The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research recently released their ranking of NIH Funding by school and researcher. The Department of Family Medicine was ranked #25 on this year’s list. Four of our faculty members were also ranked Rick Sadler, Phd, Natoshia Cunningham, PhD, Masako Morishita, PhD, and Omayma Alshaarawy, MBBS, PhD.
“I am very grateful for the support provided by the University, College, and Department that enables us researchers to be competitive in NIH research grant funding. This is part of a bigger picture, as the department currently has many innovative research projects funded by an array of sponsors. I am proud to be part of an institution that’s among those leading the effort to advance public health research.” – Masako Morishita, PhD.
Dr. Cunningham’s NIH/NCCIH funded K23 award focuses on understanding neural mechanisms of a tailored cognitive behavioral therapy she developed to target anxiety and pain symptoms in youth with functional abdominal pain disorders.
Dr. Sadler is researching discriminatory housing practices (such as redlining or white flight) that undoubtedly have some legacy impact on their communities. One such impact may be on disparate exposures to alcohol outlets and other deleterious environments. In this grant, we establish a method for estimating historical alcohol outlet density, adapt metrics of historical discriminatory housing practices, and examine whether neighborhoods that experienced, for example, redlining or white flight have disparities with respect to alcohol outlet density or food access.
