SC Biomedical Informatics & Data Science For Health Equity Research Training (SC BIDS4HEALTH)

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ABSTRACT The South Carolina Biomedical Data Science and Informatics for Health Equity Research (SC BIDS4HEALTH) training program seeks to train informaticists and data scientists to address health disparities, via engagement with local communities, using telehealth services and informatics tools to improve access, through interoperability and enhanced health information exchange, through improved healthcare quality (particularly in rural and critical access hospitals) and through novel, health disparities focused e-health innovations. Given that chronic illnesses underlie health disparities in South Carolina, the development of our curriculum is based on application of the Wagner model of chronic illness care to address healthcare related disparities through informatics to make chronic care for those with disparities more available and effective. This model provides a framework to enhance health systems for those at risk of disparities, using informatics and data science driven approaches to improve health of at-risk individuals through more effective, patient-centric healthcare. The SC BIDS4HEALTH builds on an existing joint Clemson University – Medical University of South Carolina PhD program in Biomedical Data Science and informatics and that involves faculty who are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in biomedical informatics, public health, computer science and engineering, and multiple biomedical and health domains. We leverage many existing resources and partnerships to enable curriculum that both provides state-of-the-art training and makes a notable impact on South Carolina communities, especially those that are medically underserved. Through these same partnerships, we create pathways into our program from local historically black colleges and universities. We hypothesize that systematic training in SC BIDS4HEALTH is achieved by (Aim 1) synthesizing new didactic curricula building on the foundations of Biomedical Informatics, Data Science, and Population Health to achieve understanding of how these concepts can be applied in rural and underserved populations, to advance health and alleviate health disparities; (Aim 2) developing new immersive practical and research experiences in affected communities to allow for direct trainee interactions and measurable impactful research outcomes; (Aim 3) providing teaching experiences to the pre-doctoral trainees and promote exposure of HBCU students to biomedical data science and informatics research and careers; and (Aim 4) developing a new postdoctoral training program. We further propose to (Aim 5) evaluate the careers and community impact of the SC BIDS4HEALTH training program. The predoctoral program is 2 to 3 years in length, while the length of the postdoctoral program is 1 year with possibility of renewal for another year. At full capacity, this program will simultaneously support 10 predoctoral and 4 postdoctoral trainees across Clemson and MUSC.