The Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) has been awarded funding to enhance capacity for data science in health equity research.
The southwest region of the United States is a beautiful part of the country, filled with rich culture, incredible landscapes, and a strong need for health equity intervention. SHERC, the largest research initiative within the Center for Community Health and Engaged Research (CHER), specifically addresses health and wellness disparities through community-based research.
CHER is home to multiple grant-funded initiatives that help the center reach its goal of attaining health equity for all, with a focus on underserved populations.
SHERC over the years
Established over seven years ago and the largest initiative within CHER, SHERC continues to provide a strong foundation for researchers, students, and community partners to improve health equity research in the southwest. SHERC researchers have tackled an array of basic biomedical, clinical, and behavioral health disparities since it began in 2017, adding major research and pilot projects each year.
SHERC was initially awarded $21.4 million to operate from 2017 to 2022, and was successful in renewing SHERC for another five years, securing an additional $21 million to explore groundbreaking health equity research in the southwest.
A growing component in health equity research that SHERC plans to expand upon this year is data science, which aligns with the National Institutes of Health’s strategic priorities.
SHERC leadership recognized the growing need for data science representation. In 2023, faculty members Monica Lininger, Catherine Propper, Heidi Wayment and Julie Baldwin submitted a proposal to the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) aimed to increase and sustain capacity and infrastructure for data science at the University level. SHERC was successful in securing a two-year supplement funded for $760,345 in coordination with NIMHD’s data science priority. SHERC has received supplements worth over $3.1 million from 2017 to 2022.
Digging into data science
The proposal included two specific ways SHERC plans to bolster the data science infrastructure at NAU. The project aims to:
- expand data science capacity at NAU, ultimately expanding the institutional workforce, and
- increase utilization of Big Data by health equity investigators through enhanced data science curricula, mentored training, and educational opportunities.
SHERC will meet these objectives by hiring a data scientist, creating a Data Science Skills Workshop series, and mentoring doctoral and undergraduate students using the All of Us dataset. The All of Us dataset is becoming one of the largest biomedical resources, with representation from a diverse group of over 800,000 participants.
The new data scientist, a member of the CHER Technical Assistance Group – Service Center (TAG-SC) will have expertise supporting faculty and staff to use the All of Us dataset in their research projects, which will allow for more extensive questions to be answered for those in the communities that we serve. They will work closely with Monica Lininger, TAG-SC director, to support health equity data science at NAU and in the local community. Lininger added her thoughts on receiving the data science Supplement.
SHERC’s success
Over the last seven years, SHERC affiliated faculty have been awarded 146 grants worth over $89 million, with a growing number of early-stage investigators and underrepresented faculty leading those projects.
SHERC affiliated faculty have made NAU history by earning the first K01 award, the first K00/K99 award, and being home to NAU’s first Native American Regents’ Professor and first elected member of the National Academy of Medicine: Julie Baldwin. Baldwin, SHERC principal investigator, is thrilled that the SHERC team was able to obtain this Supplement.
The SHERC roadmap
Each year, SHERC has grown to support a myriad of researchers, from the very beginnings of an idea, to evaluating the completed research project. A researcher’s journey through SHERC could involve:
- Help from the TAG-SC team with survey or interview development, statistical support, or qualitative analysis
- Funding to meet and develop ideas with community partners through the Community-Campus Partnership Support Program
- 2-year support and funding for a pilot project through the Pilot Project Program
- Promotional photos, videos, and news features through the CHER/SHERC Communications team
As the plans in the latest awarded supplement start to unfold, SHERC’s capacity to support data science will build avenues for health equity investigators to grow in this critical research area.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health under Award No. U54MD012388. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.