{"id":7599,"date":"2016-11-07T15:11:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2016-12-06T13:11:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T18:11:06","slug":"dartmouth-synergy-improving-community-health-through-local-research-partnerships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2016\/dartmouth-synergy-improving-community-health-through-local-research-partnerships\/","title":{"rendered":"Dartmouth SYNERGY: Improving Community Health Through Local Research Partnerships"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many papers and grants that have published on things that never get put into practice, and that\u2019s because the end-user is not involved in the identification or design of what the need is.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

- Stephen Bartels, MD, MS
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One afternoon several months ago, Dartmouth researcher Sarah Pratt received a phone call she didn\u2019t expect. Brian Collins, who heads up a behavioral health and developmental services organization in Strafford County in New Hampshire, had a proposal he wanted to discuss with her.<\/p>\n

Collins had previously been part of a statewide research effort that Pratt and her colleagues at Dartmouth\u2019s Health Promotion Research Center<\/a> had helped lead. It showed that offering wellness incentives, such as memberships to gyms and Weight Watchers to people with severe mental illness could significantly reduce their high risk of developing cardiovascular disease\u2014a major reason why they die on average about 25 years earlier than the rest of the population.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wondered if an adaptation of that program could achieve similar results for my clients with developmental disabilities (DD), who also suffer from high rates of heart disease and premature death,\u201d says Collins, executive director of Community Partners NH<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their interaction was quite different from the norm. \u201cUsually, a researcher approaches the community with a study proposal and essentially gets them to sign off on it,\u201d explains Pratt, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine<\/a> and of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research<\/a>. \u201cHere was someone with expertise in providing vital services in the community reaching out to us. Not only was he identifying a real need, he wanted to partner with us in a research effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Community Engagement Research Pilot Awards<\/span><\/h3>\n
\"Stephen
Stephen Bartels, MD, MS and Sally Kraft, MD, MPH co-directors of the SYNERGY Community Engagement Research Core.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Collins\u2019 timing couldn\u2019t have been better. A new funding mechanism, offered by SYNERGY, Dartmouth\u2019s Clinical and Translational Science Institute<\/a>, had become available in the form of pilot awards in early 2016, and was specifically designed to support this kind of effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main goal with our pilot funding is to support community engagement research that emphasizes the community\u2019s role in developing and translating knowledge into improvements in clinical practice, community programs, or social determinants that impact health or health policy,\u201d explains Stephen Bartels, MD, MS, who co-directs SYNERGY\u2019s Community Engagement Research Core.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe strong involvement we\u2019ve had from community members throughout the whole process\u2014from pilot design, to requiring that researchers have a community partner engaged in their work in order to qualify for funding, to reviewing the pilot applications\u2014gives us a unique opportunity to better understand our communities\u2019 needs and how we can help them meet those needs,\u201d says Sally Kraft, MD, MPH, who co-directs the Core with Bartels.<\/p>\n

After announcing they would award three $50,000 one-year pilot awards and issuing a call for proposals, the Core received 17 letters of intent, of which 10 were invited to submit full applications. Three of these projects received Community Engagement Research Awards for 2016 (running from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017)\u2014based largely on their ability to address issues that have been identified by published community health needs assessments, and provide data for future externally funded, full-scale studies.<\/p>\n

Testing Fitness Promotion with People with Developmental Disabilities<\/span><\/h3>\n

Awarded to and co-led by Pratt and Collins, and in collaboration with the University of New Hampshire Institute on Disability<\/a>, the first project \u201cis determining whether the adapted program helps obese and sedentary people with developmental disabilities to become more fit, and whether this is a model that can be used by other area agencies in New Hampshire and across the country,\u201d says Pratt.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah
Sarah I. Pratt, PhD<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Importantly, trained staff members on the project are providing the adapted program, which includes education on healthy eating and exercise, to both clients and their support teams. \u201cThe support teams are a critical piece in this,\u201d explains Collins, \u201csince many people with developmental disabilities aren\u2019t able to, for example, prepare their own meals or drive themselves to a gym and work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very excited to have this opportunity,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe hope this intervention not only shows the potential for improving our clients\u2019 health, but that it can help increase their self-confidence and their sense of belonging to their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enhancing Well-being, Access to Services for People with Mental Illness<\/span><\/h3>\n

