UCF receives $300K award from Genius Foundation to support eight research projects

In the first major programmatic gift to AHSC in 5 years, $300,000 has been released in grant funding to eight faculty research projects of interdisciplinary nature including health topics to pain management, intimate partner violence, and improving provider-patient communication. This is through a partnership with Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation and UCF Academic Health Sciences Center.

The Vice President of Health Affairs and Dean of UCF College of Medicine Deborah German stated “The Genius grant is a catalyst for bringing together multidisciplinary teams to solve health challenges that cannot be addressed in a single discipline. This is just what we need to transform healthcare for all. I am grateful for this gift to our UCF faculty.”

The winners of the grant are faculty members from all four of the AHSC units which include Medicine and Nursing, the colleges of Health Professions and Sciences and the Student Health Services, with support offered by other university departments.

The Genius Foundation is a Florida-based organization that supports education, the arts, and initiatives aimed at improving quality of life. The gift awarded to AHSC offers support to the UCF Genius Innovation Challenge, which is designed to promote holistic and innovative medical education, research as well as patient care.

The grants are supporting the main concept behind the formation of the center, said AHSC leaders.

The research projects include:

• Enhancing Understanding of the Social Determinants of Health Through Hologram-assisted Interdisciplinary Education Simulation Scenarios
• 3D Printers for Healthcare Procedural Training and Education
• Care on Campus (CoC): Screening for Intimate Partner Violence within Student Healthcare Settings, Central Florida Huntington Disease Center
• Central Florida Huntington Disease Center
• The Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Collaborative at UCF
• Interprofessional Pain Curriculum with Emerging Technologies across the UCF Academic Health Science Center
• Therapeutic Alliance: Enhancing the Patient-Practitioner Relationship Across Disciplines
• School Versus Summer Weight-Gain and Health-related Behaviors in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder