Regenstrief Institute President and CEO Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH, has announced the first Regenstrief Health Disparities and Equity and Learning Health System Research Pilot grants.
These demonstration projects support Regenstrief’s strategic goals of local discovery and serving as a national model to connect clinical care with social needs to improve health. Each pilot is receiving $100,000.
The selected projects and investigator recipients are:
Nourishing Health Equity: Integrating Food Security into a Learning Health Community. Principal Investigator: Rebecca Rivera, PhD, MPH, CPH. Health System Partner: Eskenazi Health. Community Partner: Crooked Creek Food Pantry, Inc. Dr. Rivera’s research proposal seeks to conduct a needs assessment to determine the current capacity to close food insecurity referral loop, compare outcomes between passive and active referrals to adapt to patient needs over time, and identify barriers and facilitators that patients encounter in accessing food assistance programs.
Pride in Aging. Principal Investigator: Jennifer Carnahan, M.D., MPH, M.A. Health System Partner: Eskenazi Health. Community Partners: Elder Pride Indy Collaborative and Rainbow Connection LLC. Dr. Carnahan and her team will adapt a previously successful Veterans Affairs’ Pride in All Who Served intervention for Eskenazi patients aged 50 and older who are part of sexual or gender minority groups, with the project seeking to define best practices and techniques for identifying stress, resilience, and social connection.
Measuring the Impact of Social Network Support on the Health and Health Behaviors of Black Older Adults with Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity. Principal Investigator: Monica Williams-Farrelly, PhD. Health System Partner: Eskenazi Health. Community Partner: St. Rita Church. Dr. Williams-Farrelly and her team seek to characterize social support networks for older Black adults, exploring the relationships between these networks and physical activity and nutrition, while also examining how social determinants influence the connection between social support and health behaviors, and use this information to develop an intervention to address these needs.
Enhanced Health-Related Social Needs Data Extraction to Support Action and Impact. Principal Investigator: Joshua Vest, PhD, MPH. Health System Partners: Indiana Health Information Exchange and IU Health. Community Partner: IU Health Community Health Office. By mapping the needs identified from clinical text to existing data standards such as LOINC®, ICD codes, etc., in collaboration with Marjorie Rallins, DPM, M.S., executive director of Regenstrief Health Data Standards, Dr. Vest and his team will establish performance of the algorithms across key patient populations, including older adults, racial and ethnic minority groups, patients with chronic conditions to ensure they maintain a high level of performance. This proposal is funded by the Institute and includes supplemental HEAL-R funding from IU Health.
Project performance periods began November 1, 2024. Completion date is October 31, 2025.
