Mudd-Martin Elected to NCATS Collaboration and Engagement Enterprise Committee
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 21, 2024) — Gia Mudd-Martin, PhD, MPH, RN, FAHA, FAAN, Director of the Community Engagement & Research Core for the UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science, has been elected to the Lead Team of the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) Collaboration and Engagement Enterprise Committee.
NCATS, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is dedicated to accelerating the translation of scientific discoveries into new treatments for public health. It has funded the UK CCTS through three prestigious and competitive Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) since 2011.
A priority of the CTSA program is to build enduring relationships with communities in order to understand their needs and improve health. This commitment to community engagement accelerates clinical research, expands treatment delivery and speeds the response to public health challenges.
Towards this mission, the NCATS Collaboration and Engagement Enterprise Committee works with stakeholders and their communities through active engagement and promotion of team science to foster collaboration. The goals of the committee are to:
- improve social determinants of health in rural communities, reduce health disparities, and promote health equity for all,
- advance team science as a significant academic model to promote the perspectives of community members as equal, contributing partners in all clinical, translational, and related scientific pursuits, and
- improve the availability of dissemination & implementation (D&I) methods and tools, and encourage coordination of D&I efforts across the CTSA consortium.
Mudd-Martin, who also serves as Associate Dean of Research and Nursing Science, Smith Professor of Nursing Research, and co-lead of the UK Superfund Research Center Community Engagement Core, will serve on the committee for a term of one-year with a possible extension of an additional year.
She brings extensive expertise as a health equities researcher whose work is guided by principles of community-based participatory research, engaging in reciprocal relationships with diverse communities to address health inequities and disparities. Her research funded by NIH/NINR focuses on the development and testing of sustainable cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes risk reduction interventions that are designed in partnership with Latino/Latina and rural communities.
She currently serves as the UK principal investigator on an NIH-grant supporting equitable engagement with the All of Us program and is also funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collaborate with diverse communities to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
Mudd-Martin has extensively published and presented scholarly work and is dedicated to mentoring the next generation of scientists from nursing and other health disciplines. She is an active member of multiple professional organizations and had a pivotal role in establishing the Appalachian Translational Research Network as a 501c3, for which she continues to serve as a member of the Executive Leadership Committee. She has received multiple awards in recognition of her work including, among others, induction in 2017 as a Fellow of the American Heart Association and in 2022 as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
Media Contact: Mallory Profeta, mallory.profeta@uky.edu
