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WIC Grant of $597,638 Will Boost Awareness and Participation
The WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) Program at NJMS received a $597,638 grant to implement a WIC Community Innovation and Outreach Project. The funding will help NJMS spread local awareness of the WIC program and boost the number of local families participating, particularly among underserved Portuguese-speaking families and immigrant families in northern Newark. Raising awareness is necessary, because only half of eligible people nationwide participated in WIC in 2020, despite the notable benefits of the program, which include safer pregnancies, reduced infant mortality, and better nutrition and school performance for kids. In Essex County, WIC provides healthy food, nutrition education, breastfeeding counseling, and community support for income-eligible women who are pregnant or have infants or children up to five years old. WIC is supported by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.
Win-Win for Faculty and Rutgers-Newark Students
Early 2024 brought the start of a new collaboration between RutgersNewark and NJMS on the Pathway for Junior Scientists Program. The initiative offers biomedical research opportunities to Rutgers-Newark undergraduates who are highly motivated to pursue careers in
medicine or biomedical research, including in data sciences. Medical school faculty members will have the opportunity to identify and recruit promising students to work on their NIH-funded research, and students spend 10 hours per week in a lab to get valuable research experience and mentorship.
“It’s a win-win situation for the Newark research community,” says William Gause, PhD, professor of
medicine, senior associate dean for research, and director of the Center for Immunity and Inflammation. “I think it will expose young people to the excitement of biomedical research, potentially making significant discoveries, and it provides a resource for our laboratories to bring in young people to contribute to these research programs.”
The first cohort, which will begin work in mid-January, attracted 132 diverse applicants with a median 3.6 GPA, and drew the interest of about 30 NJMS labs. “We got such a large response,” says Gause. “It shows what interest there is in doing these kinds of activities.”
The program provides each student a stipend, supplied by the State of New Jersey and the Chancellor’s Office, and $2,000 for laboratory support. Faculty with active, well-funded laboratories are welcome to participate. NJMS’s plan is to expand the program to other colleges, such as NJIT, as well as to high schools and community colleges in Newark.
Meet Robert Gross, MD, PhD, New Joint Chair of Neurosurgery
NJMS announces a new chair of neurosurgery, and the renowned neurosurgeon filling the role will also serve as chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, as well as senior vice president for neurosurgical services at RWJBarnabas Health. Robert E. Gross, MD, PhD, is an expert in the use of neuromodulation and electrical impulses to target
nerves within the brain as means of reducing symptoms of severe disorders. A world leader in functional neurosurgery, he led the surgical team at Emory University that was at the forefront of developing deep brain stimulation as a treatment for drug-resistant seizures in epilepsy. As an active researcher continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2005, Gross will bring to Rutgers a new R01 grant–supported research project that aims to develop improvements to current neuromodulation treatments.
National Academy of Inventors Honors NJMS Professor
The National Academy of Inventors has named Fred Russell Kramer, PhD, as a 2023 fellow of the academy, the highest professional distinction for individual inventors. The fel lowship, which this year recognizes 162 academic inventors in 35 states and 10 countries, honors contributions to major advance ments in science and consumer technolo gies. Kramer is a professor of microbiology, biochemistry and molecular genetics at NJMS, and associate director of public health research for business development. The academy recognizes his efforts to help invent molecular
beacon probes that identify various genes that may be present in a clinical sample. These probes are used around the world in many clinical diagnostic tests, such as assays for tuberculosis, the AIDS virus, and COVID-19. He has also distinguished himself with work to develop sensitive assays to detect rare, mutated gene fragments arising from cancer cells to enable early detection of pre-symptomatic cancer from routine blood samples. “On behalf of my colleagues who are inventors on virtually all of my patents—and without whom none of these inventions would have been made—it is an honor to represent them as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors,” Kramer said.
RBHS Celebrates its 10-Year
It has been a decade since Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, now known as Rutgers Health, began working to deliver quality health care to New Jersey communities, particularly in underserved areas. It was conceived as an institution that could operate on the scale needed to transform communities and pursue life-saving discoveries. From the first, community engagement has been a priority, along with a commitment to providing care regardless of patients’ ability to pay. Rutgers Health has proved itself a research powerhouse, with faculty bringing more than $3.7 billion in awarded funding in the last decade. As we celebrate this 10th anniversary, we look forward to many more years of providing our communities quality care and groundbreaking research.
Helping First-Gen College Students Find a Path to Medicine
For 16 years, NJMS has run the Northeast Regional Alliance (NERA) MedPrep HCOP National Ambassadors Program, which gives students from local colleges a chance to experience the medical field over the course of three summers. They spend six to seven weeks each summer taking introductory science courses, prepping for the MCAT, and gaining research exposure.
In many cases, these are firstgeneration college students who may not have the resources to enable their success in college and medical school. To guide students through these challenges, they receive one-on-one counseling, financial and wellness sessions. The program also does interventions to ensure that participants graduate from college.
“They have their first experience in the health care field,” says Humberto Baquerizo, MBA, EdD, program development specialist in the NJMS Office for Diversity and Community Engagement, which oversees the program. “They develop relationships at the hospital; they get to see people who look like them.”
In December 2023, Baquerizo gave a presentation about the program at the Student Success Conference, a Rutgers initiative to break down barriers to student success and provide students with inspiration, motivation, and validation. The presentation focused on how the grant-funded NERA program provides an equitable learning environment and gives participants the chance to develop student-to-student peer relationships.
