CFS's Norin Dollard Selected to Attend NIH Summer Institute on Health Services Research
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research, has selected three faculty members from FMHI to participate in a summer research institute aimed at improving services for individuals involved in multiple health service systems. The 2008 NIH Summer Institute on Health Services Research: Cross-Systems Research to Improve Health Outcomes will offer a special opportunity for Drs. Annette Christy, Norin Dollard and Amber Gum to intensify their research while developing individual proposals and presentations on health services research methods relevant to cross-systems studies. By the end of the training, each participant is expected to develop a draft grant proposal that will eventually lead to submission to one of NIH’s 27 institute’s and centers.
Scheduled July 27 - August 1 in Bethesda, Maryland, the Summer Institute will focus on research related to the vulnerabilities individuals face when receiving services in diverse systems such as health care, aging services, mental health treatment and services, alcohol and other substance abuse treatment and services, schools, welfare and child welfare, social services, housing programs, and criminal justice systems, among others.
Dollard’s research will focus on disparities in access to children’s mental health services. Gum will work to enhance collaboration between aging services and clients’ primary care physicians for antidepressant management and other medical service related to depression. Christy will focus on the much needed concept of social capital.
"These NIH Summer Research Institutes are exceptional opportunities and superb applicants from across the Nation compete for the very limited number of slots," said Dr. Junius Gonzales, Dean of FMHI. "To have not one, not two, but three faculty from one place selected is an astonishing accomplishment and testimony to the innovation and rigor of the work proposed and the outstanding qualifications of these three people. Finally, this NIH summer institute was not exclusively for behavioral health services research, but for all health researchers, so again kudos to Drs. Christy, Dollard and Gum!"