At Friday’s University of Nebraska Board of Regents meeting, Steven Hinrichs, M.D., presented an update on bioterrorism proposals and projects involving faculty and researchers from the four University of Nebraska campuses. Dr. Hinrichs is director of the University of Nebraska Center for Biosecurity and professor in the department of pathology and microbiology at the UNMC.
“A great deal of progress has been made this year and much of it is due to contributions by leaders in Nebraska, including the governor and our congressional delegation,” said UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D. “We also are very pleased with the support provided by the business community.”
At the meeting, Dr. Hinrichs highlighted a variety of bioterrorism-related projects involving the University of Nebraska, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Nebraska Health and Human Services System (HHSS) and private business.
“Nebraska has been unique in that it has had tremendous collaboration among government, academia and the private business sector,” Dr. Hinrichs said. “This collaboration has received much attention and is now being referred to as the Nebraska Model.”
Last month, DHS announced the University of Nebraska was one of 12 universities (out of 72) invited to submit a full grant proposal for a university-based research center related to the economic consequences of terrorism. The $12 million grant would examine the concept that alternative strategies can be developed to minimize the economic impact of terrorist attacks on the transportation and supply distribution infrastructure of the United States. It would be housed at the University of Nebraska’s Peter Kiewit Institute, located at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s south campus, under principal investigator Gerald Wagner, Ph.D., of the UNO College of Information Science and Technology.
Richard Raymond, M.D., chief medical officer for Nebraska HHSS, spoke about the combined efforts of HHSS and the university. “This partnership has benefited all Nebraskans,” Raymond said. “It has put us on the national map.”
“We have been very successful in developing university projects that have received or will be receiving federal funding in cooperation with the Nebraska HHSS,” Dr. Hinrichs said.
Listed below are some of the units which have received project funding:
- The Nebraska Public Health Laboratory;
- The UNL Center for Advanced Land Management and Information Technology;
- The Health Professions Tracking Center at UNMC;
- The UNO Aviation Institute;
- The Nebraska Center for Bioterrorism Education;
- A UNK chemistry laboratory;
- A high-risk isolation facility at UNMC.
The university continues to seek designation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a national bioterrorism preparedness center, Dr. Hinrichs said. In addition, the university has received federal funding in the form of a Department of Defense appropriations bill that provides $2.5 million for UNMC to take its clinical laboratory automation technology to the next level. The allocation to UNMC would be used to develop portable and networked automation testing technology that would efficiently and rapidly process specimens to detect the existence of biological agents in the event of a biological attack.
UNMC recently received a two-year, $650,000 federal grant from the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) to develop a bioterrorism-related curriculum, which will benefit all UNMC students and may be used by students nationally. UNMC was one of 12 universities nationwide to receive curriculum-development funding through the Health and Human Services Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program.