Five McLean Hospital researchers have been awarded NARSAD Young Investigator grants by The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF). Since 1987, the Foundation has invested over $300 million in research to identify causes, improve treatments and develop prevention strategies for a broad range of psychiatric disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, autism, bipolar, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, attention-deficit hyperactivity and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
The 2013 McLean Hospital grant recipients are:
Roee Admon, HMS research fellow in psychiatry, will investigate neural networks responsible for acute reduction of positive mood in patients with depression, with the aim of guiding selection of treatments for individual patients as well as identifying those at risk for depressive disorders.
Mei-Hua Hall, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry, will evaluate the effects of cognitive remediation training intervention for people with depression to guide further improvement of the treatment.
Jodi Lukkes, HMS instructor in psychiatry, is exploring gender-dependent increased vulnerability in adolescent girls to depressive and anxiety-like disorders, and will investigate a potential link between estrogen, social stress and alterations in stress-related brain regions during adolescent development.
Lauren Moran, HMS instructor in psychiatry, seeks to identify a biological marker for nicotine craving in schizophrenia patients, following up on findings that the connection between two regions of the brain decreased in nicotine addiction shows greater impairment in smokers with schizophrenia.
Michael Treadway, HMS instructor in psychology, will test the theory that inflammation is an underlying cause of major depressive disorder by measuring neuroinflammation in simultaneously acquired positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans.
The Young Investigator program is highly selective, and this year a record-breaking number of 1,199 applications were received. Applications are reviewed by members of the Foundation’s Scientific Council, composed of 138 brain and behavior research experts who volunteer their time to select the most promising research to lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating mental illness. Each of the scientists will receive $60,000 over the next two years to study a variety of topics.
Now in its 27th year of bestowing research grants on young scientists, BBRF (formerly known as NARSAD) announced $11.8 million in 200 new, two-year grant awards in 2013.
The VA Boston Healthcare System was recently awarded the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) 2013 Equality Leader logo by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
The annual HEI report indicates, for each rated facility organization, how many of four foundational criteria are being met for LGBT patient-centered care. The “Core Four,” as the criteria are known, include patient non-discrimination, equal visitation, employment non-discrimination and training in LGBT patient-centered care.
The VA Boston met all four criteria. Read more about the VA Boston’s LGBT program.
Christopher Landrigan, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Alisa Khan, HMS clinical fellow in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, were recipients of one of three $50,000 innovation awards. The “Taking on Tomorrow” awards, given during the National Innovation Pediatric Summit by Boston Children’s Hospital, recognize transformative advances in pediatric patient care.
Landrigan and Khan were recognized for an interactive nightly “sign-out form” for families of hospitalized children. Landrigan is also research director of Boston Children’s Inpatient Pediatrics Service and director of the Sleep and Patient Safety Program at Brigham and Women’s and Khan is also a fellow with the Harvard-wide Pediatric Health Services Research Fellowship Program and the Academic Pediatric Hospitalist Fellowship at Boston Children’s.
The family sign-out tool mirrors Boston Children’s I-PASS system for physician-to-physician patient “handoff,” successfully piloted in 10 hospitals. It uses the same I-PASS mnemonic to ensure all clinical details are communicated: Illness severity, Patient summary, Action items (the care plan), Situational awareness (what to watch for) and Synthesis (for families to write questions to providers). The sign-out tool is designed to empower families to play a more active, informed role in managing their children’s health while in the hospital. With the award, the current paper form will become a scalable app that integrates with patients’ electronic medical records.
Three independent judging panels representing research and health care leaders inside and outside Boston Children’s chose the winning entries, which fell in three categories, and were judged for the maturity of the technology, the commercial potential, intellectual property considerations and the strength of the development team.
