Research & Service

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created the NIH Challenge Grant program and increased support for the New Innovator Awards with the goal of identifying pioneering research that has the potential to accelerate the current pace of discovery and substantially impact public health.

The NIH recently recognized four Mailman School faculty for such innovation by awarding Drs. Crystal Fuller, L.H. Lumey, and Miguel Munoz-Laboy each with one of the highly competitive Challenge Grants and Dr. Naa Oyo Kwate with a New Innovator Award. These prestigious awards provide significant funding to push research forward so as to realize an impact sooner in the public health sphere.

Challenge Grants

The NIH Challenge Grants program, initiated through funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aims to identify ongoing innovative research that would benefit from significant 2-year jumpstart funds. Primary investigators and research projects awarded grants are:  

Crystal Fuller, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology
Dr. Fuller investigates multilevel behavioral and structural interventions that improve quality and accessibility of healthcare services in low income, urban environments.  The Challenge grant will be applied to the next phase of research that will evaluate a pharmacy-based pilot structural intervention that combines rapid HIV testing with other screening services, including blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol screening, as a means to reduce stigma associated with HIV testing in communities highly burdened with HIV and limited access to healthcare in New York City. The program includes offering testing services to all drug using and non-drug using pharmacy patrons instead of singling out those who buy non-prescription syringes through the Expanded Syringe Access Program.

L. H. Lumey, MD, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology
Dr. Lumey will continue his work examining the associations between maternal famine exposure in different stages of pregnancy and DNA methylation patterns in adulthood. This also includes investigating how these DNA patterns are related to risk factors for cardio-vascular disease and diabetes. Dr. Lumey's research will help lead to a better understanding of the very early sources of differences in disease across populations and how the environment shapes human development.

Miguel Munoz-Laboy, DrPH, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Dr. Muñoz-Laboy will begin a study to examine the social network factors of drug use and sexual risk behavior among formerly incarcerated Latino men in order to develop the foundation for a network-based intervention to reduce HIV and sexually transmitted infections for this population. The majority of HIV prevention interventions have failed to consider the role of social-familial networks in the post-incarceration experiences of FILM. This study is among the first to investigate HIV risks among this Latino population.

Learn more about the Challenge Grant recipients and research projects.

New Innovator Award

As part of NIH's commitment to increasing opportunities for new scientists, the NIH Director's New Innovator Award program is designed specifically to support unusually creative new investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage of their career. In selecting recipients for this award, the NIH considered the innovativeness of the research approaches, and the potential of the project, if successful, to have a significant impact on an important biomedical or behavioral research problem. A portion of the New Innovator Awards is supported by funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Naa Oyo A. Kwate, PhD, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Dr. Kwate was among 55 researchers selected nationwide for this prestigious award. She was chosen for her work exploring the effects of multiple levels of racism on the immune and metabolic function, and overall physical health, psychological well-being, and health behaviors among urban African Americans.

Learn more about the New Innovator Award and Dr. Kwate’s work.