Chronic diseases, including obesity, hypertension, depression, and arthritis, are the leading cause of adult mortality in the United States and the leading cause of health care expenditures.
Dr. Robert Rodriguez, a professor of medicine in the UCR School of Medicine, has been awarded a grant of approximately $100,000 through the UCR Office of Research and Economic Development’s Research Seed Funding and Grant Program for a project titled “The Chronic Disease Assessment and Prevention Hub: An Automated Chronic Conditions Checkup and Prevention Tool for Underserved Populations.”
The project will develop the Chronic Disease Assessment and Prevention Hub (CDAPH), an automated system designed to improve the detection and prevention of chronic diseases without requiring in-person clinician involvement.
For each patient, the CDAPH will generate a personalized health profile that summarizes identified chronic conditions, provides recommendations for those conditions, and develops a list of potential follow-up care locations, including local clinics, public health agencies and places for exercise and healthy food options.
According to Rodriguez, the grant’s principal investigator, the initiative addresses a critical healthcare challenge: More than 100 million American adults have chronic conditions that are not adequately detected or treated due, in part, to shortages in the primary care and public health workforce.
“Too many people, particularly those in underserved communities, are missing opportunities for early detection and prevention of chronic disease,” he said. “This project will explore how biomedical automation can help close those gaps, expand access to essential health assessments, and create new opportunities for collaboration among clinicians, engineers, and scientists at UCR.”
Co-principal investigators on the grant are UCR faculty members Hyle Park, Dr. Elizabeth Jacobs, and Suqi Liu.