News
Organ Donation Group Seeks Partners for AHRQ Grant Application
April 9, 2007
Dr. Fouad Beydoun, President and CEO of the International Association for Organ Donation, invites WSU researchers to partner with his organization on a grant application to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Through its grant, “Public Education Efforts to Increase Solid Organ and Tissue Donation Program”, HRSA offers to support the implementation of public education strategies that have been effective in promoting health behavior change. The program is intended to educate the public about the need for solid organ and tissue donation and to encourage positive donation decision, documentation, and family donation discussions. WSU’s role would be to develop the public education program.
The HRSA funding opportunity announcement can be found at the HRSA website, www.hrsa.gov. Look for HRSA-07-126, “Public Education Efforts to Increase Solid Organ and Tissue Donation Program”.
Dr. Beydoun can be reached at (313) 745-2379 or fbeydoun@dmc.org.
Public Health Collaboration Continues to Grow
January 30, 2007
Dozens of researchers and administrators from the University of Windsor and Wayne State University met earlier this month to develop and further extend health related research collaborations between the two institutions. The meeting featured welcoming remarks from Windsor’s Vice President for Research and from the Provost, an overview of WSU’s Master of Public Health program, and small group discussions about specific research projects.
Drs. Richard Severson and David Burnett provided attendees with an overview of the MPH program at Wayne State and a list of the core and elective classes that are required to complete the program. They invited attendees from the University of Windsor to suggest ideas for courses and collaborative teaching.
Dr. Michael Diamond, PI for Wayne State’s Clinical and Translational Science Award planning grant, led a group discussion about the role the University of Windsor might play in Wayne State’s CTSA plan. A recent NIH decision that allows d omestic institutions to use CTSA resources as support for foreign component activities, created an opportunity for Wayne State and the University of Windsor to collaborate in some way on the CTSA.
Other groups met to discuss collaborative research in the areas of childhood obesity, violence against women, gambling addiction, language and communication in health, influenza vaccination rates in healthcare providers, and mapping public health data.
Follow up meetings have been scheduled in March and April.
HASTAC
January 22, 2007
HASTAC (pronounced “haystack”) is an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, a national consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists, and engineers from universities and other civic institutions across the country that are committed to new forms of collaboration fostered by creative uses of technology. Since 2003, HASTAC has been developing tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other digital projects. The aim of HASTAC is to promote expansive models for thinking, teaching and research.
Wayne State participates in the national organization through its own HASTAC group, led by Professor Julie Thompson Klein from Interdisciplinary Studies. The group is honored to have been selected as one of the local sites to participate in the national HASTAC 2006-2007 In/Formation Year presentation series.
In/Formation Year consists of public programming exploring the humane and humanistic dimensions of technology and featuring new technological innovations. Each month, events are broadcast on the HASTAC website. The theme of the Wayne State event, which will be held on February 23, 2007, is In/Tegration, representing Interdisciplinary academic collaborations and the Interinstitutional partnerships among universities, libraries, and museums.
In/Tegration is a three-part conference in adjacent spaces of the Adamany Undergraduate Library. It features interactive demonstrations of the WSU Libraries Digital Projects, created in partnership with The Henry Ford and the Detroit Historical Museum, a keynote address by John Wilkin of the Google Print Library and the University of Michigan Libraries, and a panel on Remediating English Studies. The local sponsors of the event are the Humanities Center, the University Libraries, Office of the Vice President for Research, the Academy of Scholars, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, with added support from the Departments of English and Interdisciplinary Studies.
For further information about the national HASTAC organization or the February 23 WSU event contact the local HASTAC Campus Administrator, Professor Julie Thompson Klein, at (ad5820@wayne.edu). For information on the complete In/Formation Year series see the national HASTAC website www.hastac.org.
Center to Advance Palliative Care Excellence
January 12, 2007
Dr. Robert Zalenski wanted to create a Center that would be a source of hope and healing, and would help dying patients at the Detroit Medical Center, the Veteran’s Administration Hospital, and beyond. With his outstanding team of clinicians, researchers and educators, he is doing just that.
The Center to Advance Palliative-Care Excellence, CAPE, isan interdisciplinary community of researchers, teachers, and clinicians dedicated to discovering knowledge and disseminating practices that promote excellent care for those with life-threatening, life-limiting, and incurable illnesses.
Despite similarities in the frequency and importance of birth and death, huge disparities exist in research, education, and treatment for the care of patients during these milestones. The rapidly expanding elderly population and explosive growth of medical technology mandate a systematic approach to care at the end of life, i.e., the discipline of palliative care.
