Administrative, Biostatistics and Enrichment Core

University Of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

Over 1/3 of adult Americans and 17% of children are obese. The NIH has assigned high priority to research aimed at preventing and treating obesity and toward breaking the link between obesity and its associated health conditions. The mission of the Mid-Atlantic Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (NORC), now in its ninth year, is to foster multidisciplinary research approaches to understand the impact of nutrition and obesity on risk for chronic disease and translate this knowledge into effective clinical treatments and prevention efforts. Carrying out this mission, the Mid-Atlantic NORC includes a vibrant community of nutrition and obesity researchers across three different institutions. The NORC consists of four Cores and two Programs that interact closely with each other to seamlessly provide a wide range of interdisciplinary cost-effective services and resources to Mid-Atlantic NORC investigators. The Administrative, Biostatistics and Enrichment (ABE) Core has several functions. First and foremost, the ABE Core is responsible for overall leadership, administration, oversight, and coordination of the multiple activities in the NORC. Specifically, the ABE Core promotes collaboration and cooperation among researchers at the three parent institutions: University of Maryland School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the Geisinger Health System. Furthermore, the ABE Core promotes collaboration among the three Biomedical Research Cores: (1) Biological Mechanisms and Functional Genomics; (2) Molecular Genetics and Nutrigenomics; and (3) Clinical and Translational Research. The ABE Core is also responsible for oversight of two important programs: (1) The Pilot and Feasibility Grant program that provides small research grants primarily to early stage investigators to promote their career development in the field of nutrition and obesity research; and (2) the Enrichment program that promotes continuing education related to nutrition and obesity in order to keep NORC researchers at the cutting edge of knowledge in the field. Finally, the ABE Core contains the Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Sub-Core that partners with NORC researchers to ensure that data is analyzed in a scientifically rigorous fashion. Collectively, the NORC promotes and enables multi-disciplinary research across genomics, molecular and cell biology, animal models, biostatistics and computation biology, physiology, clinical and translational research, and epidemiology and population science to advance a program of personalized genetic and lifestyle interventions.