The Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH) announced the first recipients of its inaugural Data Core Pilot Grant Awards, providing crucial funding to four interdisciplinary research teams focused on advancing health care and population health studies.
Each of the four selected teams will receive up to $35,000 over a 12-month period. This funding is specifically intended to support projects that leverage the extensive data resources and analytic capabilities of the IFH Data Core—a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-compliant shared research facility.
“We’re thrilled to support these promising projects through the Data Core Pilot Grant Program,” Dr. Daniel Horton, faculty director of the IFH Data Core. “These awards reflect our commitment to catalyzing data-driven research that addresses pressing health challenges and produces actionable insights.”
The pilot grant program was established by IFH leaders to foster cross-disciplinary research across the university utilizing the Data Core’s electronic data assets, which include national Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data, the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, and New Jersey-based datasets like the Integrated Population Health Data Project.
Inaugural award recipients and projects
The four diverse research teams receiving the inaugural awards are tackling critical areas of health and policy:
- Hospital Compliance and Policy: Hilal Atasoy and Brad Nathan of the Rutgers Business School will link Medicare claims with audit records to examine “Audits, Errors, and Hospital Compliance.”
- Oncology and End-of-Life Care: Login George of the Rutgers School of Nursing and IFH’s Center for Healthy Aging is studying “Stopping Cancer-Directed Therapies at the End of Life — Role of Oncologist Emotional Competencies.”
- Cancer Screening: Missak Haigentz, Chief of Thoracic and Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute, is focusing on a retrospective evaluation of suspicious neoplastic lesions found during cardiac calcium score imaging.
- Maternal Health Disparities in New Jersey: Mobolaji Ibitoye from the Rutgers School of Public Health will research “Maternal Outcomes and Severe Maternal Morbidity Among U.S.-Born and Foreign-Born Black Women in New Jersey,” utilizing the state’s population health data.
The IFH Data Core, backed by funding from the Rutgers Roadmaps for Collective Academic Excellence, offers researchers access to a HIPAA-compliant computing environment, specialized analytic services, and consultation on study design, all aimed at empowering rigorous and impactful studies that inform policy and improve health outcomes in the state and beyond.
