More than $14.2 million will be used to develop, implement, and test strategies to improve the adoption and dissemination of interventions obtained from patient-centered outcomes research among racial and ethnic minority populations, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, MD, MPH, announced Wednesday.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant awards, made under its Comparative Effectiveness Research for Eliminating Disparities (CERED) program, will focus on issues such as breast and prostate cancer in underserved populations, cardio?metabolic issues in Native American and Pacific people, and health disparities in Harlem, NY.
NIH, with its National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), awarded grants to centers of excellence at the following universities and medical schools: University of Alabama, Birmingham; University of South Florida, Tampa; University of Hawaii at Manoa; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University; Columbia University Health Sciences, New York; and University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences, San Juan.
HHS' Office of Minority Health (OMH) also awarded nearly $2 million to Westat. This project will designate diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease (including stroke and hypertension), and arthritis as the primary health conditions for which appropriate interventions can be identified from comparative effectiveness research. Among the populations to be examined are African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and urban American Indians/Alaska Natives.
NIMHD and OMH will jointly evaluate the scientific progress of the recipients of the grant awards following standard NIH policies and procedures.
"Every citizen in our country deserves our best effort. With the help of the health information derived from these studies, we can take a step closer to achieving our goals and, at the same time, transform our communities into safer and healthier places for all people," said Garth Graham, MD, deputy assistant secretary for minority health and OMH director.
The awards are part of the investments made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which appropriated $1.1 billion to support patient-centered outcomes research. Of that total, $400 million was authorized to be allocated at the discretion of the HHS secretary for various patient-centered outcomes research and related activities.
The American College of Physicians, (ACP) in an updated paper released in July, noted that as the nation's population continues to grow and diversify, the healthcare system needs to change and adjust to meet the needs of an increasingly multicultural patient base.
Janice Simmons is a senior editor and Washington, DC, correspondent for HealthLeaders Media Online. She can be reached at jsimmons@healthleadersmedia.com.