The bad news is, the state of Indiana ranks in the bottom third of states for rates of cardiovascular mortality, fourth in the nation for its rate of obesity, and sixth for its prevalence of smokers.
The good news is, a team of researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Regenstrief Institute is launching a long-term study dedicated to making Hoosiers healthier. The study will be conducted under the auspices of the newly formed Fairbanks Institute, just created with a $10 million gift from the Indianapolis-based Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The Guidant Foundation also contributed $500,000.
The Fairbanks Institute brings together patient data and scientific expertise in population health, biologics (the study of biological information from the blood), and medical informatics. The first phase of the study will look at risk factors that can predict cardiovascular disease, especially how genes and the environment interact to raise or lower the risk of disease.
“Cardiovascular disease is the single largest killer in the United States,” says Keith March, the Cryptic Masons Medical Research Foundation Professor in Vascular Biology Research and director of the Indiana Center for Vascular Biology and Medicine. “We need to better understand who is at risk and how to reduce that risk. This institute should provide valuable information because we are studying genes, proteins, and characteristics of repair cells, as well as individual health behaviors, and how all these factors interact.” March is leading the biologics core effort for the Fairbanks initiative.
The study is enrolling 1,000 Indianapolis-area participants initially, Researchers will collect information about them over a period of years. Biological data from blood analysis will be collected, and the long-term health of participants will be monitored closely. Using health information exchange networks already in place in central Indiana, researchers will be able to match biologic and lifestyle data to health information gathered as part of regular medical care. This combination of information should provide one of the nation's richest and most broadly integrated health datasets.
“Using the Indiana Network for Patient Care database,” says Clement McDonald, IU Distinguished Professor and director of the Regenstrief Institute, “we will have the capacity to monitor, with appropriate permissions, when volunteers experience a critical illness, how individual risk translates into a medical event, and how health-care providers deliver care for these problems.” McDonald is leading the informatics core for the Fairbanks Institute. The Regenstrief Institute is an internationally recognized informatics and health-care services research organization.
With its funding from the Fairbanks Foundation and Guidant, the Fairbanks Institute capitalizes on the collaboration between Regenstrief; the IU School of Medicine; and BioCrossroads, the state of Indiana's public-private life sciences initiative.
