{"id":52766,"date":"2023-11-30T11:59:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/?p=52766"},"modified":"2023-11-30T11:59:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:59:33","slug":"uri-college-of-pharmacy-providence-va-establish-research-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/2023\/11\/30\/uri-college-of-pharmacy-providence-va-establish-research-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"URI College of Pharmacy, Providence VA establish research partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"

The formal agreement creates a URI research hub in the capital city, and bolsters research efforts<\/em><\/p>\n

The University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy<\/a> is establishing a research hub in Providence that will help expand its already robust research program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center<\/a> in the capital city.<\/p>\n

A new memorandum of understanding will spur collaborative research among URI, the VA and Ocean State Research Institute, Inc., a VA-affiliated non-profit research corporation. The five-year agreement establishes a formal relationship among researchers at the College of Pharmacy and the VA\u2014the largest health-care system in the country, which lists research among its core missions\u2014allowing them to collaborate on research grants, combine resources, confirm and expand on each other\u2019s work, and share data to bolster research projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have so many outstanding researchers in the College of Pharmacy, and the VA\u2019s research program\u2014which is already fantastic\u2014will be augmented by this research partnership,\u201d said pharmacy Professor Kerry LaPlante<\/a>, who was recently appointed dean of the URI College of Pharmacy, beginning in January 2024. \u201cThis will give URI researchers direct access to patients and patient samples. We depend on our medical school partnerships and our hospital partnerships because researchers need clinical samples for their studies. Now they can get them through this established relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Projects under the agreement will focus on data science, bench or in-vitro research, health services research and clinical research. URI researchers can request access to the national VA database, encompassing data from up to 8 million veterans and real-world test results. Additionally, they may now be eligible for a VA research appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are extremely pleased to be working with the URI College of Pharmacy,\u201d said Lawrence Connell, VA Providence Healthcare System director. \u201cResearch is a critical component in our commitment to provide veterans with the exceptional health care they’ve earned though their service and sacrifice, both today and in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n

The partnership will help strengthen the VA\u2019s research mission, which includes \u201cimplementation science\u201d to shorten the time it takes for discovery to make tangible impacts on patients\u2019 health. Currently, that timeframe is estimated at 17 years, which researchers aim to shorten to three or four years, LaPlante said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to implement science faster, and this partnership is an important step in that direction,\u201d LaPlante said. \u201cThe mission of the VA is research. They have a long-standing commitment to research, and elevating the care they give Veterans through evidence-based research. That is also why working and partnering with the VA is so exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the formal agreement is new, the arrangement is not unique to LaPlante and other faculty members who have maintained a clinical and research practice at the VA for nearly 20 years. Working with fellow URI professors, graduate students, and researchers at the medical center, LaPlante focuses on antibiotic use, antimicrobial resistance and health policy implementation. Part of her research includes modeling and simulating humanized doses of antibiotics to kill multi-drug-resistant bacteria by changing how antibiotics are used. She is chair of the Rhode Island Department of Health\u2019s Antimicrobial Stewardship and Environmental Task Force, where she led the Rhode Island Antimicrobial Stewardship Expansion Initiative.<\/p>\n

The formal partnership is an important step in advancing care for veterans and Rhode Islanders, LaPlante said, noting that Brown University has a similar agreement. \u201cIt creates an opportunity for the College of Pharmacy and URI in general to have a research hub in Providence,\u201d she said. \u201cWith all the great research being done at URI, at the VA and at Brown, we want to continue to grow this partnership and collaborate. Doing so elevates all of us. It increases access, it synergizes and it elevates the care we give to Rhode Islanders, veterans and all patients.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The formal agreement creates a URI research hub in the capital city, and bolsters research efforts The University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy is establishing a research hub in Providence that will help expand its already robust research program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in the capital city. A new memorandum of understanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":52767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52768,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52766\/revisions\/52768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}