of research and overcoming barriers, from restrictive health policies to technology and cost limitations. Before joining UAMS in 2022, she spent three years leading a foundational randomized trial in this area in rural Alaska, where the prevalence of hearing loss, primarily from childhood ear infections, is six-to-nine times the U.S. average.

“We can’t do research for research’s sake, because then we have stopped short of real-world impact,” said Emmett, an associate professor of otolaryngology and epidemiology. “It’s about going that last mile, creating the evidence, and then working with policymakers to ensure that it is put into practice to actually change lives.”

With collaborators across the globe, she aims to significantly reduce the burden of travel and other issues that prevent hearing loss diagnosis and treatment.

She noted that even mild hearing loss doubles the risk of dementia as well as the risk of unemployment. It also triples the risk that a child won’t graduate from high school, yet 70% of children identified with possible hearing loss in schools are lost to follow-up and never enter the healthcare system for treatment. About 80% of individuals with hearing loss worldwide live in rural and underserved settings.

Bringing it Home
“We are bringing innovations home to transform health care delivery right here in this state,” said Emmett, founder and director of Global Hearing Loss Evaluation, Advocacy and Research (HEAR) Collaborative, a multidisciplinary group with collaborators from 28 countries. “I invite you to join us; join us in changing the world. Research has the capacity to change the way that health care is delivered in rural America and beyond.”

She also encouraged the audience’s many research trainees.

“There are so many opportunities for you to create lasting change with the work that you are doing,” said Emmett, who is also the founder and director of HEAR – USA, a national research network dedicated to addressing disparities in hearing loss in underserved and minority U.S. populations. “We have trainees involved in every single project that we do, and we tailor educational experiences for our trainees to fit perfectly with the work that they are doing academically so that they have exposure to real-world research.”

Read here about the Research Day poster winners and testimonials from attendees.

Eight Oral Presentations Highlight Work in TRI-Supported Programs

Research Day 2024 included oral presentations from eight researchers in four TRI-supported programs, listed below with their presentation titles:

KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Program Scholars

Megha Sharma, M.D., M.S., assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology

Objectively Assessed Skin Color and its Association with Pulse Oximeter Bias in Critically Ill Infants

Nakita Lovelady, Ph.D., MPH, assistant professor, Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health Department of Health Behavior and Health Education

A Path Forward: Exploring Implementation of a Hospital-based Violence Intervention Program in Rural Arkansas

TL1 Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program Trainees

Lauren Fitzgerald, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry

Path to Hidalga

Stephen Shrum, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, College of Pharmacy Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Development of a Novel Tocotrienol Analogue, Tocoflexol, as a Radiomitigator

Pilot Awardees

Karen Dickinson, M.D., Ed.D., director, IPE Simulation and Clinical Skills Training, UAMS Office of Interprofessional Education; assistant professor, College of Medicine Department of Surgery

Simulation for Training Team Response to Patient Prejudice Towards Providers

Chenghui Li, Ph.D., associate professor, College of Pharmacy Department of Pharmacy Practice

Assessing Sampling Bias of the Arkansas All-Payer Claims Database (APCD) and its Linkage with Arkansas Cancer Registry

Implementation Science Scholars

Amit Agarwal, M.D., associate professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Section of Pediatric Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine

Enhancing Care for Children Requiring Long-term Home Mechanical Ventilation: A Multidisciplinary Team Approach with Simulation-Based Training

Shipra Bansal, M.D., associate professor, College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes

Implementing Standardized BONE Health Care Guidelines in Children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

TRI is pleased to announce its new Clinical and Translational Science Pilot Program (CTSP2) with two grant opportunities for 2024:

• Collaborative Clinical and Translational Science Pilot Program. This funding will support team approaches in translational science among mid-level and senior faculty in durable collaborations and generate data to advance to extramural funding. Budgets up to $50,000 for a one-year period will be considered.
• Early Career Clinical and Translational Science Pilot Program. This funding will support projects by early-career faculty that generate critical data to improve competitiveness for future extramural funding.  Budgets up to $25,000 for a one-year period will be considered.

The CTSP2 seeks proposals for projects that include one or more principles of translational science as defined here by the National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS).

The Letter of Application deadline has been extended to Monday, May 13. All projects funded under these pilot programs must be completed by June 30, 2025. 

Please attend a Q&A session to learn more about these funding opportunities on Tuesday, April 23 at 2 p.m., or Tuesday, May 7 at 11 a.m.  Register here.

Learn more at the TRI website.

View the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for mid-level and senior faculty.

View the FOA for early career investigators.

Contact: Hailey Rogers, HRogers@uams.edu.

Principal Investigator: Nishank Jain, M.D., associate professor, UAMS College of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Nephrology; TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Program Scholar

Summary: An investigator-initiated study analyzing blood samples of adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD), adults with kidney transplants, and healthy adults to understand the interactions between platelets and leukocytes as possible drivers of inflammation in CKD.

Significance: CKD patients have abnormal inflammation associated with higher risks for heart attack and stroke. Having established that platelets are a primary cause, Jain hopes to identify the abnormal inflammatory pathways in CKD patients so that therapeutics may be found to inhibit platelets and reduce patients’ inflammatory burden.

TRI Services: ARresearch participant registry

Funding Agency: NIHNational Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

Learn more about the participant registry at TRI.uams.edu and ARresearch.org.

In this issue of The TRIbune, we highlight the latest clinical trial success led by Stacie Jones, M.D., and Amy Scurlock, M.D., UAMS researchers at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and Research Institute.

