An inaugural pilot grant program at Rutgers Health supports the use of data resources to further health care and population health studies
Officials with the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH) have selected four research teams as the first recipients of its inaugural Data Core Pilot Grant Awards.
Each team will receive up to $35,000 to support projects that leverage IFH Data Core resources to advance health care and population health research. The funding period is 12 months.
The IFH Data Core is a National Institutes of Health-compliant shared resource facility housed within IFH that provides a range of survey and data resources to support researchers and trainees.
"We're thrilled to support these promising projects through the Data Core Pilot Grant Program," said Daniel Horton, the faculty director of the IFH Data Core and an associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Rutgers School of Public Health. "These awards reflect our commitment to catalyzing data-driven research that addresses pressing health challenges and produces actionable insights."
IFH leaders established the pilot grant program to encourage interdisciplinary research that utilizes the Data Core's electronic data assets and analytic expertise.
The research teams receiving the inaugural award are:
- Hilal Atasoy, associate professor, and Brad Nathan, assistant professor, both with the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Rutgers Business School.
- Project: "Audits, Errors, and Hospital Compliance: Linking RAC Audit Records with Medicare Claims to Advance Policy and Accountability."
- Login George, assistant professor in the Center for Healthy Aging at IFH and the Division of Nursing Science at the Rutgers School of Nursing.
- Project: "Stopping Cancer-Directed Therapies at the End of Life - Role of Oncologist Emotional Competencies."
- Missak Haigentz, chief of thoracic and head and neck medical oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Clinical Director of Oncology Integration, RWJBarnabas Health
- Project: "A CPRD Based, Retrospective Evaluation of Suspicious Neoplastic Lesions on Computed Tomography Performed During Coronary Artery Calcium Score Imaging."
- Mobolaji Ibitoye, an instructor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health.
- Project: "Maternal Outcomes and Severe Maternal Morbidity Among U.S.-Born and Foreign-Born Black Women in New Jersey."
The IFH Data Core provides services and resources, including:
Access to multiple local, state, national, and international health care and administrative databases, including national Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data, the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, health care data service MarketScan and New Jersey-based datasets such as the Integrated Population Health Data Project.
Analytic services to conduct analyses with large health care claims datasets.
Services and resources to conduct survey research, including in-person survey data collection, a flexible data collection platform and mobile application, secure storage of survey data, quality control of data collection, data analyses and support for measurement development.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant computing environment designed for high-performance data management and analysis and secure data storage.
- Consultation on study design, data acquisition and grant development.
IFH officials said the resources are designed to empower researchers throughout Rutgers and beyond to conduct rigorous, impactful studies that inform policy and improve health outcomes. The pilot program is backed by funding from the Rutgers Roadmaps for Collective Academic Excellence.