CAPE members hope to make a significant difference in the way that life, death, and illness are experienced in American society and to that end, they integrate palliative care with curative medicine. They seek to forge new links between the many diverse communities committed to excellence in palliative care, and they hold in high esteem the energy and synthesis of diverse approaches and perspectives that lead to innovation.
The goals of CAPE are to obtain sponsored research, develop education and training programs for the multidisciplinary teams, and to further develop model programs of clinical palliative care. A palliative care Fellowship (Co-Directed by Drs. Finn and McDonald) was started in July ’05. The first ever Palliative Medicine Fellow is Dana Buick, MD, a WSUSOM alum and graduate of Provident’s Family Practice Residency.
For additional information about CAPE, contact Denise Waselewsky, Research Coordinator, Department of Emergency Medicine, (313) 745-4350.
WSU Collaborates with DSO
December 13, 2006
Wayne State University and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have added a new dimension to their longstanding partnership with the recent launch of a new collaborative research project. The project focuses on the DSO’s collection of music from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Music Project.
Part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program to replace welfare with work, the Federal Music Project hired out-of-work instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, and copyists to create, perform, catalog, and copy musical scores. Some of the Music Project employees were organized into concert orchestras, some composed, and some worked as music teachers. The Music Project continued for eight years in Michigan, from 1935 to 1943.
About forty of the Music Project employees were hired to work as copyists in Michigan. Through their efforts, the music of the great masters, most of which had never been published, was copied from the original manuscript and made available to any orchestra that wanted it. The copyists reproduced scores with the precision of architects, so perfectly that the pieces can be used today in the same way as purchased copies. The DSO library is home to hundreds of these exceptional quality, hand copied manuscripts.
The manuscripts came to the attention of Wayne State University’s Professor Terese Volk a few months ago. Dr. Volk, a Professor of Music, is a music historian and member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education. After DSO’s Principal Librarian Robert Stiles showed her the library’s collection of hand copied music, Dr. Volk’s initial curiosity about the WPA Music Project quickly developed into a plan for a research project and partnership with the library to catalog all of the scores that were copied in Michigan. Related projects are also being planned, including:
- Creating a biographical sketch for each of the copyists who worked on the project;
- Searching past brochures to see if the scores have been performed at the DSO;
- Preserving the manuscripts;
- Making the manuscripts accessible to the public, for example by creating a website;
- Performing pieces written by WPA Music Project composers.
After a trip to the National Archives uncovered the information that WPA copyists had also worked in Grand Rapids, Dr. Volk paid a visit to the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra. There, she discovered hundreds more of the hand copied manuscripts.
Dr. Volk expects this project to take several years to complete.
Institute of Mental Health Hosts Symposium
October 25, 2006
Wayne State University’s Institute of Mental Health held its first Symposium on September 8, 2006. The symposium was designed to facilitate the organizational development of the Institute, lay the groundwork for the establishment of effective collaborations, identify further research topics of common interest and need, and establish a means of communicating best practice standards.
Patrick Barrie, Deputy Director of Michigan’s Mental Health Substance Abuse Administration was the keynote speaker. Mr. Barrie described the current state of mental health services in Michigan and emphasized the need for researchers and service providers to work together to build a better system of mental health services. Susan Moran, Acting Director of the Medicaid Services Administration, followed with a presentation of the current Medicaid eligibility and enrollment, and trends for the past several years. The morning ended with presentations of the clinical research projects that have been funded by the Michigan Department of Community Health.
The Symposium included representatives from universities, regional or state mental health organizations, and mental health service providers. The afternoon session was focused on developing recommendations for the Institute in six areas: Building Public/Academic Relationships, Planning and Fostering Continuity and Coordination of Care, Developing Pilot Programs in Health Services Research, Dissemination of Best Practice Models of Care, Evaluating Best Practice Models, and Mental Health Policy.
The idea to develop an Institute of Mental Health at WSU arose from the Michigan Mental Health Commission’s October 2004 recommendations for reforming the State’s mental health system. One of the Commission’s key recommendations was to establish an Institute where evidence-based mental health practices throughout Michigan could be identified, developed, evaluated and implemented.
In response to the Commission’s recommendation Dr. Helene Lycaki spearheaded a successful effort to build an Institute around a core of collaborative research projects already in place at Wayne State University. The State accepted WSU’s proposal for an Institute and in November 2005, WSU awarded a provisional charter to the new Institute of Mental Health.