A second pilot award project, being co-led by Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, PhD, a research assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College and at The Dartmouth Institute, and Sara Kobylenski, MSW, executive director of the Upper Valley Haven<\/a>, seeks to develop some key recommendations and strategies that can be used to improve mental health in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people struggling with mental health and substance use issues are not receiving treatment, and low-income rural individuals are particularly vulnerable as both rural poverty and mental health disparities are deepening,\u201d explains Carpenter-Song.<\/p>\n

Our project aims to place the voices and experiences of people who live \u2018at the margins\u2019 at the center of designing truly patient-and-family-centered mental health services.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

- Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, PhD<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOur project aims to place the voices and experiences of people who live \u2018at the margins\u2019 at the center of designing truly patient-and-family-centered mental health services,\u201d adds Carpenter-Song, who is utilizing ethnographic interviewing and multimedia storytelling techniques in the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so pleased to have received this pilot award with Elizabeth because of the potential impact this work can have in the region,\u201d says Kobylenski. \u201cAt the Haven, we serve in total about 13,500 people per year who are struggling with poverty by providing food, shelter, education, clothing, and support services at no charge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the Haven community are involved in all aspects of the project, she says, from serving as Advisory Board members, to participating in interviews and group discussions, to helping to interpret findings and eventually sharing key lessons learned with research, social services, and clinical communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need many different approaches to research to help solve the difficult health problems that confront individuals and families in our communities,\u201d says Kobylenski. \u201cWhat SYNERGY is bringing is an opportunity to gain knowledge in a way that hasn\u2019t been available before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enhancing Shared Decision Making for Individuals with Depression<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u201cI saw involvement in this project as an opportunity to hopefully make some good out of the experiences that we\u2019ve had,\u201d says Jim Matthews, who has suffered from depression and also been a caregiver for family members who have struggled with the disease.<\/p>\n

Matthews is partnering with Paul Barr, PhD, MSc, an assistant professor of The Dartmouth Institute, on a third SYNERGY pilot award project aimed at developing a digital platform that links routine screening for depression with what\u2019s called an Option Grid decision aid for patients with depression in primary care offices.<\/p>\n

\"Paul
Paul Barr, MSc, PhD<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"With about 16 million adults in the US having at least one major depressive episode each year, depression has enormous social, financial, and health-related impact,\u201d says Barr. \u201cAnd we know that individuals with depression are not adequately engaged in treatment decision-making, which negatively impacts their care. We believe that this kind of tool, made available on tablets for patients as they wait to see their physician and seamlessly embedded in clinic workflows, can have real impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe project is informed by previous work we did that led to a paper-based version of the tool, which was well liked and readily accepted when reviewed by clinicians and patients,\u201d adds Barr. In partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Mental Health America, patients (like Matthews), caregivers and consumers, the new tool is being evaluated in a series of focus groups at Dartmouth-Hitchcock<\/a> primary care clinics in Nashua, NH.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the real strengths of this research approach, in addition to being scientifically sound, is it includes perspectives from patients and family members,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cThat\u2019s very encouraging because it seems like an approach that is more likely to deliver meaningful results to the people that it\u2019s supposed to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about SYNERGY\u2019s Community Engagement Research Core, visit: https:\/\/synergy.dartmouth.edu\/community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three innovative research pilots, pairing Dartmouth investigators with community-based partners, are being funded by Dartmouth SYNERGY\u2019s Community Engagement Research Core to address challenging health problems facing our communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":7606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[780,782,781,37,436,45],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-community-outreach","tag-developmental-disability","tag-disability","tag-mental-health","tag-synergy","tag-tdi","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/11\/SYNERGY-comm-partners.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-1Yz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7615,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions\/7615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}