The Center for Collaborative Intervention Research,
designed to be a national model for interdisciplinary
research teams in the development, testing and
dissemination of innovative interventions to improve health
outcomes, is the newest Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
initiative to advance knowledge that promotes health and
improves health services.
The center is funded by a five-year $1.59 million
grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research at
the NIH. Through start-up funding — $20,000 to three
pilot studies each year — and the provision of
centralized resources, the new center will act as a
catalyst to stimulate research alliances among health care
disciplines, including nursing, public health and medicine,
and between health care organizations and institutions.
The pilot project funds are available to faculty from
disciplines across JHU who incorporate SON faculty as
members of their team.
The CCIR is the second ongoing SON center now funded
by NIH, joining the Center on Health Disparities Research.
"The new center is consistent with the recent National
Institutes of Health Roadmap initiative focusing on
interdisciplinary research and direct clinical applications
to improve health," said Vicki Mock, the CCIR's director
and principal investigator. "All funded center studies will
have an interdisciplinary team and ultimately will
demonstrate that science moves forward more rapidly when
research integrates knowledge from several disciplines to
solve specific health problems." The CCIR, she added, "will
generate a collective energy for solving methodological and
theoretical problems in intervention research."
Jerilyn Allen, associate dean for research at the
School of Nursing and associate director for the CCIR,
said, "The JHU SON currently has a strong, internationally
recognized group of faculty who address many conceptually
similar issues but too often pursue separate but parallel
courses toward a similar goal. The center structure and
mechanisms will facilitate consistent sharing of knowledge,
resources, skills and experiences so that all researchers
might benefit from the cumulative group knowledge."
In addition to an administrative core, which will
manage the overall activities, the CCIR features an
intervention core, directed by Linda Pugh, an associate
professor and director of the Baccalaureate Program; and an
evaluation core, directed by Miyong Kim, an associate
professor.
Mock and Allen predict the CCIR will strengthen
research initiatives, promote the development of knowledge
by fostering greater collaboration among investigators from
various disciplines and create an environment for
established scientists to mentor developing investigators.
Mock added, "The center will encourage research faculty who
have previously worked independently in individual research
programs to bridge new paradigms through interdisciplinary
research. As a result, the studies facilitated by the
center will improve the rigor, depth, breadth and
cross-disciplinary nature of intervention research, and
research findings can be more readily applied in clinical
practice to improve health."
For more information, write to
ccir@son.jhmi.edu.
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