A key component of WSU’s proposal to the State involves the development of statewide collaborations between researchers and providers. The Institute currently has affiliations with 13 Colleges and Departments at WSU, three Michigan Universities, five Community Mental Health agencies, and three advocacy groups. More collaborators will be added during the next year.
To view the Michigan Mental Health Commission’s Final Report and MDCH’s Transforming Mental Health Care in Michigan: A Plan for Implementing Recommendations of the Michigan Mental Health Commission, go to http://www.michigan.gov/mentalhealth.
Interdisciplinary Course Receives Award
October 13, 2006
The Wayne State University End-of-Life Interdisciplinary Course will be the recipient of the 2006 Michigan Cancer Consortium Spirit of Collaboration Honorable Mention Award. The Spirit of Collaboration Awards will be presented during a luncheon at the MCC Annual Meeting on November 3, 2006 at the DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. Dr. Stephanie Myers Schim will accept the award on behalf of the CAPEWAYNE group.
The interdisciplinary end-of-life (EOL) graduate course was initiated in 2001 in response to an identified need to address EOL education issues in the Wayne State University (WSU) community. The course was developed by a grass-roots group called the WSU End-of-Life Interdisciplinary Project (EOLIP) under the leadership of Dr. Donald Gelfand (Retired-Sociology) and Dr. Dick Raspa (ISP) and others. The EOLIP’s long-term goal was to improve EOL care in the Detroit Metropolitan area via education and collaboration between academics and service providers.
This course has been operating and expanding and is the product of an ongoing collaboration of academics and service providers representing at least 16 units of WSU and a dozen care provider organizations serving the WSU community. The EOLIP collaboration produced a number of products including the graduate course receiving the MCC Award and a 2005 book published by Springer under the title End-of-Life Stories: Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries (Gelfand, Raspa, Briller, & Schim, 2005). The EOLIP group has now become a vital part of the WSU Center to Advance Palliative-Care Excellence (CAPEWAYNE).
This successful graduate course on EOL issues is cross-listed in Anthropology (7430/5430), Interdisciplinary Studies (7510), Library Science (7635), Nursing (7515), and Sociology (7020/5020) and is fully enrolled each time it is offered. Student evaluations of teaching for the course and other forms of feedback suggest that this course has been life altering for many students and growth producing for most.
The course will be offered again in Winter 2006 on Thursday evenings at the Mack Avenue offices of Hospice of Michigan.
Complex Systems at WSU
October 8, 2006
The Complex Systems Interdisciplinary Collaborative Group provides a home for Complex Systems research at Wayne State University. Led by Professor David Bowen, Interdisciplinary Studies, the group meets monthly to share and discuss current research, to build collaborations and develop proposals for external grant funding, and to develop training programs for other researchers across campus.
The field of Complex Systems includes:
- Agent-Based Modeling “Agents” are typically virtual people, but can be any entity, such as a molecule, a disease organism, a gene, a person, a family or a census tract. The rules for agent action and interaction are described, translated into computer algorithms and programmed, and the system runs as a computer simulation. Common outputs of simulations are dynamic graphics and history files. History files can be inputs for the other methods below.
- Data Mining. Databases can be analyzed and searched for deep relationships using techniques such as fuzzy logic, neural networks and genetic and cultural algorithms. The database elements can include both the nodes and links in an agent-based model. Deep relationships in an existing database can also used to develop the interaction rules for an agent-based model of the underlying system.
- Network Analysis. Many complex systems can be described as a series of nodes, such as agents, linked together into a network (here, including but by no means limited to, computer communications networks. The structure of the network of links typically falls into one of several archetypes, such as "democratic," in which all nodes have approximately equal numbers of links, or "hierarchical," in which the distribution of nodes with n links commonly follow an inverse power law in n. The robustness of a network, or its ability to recover from disturbances, depends upon this structure. Data mining can be used on the structure of links from an agent-based model.
Complex Systems analysis typically involves multiple disciplines, and is applied in many areas, such as:
- Simulation of social systems such as ancient civilizations, marketing campaigns and terrorist networks;
- Development of biological systems such as evolution or species survival;
- Analysis of physical systems such as the electrical grid or traffic flow;
- Modeling of disease progression.
There will be a conference, "Complexity and Business Analytics: Theory and Applications," held on Saturday October 14, 2006 in the Undergraduate Library on the WSU campus. This is a cooperative program, with participation by Wayne State University, University of Michigan, UM Dearborn, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Chrysler Corporation and TACOM. For more information about the conference, visit the Complex Systems website http://complex.wayne.edu or contact David Bowen, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, at d.r.bowen@wayne.edu .
