Professor of Pediatrics
Michael Kappelman, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Gastroenterology, has received a CDC Cooperative Agreement Awards (U01) award entitled “Improving Outcomes and Reducing Disparities for Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease through Epidemiology, Enhanced Disease Management, Dissemination, and Education”. This will be a 5-year, $3.75 million award starting September 30, 2023. UNC is the Prime recipient. It is a multiple PI award with Dr. Kappenman as Lead PI along with adult GI colleagues Dr. Sid Singh at UCSD and Dr. Meena Bewtra at UPenn.
The overarching goals of the project are to improve quality of life and reduce health disparities in pediatric and adult IBD through: 1) rigorous epidemiological research to evaluate impact of social risk factors on the natural history of IBD, 2) testing the effectiveness of innovative IBD management strategies to improve health equity and outcomes, and 3) developing and evaluating stakeholder-informed patient and provider education and awareness programs.
The project will consist of a 52-week, pragmatic, multi-center, open-label, randomized clinical trial with a prospective cohort study embedded within the trial. We will include 1200 children (13-17y) and adults (>17y) with IBD at 6 pediatric and 5 adult sites.
Additionally, the study will involve the development of a multi-stakeholder informed, tailored digital health intervention to improve IBD management and patient activation followed by a pragmatic trial to compare the effectiveness of the intervention versus usual care.
The study will also address health disparities and increase IBD awareness through provider and patient education and the dissemination of study findings and other evidence-based practices to researchers, clinicians, and patients. This work will bring together a coalition of professional organizations, medical education events, disease associated non-profits and grassroot patient advocacy groups representing diverse patients with IBD who are to create, conduct and evaluate live, in-person and digital education and awareness programs.
Many congratulations to Dr. Kappenman and his team.