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Related Projects

There are several other projects, like DREM, that are designed to improve the quality of research on people and communities impacted by disasters. Two such projects are:

1. Research Education in Disaster Mental Health
2. The Disaster Research Training Grant

1. Research Education in Disaster Mental Health: The long-term goal of this grant is to improve the quality and utility of disaster mental health research so that victims of disasters are better understood and served. The educational goals of the proposed project are to inform, instruct, advise, and mentor disaster researchers. Corresponding to these four goals, respectively, the targets of the research education are the scientific community at large, small groups of new entrants to the field, investigators seeking individual consultation, and promising newcomers. For each educational goal, we have derived two educational strategies denoted as proactive and reactive, depending upon whether the research education is offered before (i.e. independent of) or after a focal event. The proactive strategy may be considered our primary one. However, because it is likely that disasters will occur over the course of the project, we will also propose a contingent, reactive strategy that would address the needs of researchers seeking to study those particular events.
For more information about this program visit http://www.redmh.org/
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2. The Disaster Research Training Grant: This grant is one of three grants awarded from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Institute of Nursing Research. The Disaster Research Training Grant (DRT) is a five year program of child focused disaster mental health research education, under the leadership of Dr. Betty Pfefferbaum, of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. The goal of this program is to enhance the nation's capacity for conducting rapid post-event disaster mental health research related to children and families through training of researchers and responder organizations in state-of the-art research methods, emphasizing methods of needs assessment, data collection, clinical evaluation, surveillance treatment and intervention, and evaluations of effectiveness. Its goals are: to generate understanding of child and family focused rapid research activities in the aftermath of an event through training constituencies that provide review and oversight of proposed research activities and who are positioned to facilitate large-scale implementation of a child and family disaster research agenda; to develop ten Local Multidisciplinary Research Teams (LMRTs) over a five year period  who will be trained to conduct rapid-response research; to establish Regional Mentoring Teams (RMTs) that will provide technical assistance capacity to LMRTs; and to design and implement flexible cost-effective delivery mechanisms for training. The activities of the DRT will be coordinated with the other grantees, Dartmouth, the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the New York Academy of Medicine. This collaboration will support greater integration of child and family issues into each of the grants and will avoid duplication of effort.
For more information about this grant, visit The National Child Traumatic Stress Network or contact Betty Pfefferbaum, M.D., J.D. (betty-pfefferbaum@ouhsc.edu).
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