The Complex Systems Group is actively seeking others within WSU, both to join in planning and to participate in projects. To join the Complex Systems LISTSERV, contact David Bowen, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, at d.r.bowen@wayne.edu.
GIS Software: A Tool for Research
September 27, 2006
Most health and human service problems facing the world today exist in a geographic context. Understanding issues ranging from medical epidemiology and healthcare access to human behavior, emergency preparedness, and environmental issues requires a comprehensive understanding of their geography. Leading the charge in the quest for visualizing, analyzing, creating, and managing data with a geographic component has been Geographic Information Systems technology.
Geographic Information Systems, commonly known as GIS, refers to the collection of software, hardware, people, and protocols that are involved in the collection, storage, analysis and dissemination of geographically based information. Whether they relate to people, places, events or processes, GIS can be used to test hypotheses, describe patterns and model processes. However, the greatest advantage of GIS may be its ability to incorporate multiple layers of data while addressing the data’s spatial-temporal dimension.
Location, Location, Location
One of the strongest arguments for looking at research through a GIS lens is that it provides observations with context: processes can be examined in their geographic settings. GIS supports research in a variety of ways:
- Linguists use GIS to understand the spatial arrangement of language dialects.
- Business schools use GIS to refine target marketing techniques .
- Hydrologists use GIS to map the spread of toxins in subsurface water.
- Medicine uses GIS to relate health outcomes to socioeconomic status.
- Archeologists use GIS to find hidden civilizations.
- Criminal Justice uses GIS to examine crime patterns.
- Social researchers use GIS to link behavior and genetics in drug abuse.
- Epidemiologists use GIS to address public health concerns.
What can GIS do for you? GIS provides researchers with the tools to visualize, explore, and analyze data, revealing patterns, relationships, and trends that may not be readily apparent in databases, spreadsheets, or statistical packages. In addition, other methodologies from statistics to ethnography can be examined in conjunction with GIS. This use of multi-method approaches can add to the validity and power of scientific research.
WSU Site License
Wayne State University recently purchased a University-wide license for ArcView, a full featured GIS software suite. You can order your copy of ArcView from the Software Clearinghouse, a service of C&IT. The ArcView package includes Crystal Reports, ESRI Data and Maps, and other modules. Visit clearinghouse.wayne.edu for more information.
On October 18, the Office of the Vice President for Research and C&IT will host a drop-in informational session about the software, with presentations by Wayne State researchers who currently use GIS software for their medical, social and scientific research. Watch for announcements about this session in the listing for Faculty Commons, in Research @ Wayne, on flyers around campus, and from C&IT.
INPHAASE to Release RFP
September 15, 2006
The Institutes for Population Studies, Health Assessment, Administration, Services and Economics (INPHAASE) plans to release the RFP for its third round of research funding on September 18, 2006. INPHAASE is co-sponsored by Wayne State University and the Henry Ford Health System.
INPHAASE research activities are directed toward the problems of chronic disease prevention, management and health promotion in large urban areas, and include programs to change individual and population behavior related to health status, as well as the behavior of health care systems and providers. Areas of research that have been considered for funding in the past include:
- High impact risk factors for chronic diseases, for example tobacco use, alcohol abuse, obesity, physical inactivity, injuries (intentional and not).
- Geriatric health management, for example Alzheimer’s Disease, COPD, and stroke.
- Chronic degenerative adult diseases such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.
- Infant and adolescent-associated diseases, including high-risk pregnancy and infant mortality.
- Mental health issues such as substance abuse, depression, and schizophrenia.
- Cancer, including early detection, screening, and survivorship.
- Occupational health.
- End of life care.
INPHAASE is a coordinated effort to bring together researchers from Wayne State University and the Henry Ford Health System with research expertise devoted to understanding the biological and social bases for health disparities among populations of differing demographics. The seed money awarded through and INPHAASE grant is expected to spur work that will lead to externally funded, inter-institutional teams of investigators.
Past recipients of INPHAASE awards:
- Economic and Work Place Impact of Glycemic Control in Diabetics . PI Juan Tunceli.
- Brief At-Risk Alcohol Use Intervention . PI Eric Johnson.
- Using Information Technology to Improve Depression Care . PI Lori Zeman.
- Population Health Monitoring System. PI Lee Kallenbach.
- Targeted Risk Reduction Strategies for Adolescents: One Size Does Not Fit All . PI Antonia Abbey.
- Creating a Platform of Ongoing Fundable Lupus/Women’s Health Research . PI’s Patricia Dhar and Robert Sokol.
