Dartmouth Medical School, working with four other universities, received a $3.89 million grant at the end of September from the National Institute of Health to create the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research. The grant, lasting five years, will enable the center to conduct research on disasters ranging from hurricanes to bombings.
The center is intended to provide researchers with the resources they need to run studies the field immediately after a disaster has occurred. In the past, investigators often had to wait several months to receive funding.
The project, co-led by the University of Michigan, will also include researchers at Yale University, University of Oklahoma and the Medical University of South Carolina. Each institution will conduct research in a different field, but will share its results electronically.
"We're going to capitalize on the expertise of professionals around the country to establish a center that is methodologically creative, capable of rapid response, and responsive to the needs of the scientific, policy and practitioner communities," Fran Norris, the principal investigator of the center and a research professor of psychiatry at DMS, said in a press release.
Norris will be the center's director, having conducted research on the psychosocial effects of disasters for over 20 years. She is also the director of an NIH-funded education project that advises new investigators conducting disaster mental health research.
While there has been extensive research concerning the topic of post-disaster mental health, co-principal investigator Sandro Galea, the center's Research Director and associate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, explained that it has never been conducted in this manner before.
"There has not been the capacity in the past to do research in the aftermath of disasters that is timely and addresses the questions that need to be a addressed in a comprehensive way," Galea said. "If we're serious about mitigating the consequences of events, then we need to be launching research rapidly."
While many of the center's investigators have previously researched the mental effect of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, adequate funding was not immediately available to them, which hindered their ability to respond to an incident quickly. The NIH grant aims to alleviate this difficulty by making funding more accessible. Norris believes this will allow research to be launched more directly and effectively.
"I think one of the most beneficial pieces of this project will be the ability to launch epidemiological and services research immediately in the aftermath of a major disaster," Norris said in the press release. "This addresses what has been a major barrier to effective research in this field, not receiving adequate funding until several months have passed."
After the grant expires, the center leaders will have the option of applying for a renewal.
