Pending Projects

Pending Projects as of April 15, 2005

 The major pending projects that have been submitted to various funding agencies are summarized below: 

Cancer Prevention and Treatment Demonstration for Ethnic and Racial Minorities: The UT Medical Group, Inc. recently applied for the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Demonstration for Ethnic and Racial Minorities grant.  This demonstration project is funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The project we are proposing, the Alliance for Cancer Prevention and Treatment (ACPT), will implement a demonstration project for cancer care in underserved African American populations in both rural and urban areas of west Tennessee. This initiative is an effort to unite critical components of cancer care to develop a community-based program that addresses education, health access, managed care and clinical services for the purpose of improving cancer prevention, detection, and treatment in western Tennessee.  Through this initiative the UT Medical Group, Inc. will collaborate with the TLC Family Care Health Plan, UT Cancer Institute, Bluff City Medical Society, the African American Pastors Consortium, Shelby County Health Loop Clinics, and the West Tennessee Area Health Education Center (AHEC). 

Centers of Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach, Research on Health Disparities and Training (Project Export – Establishing Exploratory Centers):  Through the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, project EXPORT grants are meant to augment and strengthen the institutional infrastructure and capacity to conduct research (basic, clinical, behavioral, and/or social sciences) aimed at addressing and ultimately eliminating health disparities.  The Mid-South Health Disparities Center (MHDC) is a new initiative to understand and eliminate health disparities in minority communities across a tri-state region comprised of Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi.  Through this initiative, UTHSC will build upon existing regional relationships with traditional minority institutions to enhance educational offerings, career opportunities and research outcomes as they relate to appropriate minority access to essential healthcare services.  UTHSC investigators and healthcare providers, partners from other local institutions, and community partners have the will and the intellectual capital to design, implement, and evaluate interventions to decrease health disparities.  The mission of the Center is to advance the understanding of health disparity across the life span of minorities through a partnership between researchers, faculty and students at UTHSC and external partners such as Lemoyne-Owen College, Rust College, United Negro College Fund- Special Projects, Christ Community Church Health Centers and the African American Pastors Consortium. 

Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program: The goal of this program is the development of a health care workforce with the knowledge, skills, abilities and core competencies to: (1) recognize indications of a terrorist event; (2) meet the acute care needs of patients, including pediatric and other vulnerable populations, in a safe and appropriate manner; (3) participate in a coordinated, multidisciplinary response to terrorist events and other public health emergencies, and include consideration of surge capacity issues; and (4) rapidly and effectively alert the public health system of such an event at the community, State, and national level.  Under this HRSA grant, UTHSC will propose a project which represents an innovative, multi-agency approach to build upon existing educational programs and share the experience of subject matter experts across the entire state.  The strength of this project is hinged on its multi-agency model and collaborative approach, with each project partner bringing different resources to cover the gamut of needs in continuing education.  The collaborating partners include UTHSC, UT Martin, Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, the Tennessee Department of Health, and the Center for Homeland Security and Counter proliferation, a joint initiative of The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Research on Rural Mental Health and Drug Abuse:  The purpose of this grant, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is to enhance the understanding of structural, cultural, and individual factors that may limit the provision and utilization of prevention and treatment services in rural communities; and generate knowledge to improve the organization, financing, delivery, effectiveness, quality, and outcomes of mental health and drug abuse services for diverse populations in rural and frontier populations.  Through this grant we plan to evaluate the efficacy of the delivery of mental health services to newly diagnosed cancer patients living in rural communities in a clinical trial by randomizing new cancer patients to one of three groups:  Group 1) Standard Care; 2) Telephone Counseling; and 3) Telemental Health.  We also plan to determine the impact of treatment modalities on the incidence of depression and anxiety, depression and anxiety severity scores, and quality of life in cancer patients from rural communities. 

Reducing Disparities in the Treatment of Epilepsy:  The purpose of this grant is to reduce disparities in the treatment of epilepsy among minority populations.  It will foster empirical research that will identify effective interventions to overcome the key barriers to, and mediators of, the treatment for epilepsy experienced by minority groups, and improve the patterns of epilepsy care among these populations.