Their decades-long research careers have included consequential collaborations in national clinical trials of new treatments for food allergies. Their work shows how clinical trials can benefit Arkansans, and Jones is helping bring additional clinical trials to researchers at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute in her role as a TRI liaison to the national CTSA Trial Innovation Network.

This issue of The TRIbune also includes a story and link to a video presentation to help researchers understand the difference between translational research and translational science.

TRI Director Laura James, M.D., is also featured for her work leading a national project to help improve clinical trials, which was published in February in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science.

Our TRI Study of the Month features Nishank Jain, M.D., whose kidney-related research has been aided by the ARresearch registry of potential research volunteers. 

Read The TRIbune.

The terms translational research and translational science have been used interchangeably for more than a decade, but that’s changing across Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA)-funded institutions, including TRI.

Driving the transformation is the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which funds the CTSA program. Beginning in July of 2024, TRI supported awardees and trainees will need to explain how their research addresses both translational research and translational science. Translational research addresses overcoming a barrier to propel a specific research project forward to develop new treatments or treatment approaches for patients. Translational science takes a step back from the specific research project to ask broader questions such as a) how can the research approach support future research projects or be used by other researchers? or b) how can barriers to research be mitigated to support the broader research community and to support future research? Barriers may be scientific or administrative.  

Translational science is the “science of translational research,” said TRI Director Laura James, M.D. The ultimate goal of translational science is to identify “best practice approaches” for translational research that have broad application for numerous researchers and research disciplines.  One recent example of translational science is the wide-scale use of electronic health records to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on specific patient groups. NCATS created the NC3 data enclave – a national data infrastructure based on electronic health records from over 75 institutions – to better understand COVID-19.

A recorded video presentation on the topic is now available. The video is a condensed version of a recent TRI seminar led by J. Rob Singleton, M.D., director of the University of Utah’s Clinical Research Unit at the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

View the presentation here.

In this issue of The TRIbune, we feature a notable achievement led by Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., MBA, and Krista Langston, MBA, that is improving the pay of community health workers. They successfully established a career ladder program in 2023 that raises salaries with additional training, certifications, as well as an opportunity to obtain college credit. Community health workers serve a number of roles, and as trusted members of the communities they serve, they are increasingly important to TRI’s research efforts.

We also highlight our Community Engagement team and its important role providing consultations on community-based research.

This issue also features the NIH-supported biomedical informatics study led by Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., a 2023 graduate of the TRI KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Award Program.

Read The TRIbune.

Megha Sharma, M.D. M.S., found the perfect way to increase her clinical and translational science skills and help advance her research career. She received a scholarship that provided protected time so she could earn a UAMS Master of Science in Clinical and Translational Sciences (MS-CTS) degree.

Sharma, an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, earned the degree in 2023. She was able to leverage her expanded skillset to secure a prestigious KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Scholar Award and the Marion B. Lyon Revocable Trust New Scientist Development Award offered by the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute.

“I had a fantastic experience in the master’s program,” she said. “I learned to apply what I learned through advanced biostatistics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, and clinical trial design to write a competitive grant application. With guidance from experienced mentors, this experience also helped me develop the art and science of asking the right research question and enriched my understanding of rigorous scientific methods.”  

The MS-CTS program is offered by the UAMS Graduate School. Scholars’ protected time is secured by the Translational Research Institute (TRI) with support from the individual scholar’s department.

The MS-CTS program serves as a feeder program to TRI’s KL2 program as well as other early-career development K awards. (TRI’s KL2 program is transitioning to the K12 program this year, offering the same benefits to its scholars.)

Jenny Rumpel, M.D., another MS-CTS scholarship recipient and graduate of the program, received a KL2 in 2022 and has applied for an NIH K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award.

The master’s program, she said, helped her develop skills that will be invaluable to her career.

“It broadened my understanding of the possibilities in clinical research design through collaboration with researchers from other departments,” said Rumpel, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics. “I loved that there was strong focus on grant writing skills right as I walked into the program.”

She said the program has also been invaluable for getting to know other TRI-supported researchers and finding prospective research mentors.

“I have met some great new friends,” Rumpel said.

Learn more here about the MS-CTS Scholarship Program and view the 2024 application form.

TRI is excited to announce that registration is now open for a grant-writing workshop March 21 and 22 by the AtKisson Training Group (ATG). 

Don’t miss out on this exclusive opportunity to elevate your grant-writing skills at this free workshop sponsored by TRI and the UAMS Office of Community Health & Research.

Workshop Focus: Structuring NIH Proposals

Time: 9 a.m. to noon (Thursday and Friday)

Location: Virtual

Lead Presenter: M.S. (Peg) AtKisson, Ph.D., an acclaimed public speaker, trainer and former neuroscientist at Tufts University.

What to Expect: Hands-on activities focusing on the Specific Aims and Research Strategy sections of an NIH proposal. Dive deep into the mechanics of effective proposal construction and writing. Engage in practical exercises using both sample documents and sections related to your own proposals. This workshop promises vital insights and strategies to improve your grant application success.

Please register here. 

“Dr. AtKisson and her team provide engaging, hands-on seminars filled with practical examples and exercises that will immediately impact the quality of your grant writing and funding success. I highly recommend the ATG Training Group to take your grant writing to the next level.” – Mario Schootman, Ph.D., co-director, TRI Translational Workforce Development

Contact: Adam Kleinerman, akleinerman@uams.edu