Executive
Summary
The University of Tennessee Outreach Center is a community
outreach unit within the College of Medicine. It supports the overall
mission of the UT Health Science Center (UTHSC) by improving the health of
underserved and isolated populations through innovative approaches such as
telehealth and e-health technologies. It currently pursues the dual
objectives of national and international recognition as a leader in
telehealth and diversity research and financial sustainability
through intramural research and community outreach.
The Outreach Center has in the past four years,
through federal grant awards, invested more than $1.9 million in
establishing an extensive telehealth network that has been named the third
largest telehealth program in the nation by The Department of Health and
Human Services. (See Attachment 2) The major aim of the substantial
telehealth infrastructure is to bridge the access gap between the medical
center resources of Shelby County (Memphis) and the surrounding underserved
areas of Arkansas, Mississippi and rural Tennessee. The Center is one of
the fastest growing units on the UTHSC campus as measured by the rate of
growth of either external funding awards or number of FTEs. The Outreach
Center has distinguished itself in another way; it has an average award
rate of 82% in winning federal funding as compared to the 18% average rate
for the rest of the UTHSC campus.
Led by Dr. Karen C. Fox, Assistant
Dean, College of Medicine, the management team of the UT Outreach Center
comprises 12 professional FTE’s and 2 support staff. The Outreach Center
team has grown over the past four years from two professionals to a staff
of fourteen. Personnel were hired to ensure a dedicated staff with a proven
track record coupled with a young, highly educated staff eager to
learn.
The staff either have backgrounds from rural environments that allow
them to understand and relate to rural clients or an inner city setting
which allow them to relate to that environment served by the Outreach
Center. This staff works well as a team because they all have a unique
part of the outreach system and have ownership in each individual project
in a specific capacity. However, with only 12 professional staff to cover
12 large federal and state projects and with many projects pending, further
growth is difficult with no positions allocated by the state for growth,
development and sustainability. A lack of significant state funding for
the Outreach Center also means that there are no management personnel other
than the Executive Director who is approximately 93% federally funded, and
is now performing double duties as the PI of all grants and the Center’s
Chief Operating Officer. Table 2 below shows the Center’s current
personnel budget and the percentage of employee cost that is covered by
external funds.
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