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Research Briefs
both as leads and as team members because the world of entrepreneurship is not, for the most part, a comfortable platform for women. And I think one of the things that Dartmouth does really well is include students in programs like this that give them such invaluable experience.”
Strong Roots, Growing Branches
The next cohort of Accelerator teams will be welcomed into the program in late 2021 and will compete for the second annual awards in spring 2022. New offerings to this second round of participants include fast-track awards totaling $100,000, a more robust pitch preparation program, and new educational topics. None of this would be possible without philanthropy. The Accelerator took off in 2020 when five Dartmouth alumni contributed $1.4 million. Since then, more alumni, parents, and friends of Dartmouth and its academic medical community have made gifts, bringing the total to $3.5 million. The Accelerator has a goal of raising a total of $15 million in philanthropy and is a fundraising priority within Dartmouth’s Call to Lead campaign. “There were so many deserving teams just in our first year. With greater philanthropic support, the Accelerator will be able to make more awards and enable more Dartmouth faculty and students to advance their innovations for the benefit of cancer patients everywhere,” says Jamie Coughlin, director of the Magnuson Center. “That’s the power of philanthropy and the Dartmouth entrepreneurial community.” To discuss ways to get involved through mentoring or making a gift to the Accelerator or to the Cancer Center, email Bethany.Solomon@Dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-5134.
2021 DARTMOUTH INNO VATIONS ACCELERATOR FOR CANCER AWARD RECIPIENTSplaceholder -
$300,000 Award
Establishing a Safe, Effective Therapy for Brain Tumors
Arti Gaur, PhD, assistant professor of neurology, Geisel, Jordan Isaacs, Guarini ’24, and Divya Ravi, Guarini ‘24, both PhD students in the Cancer Biology Program The award will fund dose optimization and pharmacology studies for a new, Dartmouthcreated highly selective anti-estrogen compound that targets brain tumors. The studies are necessary to enter clinical trials.
$100,000 Award
Solving MYC, the Most Wanted Target in Cancer
Michael Cole, PhD, a professor of molecular and systems biology, Geisel; and Edmond J. Feris, PhD, Guarini ’19, research associate, Norris Cotton Cancer Center
This award will fund the characterization of MYC inhibitors, which were identified by screening 50,000 compounds. MYC is a cancer-promoting gene prevalent in breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and melanoma.
$50,000 Quinn Scholar Award
(Named in honor of J. Brian and Allie J. Quinn and their generosity) Barcoded-Antibody Library for In Vitro Engineering (B-ALIVE) Jiwon Lee, the Ralph and Marjorie Crump Assistant Professor of Engineering, Thayer; Seungmin Shin, PhD, postdoctoral fellow; and Nicholas Curtis, PhD candidate and National Science Foundation graduate fellow, Thayer This award will fund the development of a technology platform that will enable more accurate high-throughput screening of new, more effective cancer drugs, specifically monoclonal antibodies.
TDI intro page
A Q&A WITH AMBER BARNATO
A New Dartmouth Atlas for a More Equitable World
Amber Barnato, MD, MPH, MS, began her directorship of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice on July 1, 2021. A physician-scientist with a special interest in end-of-life decision-making, Barnato has been a researcher and clinician at the Geisel School of Medicine and DartmouthHitchcock since 2017. She was also the inaugural Susan J. and Richard M. Levy 1960 Distinguished Professor in Health Care Delivery at Dartmouth College.
The Dartmouth Institute is renowned for its Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare. Initiated in 1996 by John “Jack” Wennnberg, MD, MPH, the Atlas documents variability in the cost and quality of health care nationwide. The Atlas and The Dartmouth Institute’s research on variations in health care costs and outcomes, its expertise in the science of quality improvement, and its pioneering role in shared decision-making have all helped shape federal policy and programs nationwide.
What is the role of the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare at The Dartmouth Institute today?
The discipline of health services research really started with Jack Wennberg’s small area variations studies in the 1970s. His research acquired a national scale in the 1990s through the Dartmouth Atlas. The Atlas informed some of the most important health care legislation of our generation, including the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act in 2010. But the most burning policy questions have evolved considerably since the 90s and 00s. The Atlas needs to help the United States meet today’s challenges. Dartmouth, like the nation as a whole, is in the midst of a reckoning with institutionalized gender and racial inequality. I’ve been very interested in thinking about what our obligations are as a field—health services research—that has been shaped by a white racial lens. For example, with the Atlas, we have focused especially on overuse of medical care. Overuse is disproportionately a problem of insured people with access to health care. At The Dartmouth Institute, we’ve promoted shared decision-making as a strategy to “right size” medical care use. Yet shared decision-making is a privilege of people who engage in conversation with their clinicians and who have high levels of self-efficacy in what are predominantly white spaces. We need scientists and practitioners who can help us center other voices in our work. To that end, we’ve hired four new health equity researchers. [For a story on the new hires, see p. xx.]
How will this equity focus build on the legacy of the Dartmouth Atlas?
We will use a truth and reconciliation framework to reflect upon the legacy of the Atlas and to create a new Health Equity Atlas. For a national Health Equity Atlas, I hope that we can use our large repository of Medicare claims data to revisit some of our past work. For example, given what we know about segregation of health care delivery in the U.S. – that 20% to 30% of providers care for 80% of Black people – has Medicare service delivery become more or less segregated over time? No one has ever used 30 years of claims data as a lens to examine the ways that Medicare policy affects systemic racism in health care. This framework will allow us to challenge our own assumptions and ask new research questions. We also envision designing a local version of the Health Equity Atlas here in New Hampshire. Stakeholders will participate in deciding what questions are most important to them and their communities. We can look beyond just health care to include water quality, housing, and other factors to assess health outcomes. Our approach might enable others to create local atlases for their communities. These are all ideas at this stage. The Health Equity Atlas will depend on philanthropic support and broad community engagement to come to fruition.
You’re overseeing 150 researchers and degree programs that enroll more than 200 full-time students each year. You also plan to strengthen or initiate joint projects with other Dartmouth institutions tackling major global challenges. Plus you’ll still see patients. What inspired you to take on this new vision for The Dartmouth Institute?
I love health services research and have a thriving lab devoted to studying end-of-life decision making. Providing palliative care to patients with serious illness and their families – many of whom are dying years younger than they would have if they’d been born into different social and economic conditions – keeps me connected to the broken realities of our system. I felt called to take on this new vision now through a recognition that my privilege as a white cisgender female with high educational attainment comes with responsibility. I hope that facilitating the research and educational missions of The Dartmouth Institute will have a greater impact on health policy and clinical practice than my individual lab ever could.
