Grants
Indiana University has been declared a Center of Excellence for the Care of Patients and Families with Huntington Disease by the Huntington Disease Society of America. This designation brings a cash award of $50,000 to be used to expand and improve services for our patients. The Center will be directed by Dr. Kimberly Quaid who is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics and a core faculty member of the Indiana University Center for Bioethics. Dr. Quaid had been involved in research and clinical care for patients and families with Huntington Disease for over twenty years. Dr. Joanne Wojcieszek, a neurologist and member of the IU School of Medicine Department of Neurology, will co-direct the center.
Dr. Clement McDonald of the Regenstrief Institute received a $2 million grant from the 21st Century Fund (Indiana) to establish a Center for Excellence in Medical Informatics. The Center’s infrastructure will integrate many sources of clinical data and specimen resources, and will simplify the work processes of the clinical researcher. Eric M. Meslin and David Flockhart, MD, Ph.D (co-director of the Center for Bioethics program in Pharmacogenomics, Ethics and Public Policy) are participant researchers on Dr. McDonald’s grant, which runs from 2005-2007.
Dr. Rose Fife, Director of the Indiana University National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, a program within the Indiana University School of Medicine was awarded a contract ($15,000) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support an education program on Organ and Tissue Donation (OTD) targeting the women and minority populations around the state. Dr. Fife will be collaborating with Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D, (IU Center for Bioethics), Mark Pescovitz, M.D. of the Indiana University Transplant Program, and with the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization.
Kimberly A. Quaid and John I. Nurnberger Jr. (PI) recently received funding for their project “Adolescents at High Risk for Familial Bipolar Disorder.” They will begin their study in 2004 and plan on completing their study in March 2009.
Kimberly A. Quaid and Ira Shoulson have received multiple grants from the NIH/NCHGR for their “PHAROS: Prospective Pilot Huntington At Risk Observational Study.” This project is a multi-center observational study of a sample of individuals at risk for Huntington disease in order to measure the rate of phenoconversion. Drs. Quaid and Shoulson received their funding in 2001 and plan on completed the project in August 2005.
Kimberly A. Quaid and Jane Paulsen have received a grant for $84,812 from the NIH/NINDS for their project “PREDICT:
Neurobiological Predictors for Huntington Disease.” The goal of this project is to follow a cohort of individuals who are known to be gene positive for Huntington Disease in order to measure structural and functional changes that occur as individual move from being unaffected to affected with HD. This project began in 2001 and will be completed in August 2005.
Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D.., John Sidle, M.D. and Kara Wools-Kaloustian, M.D. received an International Development Fund grant from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis for $11,806 This grant will enable Drs. Meslin and Wools-Kaloustian to study a group of Institutional Review Board Members to determine “Needs Assessment for Implementing the IU/MOI MOU (memorandum of understanding) in Research Ethics.” They will be conducting the study during the summer of 2004 with the intention of publishing the results in the fall of 2004.
William H. Schneider, Ph.D., has been awarded a research grant from the National Library of Medicine at the NIH. The grant in the amount of $96,703 will support a collaborative project with Marta Balinska, a historian and researcher at the French National Institute of Prevention and Health Education.
The focus of the project is to translate, edit and annotate the autobiography of Ludwik Hirszfeld, The Story of One Life. The book, which describes the life of the Polish microbiologist Hirszfeld (1884-1954), was first published in 1946 and has had many re-editions, as recently as 2000. The importance of making this work available in English stems primarily from the scientific accomplishments of Hirszfeld, who along with Emil von Dungern, established the ABO nomenclature and the inheritance of the blood groups, then discovered the population genetics of human blood groups. He also worked on the genetics of disease and immunology between the wars as scientific director of the new National Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw, Poland's first and most important center for research in public health.
Utilizing interviews with former students, plus unpublished documents, this translation will be annotated and an introduction written by two scholars with unique qualifications to understand both the immediate setting in which Hirszfeld lived his life, as well as the broader implications of his work to the history of medicine. The University of Rochester Press has agreed to publish the translation.
William H. Schneider, Ph.D., was awarded the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Grant, Spring-Summer 2006 to study the "The History of Blood Transfusion in Sub-Saharan Africa". The amount awarded is $64,650.
The main goal of this research is to examine the possible role of blood transfusion in the origin and early spread of HIV/AIDS. Funds will support completion of research in European archives and medical libraries, as well as selected locations in Africa. The goal is to arrive at a reliable estimate of the extent and timing of blood transfusion which can be used by epidemiologists, virologists and molecular biologists to build a model for the crossover and evolution of HIV. This project will also add to the broader understanding of the way blood transfusion was introduced to Africa.
