Research is critical to discovering innovative solutions to prevent the incidence and improve the consequences of injuries. We research novel interventions, evaluate injury prevention programs, and fund multidisciplinary projects to determine and implement best practices to prevent injuries. Our research focus areas include:
Stepping Strong Injury Prevention Innovator Award. Beginning in 2019, The Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation started funding research projects designed to develop and evaluate novel injury prevention interventions. As with other Stepping Strong Innovator Award projects, the center’s model is to provide seed funding to innovative, high-reward projects that require preliminary research and development before securing larger grants from industry partners or public health organizations. As of January 2022, the Stepping Strong Center has provided funding for the following three Injury Prevention Innovator Awards:- Bharti Khurana, MD: Making the Invisible Visible: Bringing Intimate Partner Violence into Focus
- Jeffrey C. Schneider, MD: Digital Phenotyping: A Novel Way to Assess Outcomes for Burn Survivors after Hospitalization
- Peter T. Masiakos, MD, MS: Developing and evaluating an avatar/virtual reality-based gun violence prevention training program for clinicians
Stepping Strong Start Up Grants. The Stepping Strong Start-Up Grant program offers awards of between $25,000 – $30,000 to help launch early-stage research initiatives that align with the mission of the center but do not require Innovator Award funding.- Remote Evaluation of Symptoms and Trauma Outcomes in Recovery (RESTORE). Improvements in technology and clinical care have reduced in-hospital deaths from traumatic injury to fewer than 4%. However, what happens to the 96% of survivors when they go home is largely unknown. To solve for this, the Stepping Strong Center awarded a Start-Up grant to Juan Herrera-Escobar, MD, to explore innovative ways of using passive smartphone technology to collect long-term outcome data for trauma patients. RESTORE is a program of the FORTE (Functional Outcomes and Recovery after Trauma Emergencies) research collaborative. Watch a FORTE video.
- Walk Boston: Improving Pedestrian Safety. In 2020, the center awarded a $25,000 grant to WalkBoston, the only statewide pedestrian advocacy organization in Massachusetts, to implement a training program for Boston’s Level 1 trauma centers injury prevention professionals. With the funds, the WalkBoston Pedestrian Safety Program taught injury prevention professionals the tools to pursue pedestrian safety improvements in their hospital catchment area. As there is no current offering of a pedestrian safety program for trauma centers across the United States, we hope this project will serve as a model and lay the groundwork for national efforts.