Texas Medical Center's Health Policy Institute Announces Collaborative Grant Program Funding

HOUSTON, Dec. 14, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Texas Medical Center's (TMC) Health Policy Institute announced today the recipients of a combined $750,000 in funding through its inaugural Grant Program in Collaborative Health Policy Research.

"The major goals of our Institute are to generate innovative practical approaches to improvement in health policy, and to support collaboration across the 56 member institutions. This program serves both of those goals," said Dr. Arthur Garson, Director of the TMC Health Policy Institute. Texas Medical Center grant applicants were required to meet three, simple criteria.  First, the research team had to include first-time collaborators drawn from two or more TMC organizations.  Second, the one-year project had to promise results that would improve health policy in the near term. And thirdly, these results had to benefit the health of Texans.  The reviewers were from out of state and were chosen to cover the key areas of the 21 original submissions.

"These notable grant recipients are evidence of one of the Texas Medical Center's greatest potential strengths—institutional collaboration," said Dr. Stephen Linder, Associate Director of the TMC Health Policy Institute. "This funding program has brought together some of the leading policy researchers from TMC member institutions in a way that has not been done in the past. As you can see, the principal investigators for our four grants come from four different institutions, with a total of 11 member organizations collaborating."

Grant recipients include:

Increasing Healthcare Access for At-Risk-Populations: Research-based Policies for Mobile Health Clinics
Robert Delgado, PI, UT-SPH, Collaborators: U of H, MDACC, UTMB, and TCH
$148,654

Tracking Implications of Freestanding Emergency Departments for Texans
Vivian Ho, PI, Rice, Collaborators: UT-SPH, Baylor, VAMC
$197,000

Policies, Practices and Structures Impacting the Health and Care Access of Refugee Children
Kenneth Smith, PI, UTMB, Collaborators: U of H, TCH, Baylor
$171,032.70

The TEXAS Project: Transitions Explored and Studied: Leveraging Data to Prevent Readmissions in the TMC
Robert Phillips, PI, Houston Methodist, Collaborators: UTMB, Baylor, CHI-ST. Luke's, Texas A&M
$250,000

About the TMC Health Policy Institute
The TMC Health Policy Institute was established to inform, define and lead health policy, ultimately developing the most effective solutions to improve the health of diverse populations around the globe. Utilizing expertise across the Texas Medical Center's member institutions, the TMC Health Policy Institute addresses fundamental health policy issues important to Houston, the state and the nation including public health advocacy, health care delivery models, health care funding, patient quality outcomes, patient safety and health ethics. The Health Policy Institute launched its first initiative TMC72 in January 2015. TMC72 is a decision support program that offers assistance to state legislators, state and local officials and TMC-member government relations' representatives in evaluating and creating public health policy. In April 2015, the Health Policy Institute released findings from a healthcare survey of Texans called "TMC 2015 Texas Consumer Health Report: A Texas Medical Center-Nielsen Poll."

SOURCE Texas Medical Center