UNMC College of Nursing faculty members received two major research grants in April.
Windy Alonso, PhD, and Michele Balas, PhD, were each awarded National Institute of Health (NIH) grants in April.
Alonso’s project, “HEART Camp Connect: Promoting Adherence to Exercise in Adults with Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction,” is a five-year, $3.85 million National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-sponsored project.
According to the project summary, “heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is one of the greatest unmet needs in cardiovascular medicine today.” The study is a randomized controlled trial testing the effects of two behavioral interventions against enhanced usual care on adherence to moderate intensity exercise in 300 adults experiencing the condition.
Dr. Alonso’s team includes Bunny Pozehl, PhD, Kevin Kupzyk, PhD, and graduate research assistant Erin Salahshurian, PhD student from the UNMC College of Nursing. Her team also includes Sara Bills, DPT, and Joseph Norman, PhD, from the UNMC College of Allied Health; Cheng Zheng, PhD, from the UNMC College of Public Health; Scott Lundgren, DO, and Alfred Fisher, MD, PhD, from the College of Medicine; and collaborators from Henry Ford Health of Detroit and the University of Utah.
Dr. Balas, in collaboration with Breanna Hetland, PhD, earned funding for “Behavioral Economic and Staffing Strategies to Increase Adoption of the “ABCDEF Bundle in the ICU.” The project is a $6.6 million, five-year, bi-phasic study dually sponsored by the National Institute of Nursing Research and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Through the project, Dr. Balas’ team will develop and support the “real world” assessment of strategies used to foster adoption of several safe and highly efficacious mechanical ventilation liberation and symptom management practices in health care systems that provide care to critically ill adults with known health disparities.
The study results will support development of simple, effective ways to accelerate the reliable uptake of evidence-based ICU interventions, which will ultimately improve the care and outcomes of millions of critically ill adults annually.
Throughout the first phase of the project (UH3), the team will collaborate with NIH’s Health System Research Collaboratory Coordinating Center and community partners to enhance and finalize the implementation strategies and research methods used to facilitate and evaluate the effectiveness of “ABCDEF Bundle” adoption.
After the first year, the study will move to phase two and commence the clinical trial activities in three geographically and organizationally distinct safety net hospitals at Nebraska Medical Center, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.