{"id":4004,"date":"2021-07-20T12:39:55","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T19:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/center-health-equity-research\/?p=4004"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:41:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T22:41:43","slug":"southwest-health-equity-research-collaborative-funds-faculty-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/blog\/southwest-health-equity-research-collaborative-funds-faculty-equipment\/","title":{"rendered":"Funding faculty equipment purchases is a little-known but important SHERC mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Rebecca<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For many Northern Arizona University researchers, the one thing that prevents them from completing groundbreaking research is the cost of equipment or programs needed to capture their data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past five years, NAU\u2019s Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative\u2019s Research Infrastructure Core (RIC) has purchased much-needed equipment totaling approximately $1.9 million for almost 20 researchers in a variety of different NAU departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to RIC co-leads Regents\u2019 Professor Robert Trotter<\/strong>, Department of Anthropology and Catherine Propper<\/strong>, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, the goal of purchasing equipment is to support NAU researchers to develop cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in health equity fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis equipment supports new investigators and others to build their research programs up to the next level,\u201d said Propper. \u201cHaving these emerging technologies available has been essential to our continued build-out of health equity-related research at NAU as well as to training the next generation of our workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous RIC equipment purchases have included water purification systems, freezers, a cell IQ incubator, a state-of-the-art real time PCR machine, a DNA\/RNA fragment analyzer, a flow cytometer xCELLigence and even a Time-of-Flight mass spectrometer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca Bartlett<\/strong>, assistant professor in NAU\u2019s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, offers a graduate-level course about swallowing disorders. Her students practice flexible nasendoscopy on human patient simulators using the RIC equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent research project with Savannah Bruecker,<\/strong> former graduate student in the School of Nursing, and Bobby Eccleston<\/strong>, assistant clinical professors in the School of Nursing, Bartlett and colleagues found that training students in how to perform a clinical swallow evaluation using a human patient simulator yielded better long-term knowledge than traditional teaching methods, such as reading a textbook and listening to a lecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis gives the students a low-stakes opportunity to practice endoscopy, and a context for me to test their knowledge of anatomy,\u201d Bartlett said of the equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bartlett said that for her next project, she would like to use the RIC-funded equipment to measure learning outcomes for endoscopy training in two training paradigms, such as the human patient simulator versus traditional training methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura Wasylenki<\/strong>, associate professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability, uses an Agilent inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, purchased through RIC, to measure concentrations of trace metals in a variety of environmental, geological, and biological samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithin my own research group, we have used the instrument to measure uranium concentrations in plant tissues. We have also measured tungsten concentrations in a lot of lab experiments,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wasylenki said that tungsten is increasingly regarded as causing bone cancers, although the mechanism of carcinogenesis is still not confirmed. Despite known contamination at mines, smelting facilities, machining facilities, and weapons testing fields, she said that almost nothing is known yet about what controls tungsten\u2019s behavior in the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re studying the chemical reactions that happen automatically in nature that are most likely to retard migration of dissolved tungsten to try to figure out how they work at the molecular scale,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe we can predict how much tungsten will travel how far and how fast in contaminated soils, and maybe we can design an effective remediation strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regents\u2019 Professor Jani Ingram<\/strong>, in NAU\u2019s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and her colleagues have also used the instrument to measure heavy metal contents in rodent hair collected in agricultural fields near Yuma that may have elevated levels of toxic metals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wasylenki said she has also analyzed gadolinium in her own blood, urine, and hair, collected last spring using the Agilent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGadolinium is used as a contrast agent during MRI procedures, because that makes it easier to identify masses and lesions,\u201d Wasylenki said. \u201cAfter being injected with a pretty large amount of gadolinium, each patient urinates it all out, so this rare element is much more common than it should be in the wastewater treatment plant and in reclaimed water. Maybe we\u2019ll figure out how to use it as a tracer for all the places that reclaimed water ends up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RIC also provides support for equipment service contracts and maintenance to ensure that the investigators\u2019 effort are sustained. The equipment must be used for research associated with health equity related projects that include clinical, behavioral, sociocultural, and basic science work. RIC prioritizes equipment that will have multiple users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

SHERC, U54MD012388, is sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many Northern Arizona University researchers, the one thing that prevents them from completing groundbreaking research is the cost of equipment or programs needed to capture their data. For the past five years, NAU\u2019s Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative\u2019s Research Infrastructure Core (RIC) has purchased much-needed equipment totaling approximately $1.9 million for almost 20 researchers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":286,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[446,104,163,162,447,445,155],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-catherine-propper","tag-center-for-community-health-engaged-research","tag-research-infrastructure-core","tag-ric","tag-ric-equipment","tag-robert-trotter","tag-southwest-health-equity-research-collaborative"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14005,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/14005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/center-community-health-engaged-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}