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“We want to
speed up and encourage
... translational research ...
that takes discoveries at
the bench in the lab
and actually applies
”
them
to the bedside.
“So that we can more quickly develop
the evidence base for optimal medical
practice,” Wynne said. “Given the fact that
roughly two out of three physicians in this
state are on our clinical faculty, that’s a
wonderful network to use to develop
clinical trials and translational research
protocols so, again, we can take discoveries
in the lab and bring them to the bedside.”
The third is to enhance the focus on
population health.
“It’s been estimated that upward of 40
percent of deaths in this country could be
delayed, with an accompanying increase in
quality of life, if people took better care of
themselves,” Wynne said. “For example, if
we could get people to stop smoking,
reduce their drinking, exercise more, and
lose weight, we could have a substantial
improvement in our community health,
and an improvement in life expectancy and
quality of life for individual members of
that community.”
That’s why the SMHS developed a
Master of Public Health (MPH) degree
program in conjunction with North
Dakota State University—it’s an effort to
shift the focus from individual health to
group, or community, health.
“We want to focus on research
questions that revolve not only around
‘why does my grandmother have
Alzheimer’s and what should we do to treat
her’ to questions like ‘what can we do to
improve the health of Grand Forks in a
global way with my grandmother being a
member of that community, but not the
only one there.’”
Meanwhile, Wynne noted, the SMHS
continues to build on its successful
research tradition.
A look at a sample from this year’s
grant awards shows how and why.
Doing well
“We’re doing fairly well,” said Barry
Milavetz, PhD, professor of biochemistry
and molecular biology at the SMHS and
UND associate vice president for research
development and compliance. “The
medical school brings in about 20 percent
of the research dollars coming into UND.”
About 95 percent of the external
support received by the SMHS comes from
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an
agency of the federal Department of Health
and Human Services. This year’s NIH
funding to the medical school included
two new R01 grants, five years each at
$250,000 per year, one to Joyce Ohm and
another to Colin Combs (see list below).
“UND itself has been very fortunate in
previous years to get semicompetitive
federal earmarks, but the medical school
by and large doesn’t benefit from that,” said
Milavetz, himself a recipient of federal
research grants; he’s also a reviewer on an
NIH committee that looks over grant
applications. “Almost all of the medical
school’s grant dollars emanate from
competitive grants, and its overall rate of
success is more than 12 percent.”
Research, according to Milavetz, is the
key to maintaining credibility and expertise.
“At a basic philosophical level, a lot of
people believe that in order to be a good
teacher you need to be an expert in your
field,” Milavetz said. “The way you
demonstrate—and continue to
demonstrate—that expertise is by doing
research. We, the SMHS, are a research
institution. It’s critical that our faculty be
active researchers.”
$15.9 million—
largest grant in SMHS history
For Don Sens, PhD, federal dollars are the
key to helping the younger generation
develop an interest in science and the health
professions. Sens, professor of pathology and
a longtime cancer researcher, coordinates
the North Dakota INBRE (Institutional
Development Award [IDeA] Network of
Biomedical Research Excellence) program.
“INBRE gets awarded to 25 states that
together get less than 5 percent of the NIH
budget of about $30 billion,” Sens said.
“The INBRE grants are used to develop
infrastructure, for example, labs, not just
here at UND but around the state. A big
part of that is getting undergraduates in all
of North Dakota’s colleges and universities
interested in research and health professions.
Our INBRE grant, administered here at the
SMHS, helps to support undergraduate
research programs at, in addition to UND,
Minot, Valley City, Mayville, Dickinson,
Little Hoop, and Turtle Mountain.”
INBRE now is in the fourth year of a
$15.9 million, five-year NIH grant, which
14 NORTH DAKOTA MEDICINE Holiday 2012