Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research ranked 4th in Oregon for federal health research money

Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research ranked 4^th in Oregon for federal health research money

Stories - May 14 2019

According to a recent survey in the Portland Business Journal, CHR received 17 grants from the NIH in 2018 for a total of $11,933,644, or just over 3.3 percent of the $357.8 million in funding awarded to Oregon researchers.

The Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (CHR) ranked 4^th in Oregon for institutions awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2018, according to a recent survey by the Portland Business Journal.

CHR received 17 grants from the NIH in 2018 for a total of $11,933,644, or just over 3.3 percent of the $357.8 million in funding awarded to Oregon researchers. Oregon Health & Science University, University of Oregon and Oregon State University led the list, which included 42 institutions of higher education, research centers, government agencies and others receiving some form of NIH funding. You can find the article and list of grant recipients here: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/04/25/federal-health-research-funding-rises-in-oregon.html

“National Institutes of Health funding, which spurs medical innovation, research and training, rose 9.5 percent last year in Oregon to $357.8 million after increasing 13.2 percent in 2017,” according to the Portland Business Journal story. “The state's funding amounted to 1.3 percent of total NIH funding in 2018, up from 1.2 percent in 2017. The number of grants it was awarded also increased to 729, from 672 the prior year, for an average of $490,862 per grant.”

Several significant research projects led by CHR investigators and funded by the NIH are currently underway, including:

Gloria Coronado, PhD – “PROMPT: Participatory Research to Advance Colon Cancer Prevention”
Rachel Gold, PhD, MSH – “CV WIZARD: Does a Prioritized, Point-of-Care Clinical Decision Support Tool Improve Guideline Based CVD Risk Factor Control in Safety Net Clinics?”
Stephanie Fitzpatrick, PhD and Stephen Fortmann, MD – “Evaluating the Implementation of the Diabetes Prevention Program in an Integrated Health System”
Francis Lynch, PhD – “Understanding Family Economic Impact of Chronic Child Health Conditions”
Bobbi Jo Yarborough, PsyD – “Predictive Modeling: The Role of Opioid Use in Suicide Risk”

In an accompanying interview, Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s VP of Health Research and CHR Director Lucy A. Savitz, PhD, MBA, noted “in terms of federally funded research, one of the big areas is in proper pain management, related to opioid and substance abuse. Intricately linked with that is mental health issues.” Several CHR researchers, including Yarborough, Lynch, Greg Clarke, and others study the overuse—and over-prescribing—of opioids and its intersection with mental health illnesses.

Dr. Savitz expressed concern that, while 2018 was a good year for health research money, award notices have been slow to date in 2019, possibly due to a backlog created by the government shutdown which ended in late January. “It’s not really a threat, it’s just there's slowness in processing where the wheels have ground to a slow pace. That’s a challenge.”

To read the entire interview with Dr. Savitz, visit: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/04/25/faces-of-the-list-lucy-savitz-of-kaiser-permanente.html