Researchers at UAMS and the University of Utah have been selected for pilot funding from the Consortium of Rural States (CORES) to study the risks posed by extreme heat to patients recovering from surgery, particularly in rural areas where such health risks are understudied.
The University of Utah is the lead site with John F. Pearson, M.D., as principal investigator. Jill Mhyre, M.D., serves as the UAMS principal investigator.
Pearson is an associate professor of anesthesiology and a researcher in climate health and environmental epidemiology. His work focuses on the impact of air pollution on perioperative health outcomes.
Mhyre is the Dola S. Thompson Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology. Her research focuses on obstetric quality and safety.
The project is one of four recently announced by CORES. Each collaborating site, supported by Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), receives up to $25,000 to support their one-year projects.
Extreme heat events threaten public health nationwide, but privacy protections have made it difficult to link local weather data with patient outcomes in large surgical registries. The collaboration is developing privacy-preserving methods to safely combine environmental exposure data with surgical records, addressing a key translational science barrier.
NCATS, which funds about 60 CTSA institutions nationwide, is dedicated to applying translational science to overcome barriers to the research pipeline. The approach developed by the UAMS and Utah researchers aims to better understand and protect patients at risk during heat waves. Their findings could inform national health policy.