RHODE ISLAND: The Miriam Hospital receives NIGMS $11.1M grant to research stress, trauma, and resilience
The Miriam Hospital has received an $11.1M NIGMS grant to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Rhode Island devoted to a growing field of inquiry – how stress and trauma early in life can have lasting impacts on our health and wellness.
The grant will fund the creation of the STAR COBRE, which will be based out of the Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital. STAR stands for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience.
The center will build research capacity at The Miriam while also establishing partnerships with collaborators at Lifespan, the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Care New England, specifically its psychiatric facility, Butler Hospital. Study topics will include the effects that child neglect, sexual abuse, and food insecurity have on mental and physical well-being.
“It is a critical time for research into stress and trauma, and the pathways to resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the global burden of stress, trauma, and adversity and has exaggerated racial, ethnic, and socio-economic inequalities. The STAR COBRE will be the first research center in Rhode Island to focus on stress, trauma, and resilience,” said the center’s principal investigator, Laura R. Stroud, PhD, who is director of The Miriam’s Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “It will support transformative research to understand how stress and trauma impact mental and physical health and develop novel approaches to interventions that will promote resilience across the lifespan. The COBRE will support the Miriam Hospital to emerge as a leader and as a local and national resource in this area of research.”