Kennesaw, WellStar Partner For NIH-Funded Research

KENNESAW, GA — Kennesaw State University and WellStar Health System will together address the bioethical issues faced by individuals experiencing social and/or economic hardships when trying to manage their healthcare needs. This recent research partnership is made possible through a National Institutes of Health grant.

Evelina Sterling, director of research development and strategic initiatives in KSU’s Office of Research, and Jason Lesandrini, assistant vice president of ethics, advance care planning, and spiritual health at WellStar Health System, are studying this aspect of health disparity through a one-year, $113,000 supplemental grant.

“Bioethics transcends advance care planning or communicating with doctors, especially among vulnerable and underserved populations who may already experience barriers and challenges such as transportation, money and insurance issues while accessing prescribed care in their communities,” said Sterling, also assistant professor of sociology and the grant’s principal investigator.

Sterling and Lesandrini will integrate a bioethics component into an already existing NIH-funded project Sterling is working on with KSU colleagues and social work professors Vanessa Robinson-Dooley and Carol Collard. The KSU professors are developing a new self-management and support intervention program called “Healthy Together” for low-income African-American men with multiple chronic conditions living in rural and urban areas of Georgia.

As part of the grant, researchers will interview the men and their healthcare providers to explore themes related to bioethical issues they face as patients and as research participants. Then a bioethics module will be developed based on those interviews and added into the “Healthy Together” program.

A separate training module for clinical and research staff at WellStar Health System will also be included. That is where Lesandrini’s expertise comes into play since he leads WellStar Health System’s ethics program, which provides leadership and resources to promote ethical behavior and decision-making aligned with the mission, vision and values of the health system. Core services include ethics consultation, ethics programming, education and advance planning resources for patients, families and team members.

“A colleague in the ethics field once said, ‘there are no ethics-free zones in healthcare.’ My experience is similar,” said Lesandrini, who serves as co-investigator of the supplement grant. “Values touch everything we do, and it is important for us as a community-based healthcare provider to understand the complex ethics issues faced by one of our most vulnerable and underserved populations.”

Although KSU and WellStar Health System have been involved in a number of research collaborations before, this is the first time the two have received a grant from NIH to partner on a project.

“We are very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Kennesaw State University in this research endeavor,” said Quincy Byrdsong, executive director of the WellStar Research Institute, the centralized research facility serving WellStar Health System. “Not only will the research have significant impact on the communities we serve, but the collaboration continues to maximize the collective strengths of Kennesaw State University and WellStar Health System in our service to the state of Georgia and beyond.”

Also over the summer, through Kennesaw State’s Summer Research Fellows program, Ebony Glover, assistant professor of neuroscience, worked on a grant proposal focused on examining the biological factors of men and women that contribute to anxiety risk, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder and vulnerability in women.

“The success of my proposed project is critically dependent on the engagement of undergraduate student researchers in all aspects of the study, from data collection to the dissemination of results via conference presentations and manuscript publications,” she said. “Accordingly, undergraduate students will be exposed to the high impact practice of scientific investigation and contribute to our understanding of biological factors that influence women’s mental health.”

Research-based experience for students is one of the aims of a grant proposal Yenupini Joyce Adams, assistant professor of nursing, worked on over the summer.

Both professors, along with 22 other Kennesaw State faculty, are learning best practices to prepare successful grant proposals as Summer Research Fellows. Adams credits the program’s supportive environment and the connections made in helping advance her efforts in studying maternal health and mortality issues immediately following childbirth.

The Fellows program is a new initiative developed by the University’s Office of Research as a way to support faculty in their pursuit of external research funding, especially the opportunities involving undergraduate researchers.

“Relevant research and effective teaching are strongly linked themes of a well-rounded undergraduate education,” Sterling said.

Sterling mentored the faculty through the process of writing federal grant proposals to the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The two-month curriculum included guest speakers with experiences as grant reviewers and recipients, and a peer-review process during each stage of proposal development.

“The mentoring program provides faculty with the tools they need to take their research to the next level, which in turn benefits the students involved who not only see the real-life applications of the projects, but also develop marketable skills in problem-solving and critical thinking,” Sterling explained.

Jungkyu (Justin) Park, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, said that the Summer Research Fellows program gave him time to focus solely on grant writing and his assortment of projects, which serve as a natural fit for applied research opportunities for his students. He plans to submit a grant proposal centered on developing novel 3D carbon nanostructures using a 3D nanoscale printing process.

“In my lab, undergraduate students will utilize the results obtained in my current research studies to develop their own independent research proposals/projects,” he said. “I have consistently observed that students perform much better when they are excited about the research topic and when they take it on as their own projects by being involved in research idea development and project planning.”