The National Institutes of Health awarded the University of Idaho more than $11 million to create a biomedical research center focused on women’s health and nutrition.
The Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant will span five years. UI will then be eligible to apply for two additional five-year phases of funding.
Shelley McGuire, director of the UI Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences, will be the project director.
Researchers from a UI college will be eligible to apply for up to $100,000 per year to fund pilot projects relevant to women’s health. McGuire has already received inquiries from faculty members in four colleges.
The funds will cover six staff members. UI professors Yimin Chen, Ginny Lane and Ann Brown have been named initial research project leaders.
Chen will lead a study on how vitamin D supplementation affects maternal depression. Lane will study Type 2 diabetes among Hispanic women in Idaho. Brown will study the effect of excess body fat on women with normal body weights.
According to the UI news release, American women face a heightened risk of malnutrition. This is an especially serious problem in Idaho, where 12% of the population is food-insecure, compared with 10% nationally.
