Rutgers University's Institute for Translational Medicine and Science has received a $47.5 million federal grant to develop practical applications for scientific discoveries, the university announced last week.

The funding will support the institute's work to bring the latest medical practices and research advancements to patients in the region. With this grant money, it will focus on several persistent challenges in public health: improving maternal mortality rates, understanding childhood asthma and environmental toxins, and preventing opioid overdoses.

"What we do is find the best process to bring a discovery in any disease to a patient and then change the behavior of providers in the health systems," said Reynold Panettieri Jr., a physician who serves as the vice chancellor for translational medicine and science at Rutgers.

Many people believe that medical research is directed toward curing or treating a specific disease, Panettieri said. But translational science can help find applications for research discoveries across a wide range of medical issues, he said.

In 2019, with $27 million from the NIH, Rutgers partnered with Princeton University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and RWJBarnabas Health to form the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science. Its second Clinical and Translational Science Awards grant is nearly double its initial funding amount and expected to support research efforts for seven years.

Rutgers received its first round of funding for the alliance three months before the COVID-19 pandemic, Panettieri said, and quickly directed their efforts to applying developments in COVID research to patient care. His team recruited 5,000 patients in the area -- most of whom were from groups that had been underrepresented in research on COVID testing -- for studies that contributed to the development of the first nasal-swab COVID tests, he said.

The team also worked with that group of patients to learn how to deliver the tests most efficiently. For example, it compared the results of COVID testing outreach when medical providers went out into the community with what happened when testing efforts were led by community-based groups like churches and the YMCA.

"The community-based organizations were far better in building trust and getting people to get tested," Panettieri said. "It's about learning how you get to the community, change behaviors, and meet needs."

With the new round of funding, Panettieri said he hopes to continue to engage community members on how scientific research can help them. "Communities tell us what they're interested in, and we can try to meet their needs scientifically," he said.

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