William H. Schneider, Ph.D., was also awarded the New Frontiers Arts & Humanities Program grant in the amount of $20,000 in support of "Indiana and Eugenics, 1907-2007". Funding was secured for a two-day conference that will take place in conjunction with other events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing into law of a bill passed by the Indiana legislature that provided for the involuntary sterilization of criminals. It will be part of a larger commemoration that will include plans for a museum exhibit, a workshop for legislators and judges on recent developments in genetics and the law, and a resolution of apology by the Indiana state legislature, modeled on apologies recently enacted by other states.
Amy J. Hatfield, M.L.S. New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Traveling Fellowship Award to attend the Intensive Bioethics Course, Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. $2,500.00. June 7-13, 2005.
The Traveling Fellowship Award supported at trip to Georgetown University to attend the Intensive Bioethics Course and to meet with the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) librarians. The goal of the trip was to better understand Bioethics as a field of study, the researchers and practitioners of bioethics and clinical ethics, and to strengthen the NRCBL-IUCB partnership with regard to the Bioethics Digital Library project.
Amy J. Hatfield, M.L.S. Bioethics Digital Library (BEDL) Digitizing Station. National Library of Medicine supported grant: National Network of Libraries of Medicine Greater Midwest Region Technology Improvement Award (NO1-LM-1-3513). $2,645.00. June 1, 2005-April 30, 2006
The Bioethics Digitizing Station acquired through this NLM grant is being used to digitize the first of many comprehensive digital collections for the Bioethics Digital Library. Three Indiana University School of Library and Information Science interns are working on the project.
William H. Schneider, Ph.D. was awarded a National Institutes of Health grant in the amount of
$153,058 to support scholarship, education and activities throughout the centential anniversary year of the signing of the Compulsory Sterilization Law of Indiana. [Awarded in 2006]
Margaret M. Gaffney M.D. & Peter Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D. were awarded a Medical Education & Curricular Affairs (MECA) Educational Research & Development Grant: Teaching the Ethics and Social Context of Pharmacology. Dr. Meg Gaffney and Dr. Peter Schwartz will design and implement two Team-Based Learning modules on ethical, economic, and societal issues associated with pharmaceuticals. The modules will focus on 1) challenges posed by the introduction of expensive chemotherapeutic agents in public hospitals, and 2) the use of human growth hormone in short, otherwise normal children. Dr. Gaffney and Dr. Schwartz will use these modules to teach two sessions in the second-year Pharmacology class at IU School of Medicine in Spring 2007. [Awarded in 2006]
Amy J. Hatfield, M.L.S. was awarded a Central Indiana Community Foundation Library Fund grant: The Central Indiana Bioethics Portal. The Indiana University Center for Bioethics Reference Center (Bioethics Reference Center) was recently established (2005) as a non-circulating branch library of the Indiana University School of Medicine Medical Libraries. Because the Bioethics Reference Center is a non-circulating library with a specialized collection, we are developing virtual reference services and digital collections to serve our many constituencies. The Bioethics Reference Center has two priority goals: (1) fulfill the bioethics-related information needs of the life sciences communities served by the Indiana University School of Medicine Medical Libraries and Indiana University Center for Bioethics by means of (2) developing virtual information services and products such as a searchable, online catalog of our print collection, and web-accessible Bioethics Digital Library (BEDL) and Central Indiana Bioethics Portal. In addition to our primary constituencies, the Bioethics Reference Center will engage the future Indiana life sciences workforce by piloting the Central Indiana Bioethics Portal resource in selected Marion county high school and undergraduate academic programs. The Indiana Department of Education's Academic Standards & Resources already recognize the importance of bioethics in the high school curriculum. Many lessons and benchmarks identified in the Academic Standards & Resources, Grade 9-12 Biology I curriculum, for example, include bioethics topics and issues. The Bioethics Reference Center is poised to assist students and teachers researching these topics by creating a specialized, online resource that specifically addresses bioethics research needs.
[Awarded in 2006]
Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D, has received a grant from the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation to create a Program in the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in Predictive Health Research. The grant is for $750,000 over three years. [Awarded in 2006]
More information...
Paul Helft, M.D., Director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics & IUCB Core Faculty, has received a three-year grant of $250,000 from the Methodist Health Foundation's Hospital Society Endowment Fund to underwrite start-up expenses for the Fairbanks Program in Nursing Ethics.
Clarian announcement.
Eric M. Meslin, Ph.D., Director of the Indiana University Center for Bioethics, is a Co-Principal Investigator of a new $13,000 Greenwall Foundation grant: Reassessing National Bioethics Commissions in the United States. [Awarded May, 2007]
