WE SUPPORT INNOVATIVE THINKING BECAUSE IT CHANGES LIVES
2019 marked the eighth year of the Blue KC and BioNexus KC partnership to award the Transforming KC Health Research Grant. While Blue KC has been participating in this grant program since 2011, we restructured it in 2019 to align with our Well Stocked community impact program and Community Health strategy. Now the grant focuses on initiatives that research nutritional access within nutritionally insecure communities, an approach that has been well received among clinical research institutions and community-based organizations.
"Our collaboration with Blue KC provides the opportunity to improve our community’s health by addressing important environmental factors that have a direct impact on health outcomes,” said Dr. Keith Gary, Vice President, BioNexus.
And this year’s grant goes to...
Blue KC and BioNexus awarded the 2019 Transforming KC Health Research Grant to a partnership between the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County (CHC), the University of Kansas Medical Center Research Institute (KUMC) and Vibrant Health. The $400,000, two-year grant will be used to combat food insecurity in the Kansas City area.
The CHC/KUMC/Vibrant Health partnership aims to address socioeconomic and environmental barriers to health through research on improving access to nutritious foods in nutritionally insecure communities.
Closing the food insecurity gap
The partnership’s joint research proposal aligned with Blue KC's aspiration for scalable nutritional prescribing programs with our clinical partners. Their research will focus on community health workers who support individuals with poorly controlled diabetes. These individuals have the propensity for frequent inpatient and emergency department care.
"Our team is honored to be funded, and excited to partner with Vibrant Health and the University of Kansas Medical Center Research Institute,” said Donna Young, Interim Executive Director for the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County. “Our project will investigate the best ways health systems and community-based organizations can improve the health of our metro area community members who are diagnosed with chronic disease and experiencing difficulty in accessing healthy foods. We will implement these interventions in the community, where patients spend most of their time, as opposed to controlled clinical settings."
