MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University, state and local agencies will be getting a boost in funding for health-care programs.
On Tuesday, the office of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. announced that he and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. helped secure $2,773,296 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for various health-care programs across the Mountain State. Both senators are members of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.
“This significant funding will support a variety of programs throughout West Virginia, including school health programs, public health education programs, mental health and substance abuse programs and cutting edge medical research,” Manchin said. “All of these programs are important to West Virginians overall health and well-being. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I’ll continue advocating for these important resources on behalf of the Mountain State.”
The lion’s share of this funding, $2,226,038, will go to WVU. Dr. Clay Marsh, dean of the WVU Health Sciences campus, said this funding comes in the form of grants from the Institutional Development Award program out of the National Institute of General Medical Science.
The IDeA program supports basic, clinical and translational research, faculty development and infrastructure improvements in the health-care arena in states that have typically receiving lower levels of funding from the National Institute of Health. Marsh said West Virginia is one of 23 more rural states that fall into this category.
“I think that what we are grateful for is that many of our federal representatives, including U.S. senators, U.S. Congresspeople who are leaders at NIH and other agencies, have been able to understand the challenges of smaller states with fewer people and perhaps less immediate resources and they have started working on creating opportunities for states like West Virginia,” he said, adding that this is one of a few types of grant funding the university has secured. “The truth is that we have a state that very much needs the smartest people with the highest degree of innovation, and we have a population consistently ranked worst in the country on many of our important health-care outcomes, such as cancer rates, opioid deaths, heart diseases and many others.”
Marsh said this kind of funding from the federal government and national health research entities is what is allowing the university to recruit the high caliber specialists that make the research at the WVU Heart & Vascular Institute and the Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute possible. Furthermore, he said WVU’s track record of grant funding acquisition has helped propel to the status of an R-1 research institution because the university has proven itself able to make good on outside investment.
“It is critical that West Virginians have access to quality health-care services backed by the most recent innovations in medical research,” Capito said. “These federal investments will give our universities the resources they need to continue making breakthroughs in medical science and support state and local efforts to provide health care in our communities. I am thrilled to see this funding come to our state, and I will continue to fight to fund programs that benefit the health and well-being of West Virginians.”
As for the rest of funding secured by the senators, $367,258 will go to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, the second largest recipient. Jessica N. Holstein, the department’s assistant director of communications, said the money will be used for increased screening rates and to provide public education to aid in prevention and elimination of childhood lead poisoning. The West Virginia Department of Education also received $85,000.
A further $95,000, also in the form of grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is going to Hampshire County Pathways Inc, which is an organization dedicated to helping those with mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Cindi Corbin, executive director of Hampshire County Pathways, said the funding is the first installment of a three-year-long grant to establish a statewide peer network called WV Recovers! to guide those in need of help toward the resources they need.
“My organization and I have been working with the Bureau of Behavioral Health, as well as members of the West Virginia BRSS TACS team, and so we’ve formed an interim operating committee several months ago after we wrote the grant,” she explained. “It will help because it’s going to allow us the funds to actually build and support a statewide peer network mainly for individuals with mental health disorders but also substance abuse. It’ll be a clearing house, so to speak, kind of that one stop shop.”