Hartford Award for Research and Practice
The Hartford Award for Research and Practice (HARP) at OHSU supports innovative research projects to promote healthy aging of people in Oregon and beyond. It includes pilot studies to assess feasibility, collect preliminary data to support an external grant application or implement a process improvement initiative. The HARP program values outcomes, accountability, and program sustainability of research or practice improvements. Investigators are encouraged to consider the “National Institute on Aging: Strategic Directions for Research, 2020-2025.”
HARP has two OHSU faculty calls. Applications for the School of Nursing HARP (SON HARP) and the Interprofessional HARP (I-HARP) are invited for one-year projects of up to $25,000. Applicants must have a clinical or research doctorate to apply. The HARP program is aimed at early career investigators; all applications will be considered. HARP allows faculty to pursue implementation science and practice transformation. Application announcements are issued annually in the winter, with funding beginning in September.
Through generous support from the Frances E. Price Estate - Quasi Endowment, the Hartford Center celebrates a rich tradition of grantmaking "based upon our superb history of quality gerontological nursing students and talented faculty, combined with the national profile of the HCGE and the long-time generous support from The John A. Hartford Foundation," according to the Principal Gifts Office of the OHSU Foundation, who administer the endowment.
Accomplishments:
- 20 OHSU faculty research studies funded over the past ten years
- $487,403 awarded to OHSU faculty and advanced-practice nursing students since 2014
- Community Impact in Advanced Care Planning for Older Adults, Oral Health Promotion in Rural Populations, and Fall Prevention in Older Adults
Faculty HARP
The Faculty HARP is for School of Nursing faculty only. All applicants must have a clinical or research doctorate. The 2024 application has closed; check back in early 2025 for updates.
Interprofessional HARP
The Interprofessional HARP (IP-HARP) is available to all OHSU faculty with a clinical or research doctorate. Principal investigators with a primary appointment outside of the School of Nursing require a co-investigator from the School of Nursing. The 2024 application has closed; check back in early 2025 for updates.
Looking for a co-investigator? View the research and interest areas of the Hartford Center for Gerontological Excellence affiliate faculty.
2024 HARP Recipients
Congratulations to Mary Roberts Davis, Ph.D., RN and Quin Denfeld, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FAHA, FHFSA on their 2024 Hartford Award for Research and Practice (HARP).
Drs. Roberts Davis and Denfeld, with co-investigator MinKyoung Song, Ph.D., RN, FNP, FAHA, will analyze data collected as part of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) to test an integrated framework they developed in collaboration with other faculty at the SON, titled “Women’s Health Research Across the Lifespan (WHRL).” Specifically, they plan to examine and identify factors that are associated with physical frailty among older women with cardiovascular disease, such as heart failure and coronary artery disease. They also aim to elicit feedback from older women with cardiovascular disease on both the WHRL framework and the identified predictors of physical frailty.
The new HARP study, “Identifying predictors of frailty among women with cardiovascular disease: An application of the Women's Health Across the Lifespan framework,” aims to both advance the WHRL framework and the co-investigators’ understanding of physical frailty among older women with cardiovascular disease. The framework was presented at the Western Institute of Nursing Conference in April 2024, as an initial step and future research is needed to test and refine the framework to optimize its utility for women’s health research at different stages of the lifespan.
Past HARP awardees
Ruth S. Tadesse, Ph.D., M.S., RN, has been awarded an Interprofessional Hartford Award for Research and Practice titled, “Behavioral health management interventionists and their experiences in implementing clinical trials of telehealth behavioral interventions”, which will be conducted with Co-investigators Allison Lindauer, Ph.D., N.P. and Aimee Mooney, M.S., CCC-SLP, both from OHSU’s Department of Neurology in the School of Medicine. Dr. Tadesse has assembled a strong research team with extensive experience working together, and, as Principal Investigator, she brings expertise in both the role of a behavioral health management interventionist and the qualitative descriptive methodology to be used.
Dr. Tadesse is an early career investigator with a passion for older adults and those caring for them.
