National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Monica Bertagnoli expressed her excitement about the work and research being conducted at the Arkansas College of Health Education during a facility tour Monday (October 21).
Bertagnoli’s visit to ACHE was part of a tour of Arkansas hosted by Rep. Steve Womack (R-Rogers) on Monday and Tuesday (Oct. 22).
“Being able to spend a day learning about this wonderful institution, meeting the students and seeing the amazing quality of our students, seeing not only the students but all the resources available to us. I’m just excited about what we can do, not just the students, but also build a scientific community here,” Bertagnoli said.
With the resources and government support provided through ACHE, the scientific community will be able to do “incredible things for the people of Arkansas,” she said.
The tour also included a tour of the research facilities at the ACHE Institute Health and Wellness Center, located in the former Golden Living facility on Fianna Way in Fort Smith. Kyle Parker, president and CEO of ACHE, said one of the reasons the research center is making a difference in Arkansas is because they think differently.
“I want to do research to solve problems, not research for research’s sake,” Parker said.
For example, it allows those working at the center to consider what neurological effects aircraft used at the Foreign Military Pilot Training Center at Fort Smith have on pilots and how they can be mitigated. That means, he said.
“Can we, through a culture program, help create a G-suit that can handle the kind of forces that airplanes put on pilots and extend pilots’ lives to prevent potential neurological damage?” Parker said. “It’s about finding solutions, not just identifying solutions.”
He told the new employees that one of the big benefits of the facility is that it allows them to create what they need for research, but it also requires them to think outside the box and figure out the best way to use the facility. He said it also meant something.
“But if you don’t change your mindset, if you don’t try things that you know might fail, if you don’t start weeding through failures, you’re not going to find anything that works,” Parker said. Ta.
The center’s 90,000-square-foot biomedical laboratory will be one of the largest medical research facilities in the country, and will include research into cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and more, ACHE said. Allergy and muscle mass testing will also be done for some new weight loss drugs.
“I think we have an environment here that can really attract top talent. We have some things that the major centers don’t have,” said Bertagnoli, the 17th director of the nation’s medical research institute. he said. “You have the infrastructure, and then you also have the academic freedom to get a core team.”
Dr. Jeff Osborne, vice president of research, said the research center is open and operational, although some areas are not yet completed and some equipment has not yet been delivered.
