Rutgers University awarded $5M to improve access to COVID testing in underserved communities
The New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) at Rutgers University received a $5 million National Institutes of Health grant to launch outreach campaigns and expand access to COVID-19 testing for underserved and vulnerable communities throughout the state.
The Rutgers-led study called the New Jersey Healthcare Essential Worker Outreach and Education Study – Testing Overlooked Occupations, or NJ HEROES TOO, will be funded under NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative, RADx Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) program, according to the university.
The program supports research that aims to better understand COVID-19 testing patterns among underserved and vulnerable populations; strengthen the data on disparities in infection rates, disease progression and outcomes; and develop strategies to reduce the disparities in COVID-19 testing, according to NIH.