MISSOULA — The National Institutes of Health recently awarded the University of Montana an $11 million grant with the goal of creating a research center to improve the health of all Montanans.
The funding launches the Montana Clinical and Translational Research Center, which is housed in UM’s School of Public and Community Health Sciences.
The new Montana CTRC will build clinical research capacity with partner organizations across the state, including both clinical and public health stakeholders, and translate research findings into practical patient care to benefit all Montanans.
“We will support research working with our statewide partners that makes an impact at the community level,” said Tony Ward, director of the new center. “We have some pretty significant health issues to address in our rural state and a lot of underserved populations.”
Ward said the center initially will fund up to five research projects a year, incubating them with the goal of securing larger funding in the future.
Project examples include understanding why people don’t vaccinate their kids in rural areas, better ways to protect elderly populations when wildfire smoke blankets the region and studying how diabetics can receive better care in isolated places.
Some other pressing issues for Montana include mental health, suicide, cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems.
Ward said the NIH only funded four of these “bench-to-bedside” rural research centers nationally. The others are at the University of Louisville, the University of South Carolina and the University of North Dakota.
“So we are the only university in the western U.S. that got one,” Ward said. “Here at UM we have a group of eight to 10 researchers who will work with the new center.”
He said their clinical partners in Missoula include All Nations Health Center, Missoula Public Health and Providence. Partners beyond the Garden City are the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, Shodair Children’s Hospital in Helena, Billings Clinic and Logan Health, and Rocky Vista University, the Billings medical school.
Laura Williamson, DPHHS state epidemiologist, said she’s excited to have the new center strengthen her department’s ties with UM.
“We will engage with UM researchers to discover new approaches to public health practice here in Montana,” Williamson said. “This partnership gives DPHHS an opportunity to look at data the agency collects in new ways. It also grants us an opportunity to explore innovative solutions to address health issues in Montana with the firepower brought by academia.”
“Montana is big and rural, and this can lead to significant health disparities compared to more urban areas,” Ward said. “We firmly believe that working together with our partner organizations throughout the state, Montana CTRC will ultimately improve the health of our rural residents.”
