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The Stanford University School of Medicine will receive $30 million in federal funds over the next five years to help translate its laboratory discoveries into improved health care for patients.
The grant, announced Thursday by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), also links Stanford to other medical centers working to translate research into health care treatment improvements.
“Translating discoveries is more than the School of Medicine,” Dr. Harry Greenberg, the school’s senior associate dean for research, said. “You need lawyers, psychologists, anthropologists, economists, environmental scientists — all of these — to figure out how to best move scientific discoveries into improvements in human health and well being. What’s unique about Stanford is that we can harness the best in those areas.”
The NIH started the program to translate research in better health care in 2006 by funding at 12 medical centers, added 12 more last year and 14 this year. Ultimately, NIH plans to fund 60 medical centers with an annual budget of $500 million.
“The NIH is trying to take the nation’s largely unorganized way of conducting clinical research and bring innovative strategies together in one program, with more centralized direction and management,” Greenberg said.
— Don Kazak
By
— Don Kazak
By
— Don Kazak
By
Taking an intergrated view turning research into medicine (not health care) is something that Stanford is probably as good at as any medical school in the country, but this area is not very well developed at Stanford or anywhere else.
I draw a distinction between medicine and health care, because there is one degree of separation from reserach to medicine, and two degrees to health care. A great deal of work is going on with the genome, bio-engineering, computer science in medicine, and Stanford is fortunate to have some cross disciplinary work already going on.
UCSF could eventually be very exciting when the Mission Bay Campus is completed, but popluating those buildings with outstanding researchers and practicioners will take several years to take hold, if indeed it happens. Harvard is touting is Allston campus as taking a huge leap forward in integrating multiple disciplines, from business, law, medicine and life sciences, but as I read reports of what is going on in Cambridge, the ideas seem bigger than the plans to turn them into a reality.
This is really difficult stuff, and as I follow the topic, it appears to this writer that human nature and organizational obstacles may prove to be as intractable as the actual research going on at these and other institions. There really are not any good models on how to do this. Stanford may be building the tracks as the train lumbers along.
This may seem like good news for Stanford, but it is bad news for Palo Alto. This will lead to new jobs, the hiring of new people and with that more traffic. Traffic is something PA does not need more of.
PA needs to start seriously clamping down on Stanford and the trouble it causes to the citizens of Palo Alto.
Our city leaders need to meet with stanford and have them refuse this grant. If they refuse, then the city needs to take drastic action
Wow – citizens of palo alto are willing to ignore the jobs, willing to ignore the potential gains to the man kind by this grant .. why because the traffic will disturb their siesta??
Enough is Enough, I’d rather have the added traffic than have Stanford build additional housing because we don’t have room in our schools for the added children in the new housing.
Bring the traffic on, I don’t mind, and I have to drive down El Camino everyday at commute times, it isn’t that bad. Enough is exaggerating a non-existent problem.