Thursday, July 29, 2010

From Lab To L.A.:Keck School Uses NIH Award

USC's Keck School of Medicine will be putting a 58 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to good use in the communities of the Los Angeles Basin.The Clinical and Translational Science Award supports and promotes scientific discoveries and their health care applications in the real world.The Keck School will focus the award on the health problems of people in the densely populated urban environment of the Los Angeles Basin.The Clinical and Translational Science Institute already exists at Keck,presided over by Dr.Thomas A. Buchanan,Associate Dean for Clinical Research at Keck.USC competed with 38 other institutions for one of the nine awards.
Clinical and translational research connects basic scientists to clinical and community researchers and practitioners with the goal of accelerating the translation of lab discoveries into practical help for citizens.It can take up to 20 years for such discoveries to make their way into communities without the benefit of the perspective of clinical and translational research..Some of the many problems Keck and its several partners in academia,government and other realms are addressing include:
1.Relationship between childhood obesity and leukemia;
2.Disparities in health outcomes between sickle cell disease patients in L.A. and those elsewhere;and
3.Relationship between air pollution and the prevalence of chronic disease in urban communities.
Besides other professional schools at USC,among Keck's research partners are Kaiser Permanente of Southern California,the L.A. County health system and Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

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