Hiroko Kiyoshi-Teo, Ph.D., RN, and her co-investigators, Kathlynn Northup-Snyder, Ph.D., RN and Jennifer Frey, Ph.D., will conduct a secondary data analysis focused on evaluating a subset of recorded motivational interviews on fall prevention (MI-FP) from Dr. Kiyoshi-Teo’s previous K23 study funded by National Institute of Nursing Research (K23NR018672), “Engaging older adults in fall prevention using Motivational Interviewing.”
The research team will also produce educational videos about MI-FP, so stay tuned.
Congratulations to Jenny Firkins, RN, Ph.D., who will serve as Principal Investigator on the 2022 Interprofessional Hartford Award for Research and Practice (IP-HARP), “Evaluation of Values and Preferences in Treatment Decision Making in Cancer Survivors over the Age of 65 in the Pacific Northwest”. This is a cross-sectional study with qualitative and quantitative aims designed to examine and better understand the values and preferences that impact treatment decision-making in older adult cancer survivors.
This one-year, $24,973, grant demonstrates the team-based science the IP-HARP is intended to advance.
Dr. Firkins is an early career nurse scientist whose goal is to improve the quality of life for adults with cancer. She completed her doctoral work in 2019, which included examining quality of life in cancer survivorship. She will continue her collaboration with Lissi Hansen, Ph.D., RN, and Nathan Dieckmann, Ph.D. (Co-Is on the IP-HARP) both served as members of her dissertation committee and are on faculty at OHSU School of Nursing.
Jenny was awarded an Innovation Mentorship Grant through the OHSU School of Nursing to establish and develop a mentoring relationship with Christopher Woodrell, M.D., M.S., also a Co-I on this award. Dr. Woodrell is an Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a staff physician at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in Bronx, NY. His research career is focused on improving the quality of life of people facing liver cancer.
The final Co-I is Donald Sullivan, M.D. Dr. Sullivan has a breadth of knowledge in health services, mixed methods, and qualitative research. Along with his clinical experiences in the intensive care unit, he has extensive experience studying palliative care, including advanced care planning, decision-making, and patient-clinician communication.
IP HARP to Eriko Onishi
The Interprofessional Hartford Award for Research and Practice (IP HARP) program aims to improve older adults' health and health care through research and innovations in care by supporting OHSU faculty research and process improvement initiatives.
An IP HARP was granted to fund the "Developing an Inclusive Advance Care Planning Training Model for Interprofessional Primary Care Teams” project. The principal investigator, Eriko Onishi, M.D., M.C.R., C.M.D, is joined by co-investigators Seiko Izumi, Ph.D., R.N., F.P.C.N.; Sumathi Devarajan, M.D., C.M.D. and Harry Krulewitch, M.D., M.P.H. who complete the interprofessional research team that is a requirement of this award.
This project aims to develop and pilot test an inclusive Advance Care Planning (ACP) training program that enables interprofessional primary care teams, including learners from various disciplines, to learn to facilitate high-quality ACP conversations with older adult patients from diverse backgrounds. The project will expand a more significant grant from the Cambia Health Foundation. It will increase the number of providers and learners trained in high-quality ACP conversations and, hopefully, help promote and sustain the structured ACP model as routine practice in an ambulatory setting.
SON HARP to Amy Ross
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of you have found benefits to your physical and mental health through spending time in nature. For those who may not be able to venture outside due to the chronic effects of chemotherapy, radiation or other cancer treatments, Amy Ross, Ph.D., RN, C.N.S., and her research team have developed a complementary therapy.
The pilot study, “Feasibility of Substitution of Virtual Reality Greenspace and Volatile Organic Compound Humidification to Simulate the Forest Experience Effects on Immune System Recovery”, will be funded for $25,000. The anticipated outcome will be to “standardize procedures for main effects analysis of the simulated forest exposure intervention for use in the future study”. It is a novel study of a simulated forest exposure therapy intervention using virtual reality and humidified volatile organic compounds. In this case, they will test phytoncides from wood essential oils which have been shown to induce human natural killer cells. (Tsao, et al. Health effects of a forest environment on natural killer cells in humans (Tsao, et al., 2018).
Dr. Ross also received the Sigma, Beta Psi Chapter, Naomi Ballard Research Award and an Innovations award for her proposal.