Professors Win Strategic Direction Spark Award.
Professors Win Strategic Direction Spark Award
Amruta Nori-Sarma and Jaimie Gradus will use Medicaid data to study the adverse impacts of climate on the most vulnerable populations across the United States.
Amruta Nori-Sarma, an assistant professor of environmental health, and Jaimie Gradus, a professor of epidemiology, have received a Strategic Direction Spark Award from idea hub to obtain Medicaid claims data for research on climate and health.
Nori-Sarma explained that the award has enabled SPH researchers to “strengthen a collaboration with the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI) and facilitate access for climate and health researchers of BU to over a decade of nationwide Medicaid claims data, as well as computing resources to sustainably conduct research in this claims dataset.”
Award funds have been allocated to purchase all Medicaid in-patient hospitalization data from 2013-2018,” Nori-Sarma says. “While that data purchase is ongoing, we have begun preliminary work to understand the physical and mental health impacts of extreme heat exposure among Medicaid beneficiaries between 2005-2012.” Additionally, the data will enable researchers to “more completely characterize the impacts of climate related extreme weather on health in a highly vulnerable population, across the US,” Nori-Sarma says.
Vanessa Edouard, director of idea hub, the entrepreneurship incubator at SPH, says pilot grants such as the Strategic Direction Spark Award support innovative thinking and encourage faculty to try something new.
Idea hub awards “often serve as a launching point for independent research portfolios for early career researchers or preliminary data for larger grant applications,” Edouard says. “They are an important part of the school’s ethos to continuously evolve our methods and thinking, towards the improvement of population health.”
The aim of the Strategic Direction Spark Award, according to idea hub, is to “catalyze new collaborations leading to a body of innovative research that aligns with one or more of our strategic directions: cities and health; climate, the planet, and health; health inequities; infectious diseases; and mental and behavioral health.”
Idea hub also facilitates partnerships with different industries, meaning this award or a spin-off project that arises from the award may be applied to the for-profit world. When asked specifically about this possibility, Nori-Sarma says, “There is a huge relevance of research in Medicaid for private companies who are working to develop and implement interventions to mitigate the impacts of extreme weather in vulnerable populations.”
Looking ahead, Nori-Sarma says, “We are working to build a collaboration of environmental and other disciplines across BUSPH who are interested in leveraging Medicaid data to study the adverse impacts of climate on the most vulnerable populations across the US. We are really excited to build out this conversation and collaboration with our colleagues.”