Dr. Natalie Cartwright awarded a grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) AIM-AHEAD program.

Dr. Natalie Cartwright, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has been awarded a $620,611 grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) AIM-AHEAD program. 

“The rapid increase in the volume of data generated through electronic health records (HER) and other biomedical research presents exciting opportunities for developing data science approaches for biomedical research and improving healthcare,” explains the AIM-AHEAD website. 

The project titled “AIM-AHEAD – Impact of Gun Violence Exposure on Health” has two primary goals. First, to provide a data source for identifying patients with exposure to firearm violence from unstructured medical notes using natural language processing. Second, to develop an artificial intelligence / machine learning model using demographic and social risk information to identify risk and protective factors for developing behavioral health outcomes following exposer to gun violence.

The two-year project proposal was for $1.26 million and was one of only 21 funded proposals. The $620,611 award is the first-year funding with the year-two funding subject to satisfactory performance in year one.

Dr. Ali Al-Bataineh is a collaborator on Dr. Cartwright’s grant. Dr. Mina Peshavaria provided all the pre-award (proposal and budget development support), and Cristy Boarman will assist with all post award and compliance items.

 The research team is:

• Nicole Cook, PhD epidemiologist 
• Alan Cook, MD trauma surgeon 
• David Hosmer, PhD statistician 
• Turner Osler, MD trauma surgeon 
• Ali Al Bataineh, PhD Director of NUARI at Norwich 
• Kerime Toksu, MS computer engineer 
• Anna Templeton, DNP engagement scientist