Ethel Donaghue TRIPP Center is Redesigned for Focus on Health Disparities

Started in 2006 with a nearly $2 million award from Donaghue, the Ethel F. Donaghue Center for Translating Research into Practice and Policy was formed as a new center at University of Connecticut Health Center for the purpose of creating the infrastructure to support research on the best ways to move evidence into practice.

Led by Judith Fifield, PhD, Professor of Family Medicine, the TRIPP center was structured to support research in multiple departments at the medical school and from affiliated partners in the region. With its technical assistance and pre-award support, TRIPP helped to secure over $18 million in external funding to support the work TRIPP scholars and partners. The Center was also designed so that the expertise provided by TRIPP scholars (such as consultation on study design, grant preparation, preliminary data analysis, database assistance, and project management) to other researchers could be paid for by their external funding; consequently the Center was able to provide $6.5 million worth of services that were paid back to the Center from other funded projects.

Some of the services and projects sponsored by TRIPP included pilot and planning grants to researchers at UConn and other organizations; a Center Affiliate program; Visiting Scholars; and pre- and post-award services that focused on research-to-practice expertise.

As of this year and as a part of the Bioscience Connecticut legislative mandate, the mission of the TRIPP Center will be changed to focus its practice-oriented translational research onto the issue of health disparities. Although Donaghue is no longer providing financial assistance to the center now called the UConn Health Disparities Institute, it is delighted that many of the methods developed under the Donaghue-funded TRIPP center will remain the same with its new focus on health disparities. A national search for an executive director to lead the Center is underway.