Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Announces New Center for Chronic Disease Management and Research

The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to launch a new Center for Chronic Disease Management and Research. The center will advance science in supporting patients with multiple chronic conditions and provide an opportunity for researchers to drive culture change and develop sustainable health care initiatives through innovative research design.

The new PROMOTE (Promoting Resilience in Persons with Multiple Chronic Conditions) Center will focus on three founding pillars: managing multiple chronic conditions, studying social determinants of health, and providing community-driven care. This will include leading a shift in current disease-specific models of care to person-centered, community-focused methods that address factors affecting health including functional limitations, family and caregiver perspectives, poverty, housing, access to food, or traumatic life events.

Sarah L. Szanton, PhD, ANP, FAAN, center director and JHSON endowed professor for health equity and social justice, tells Newswise.com, “With two out of three adults in the US experiencing multiple chronic conditions, the need for relevant research and scalable programs is urgent. Our center takes a holistic view of the person, their environment, and their goals. The center will prepare clinician-researchers to design compelling solutions that are relevant to the home, family, social, and financial ecosystems that people live in. We want to change the question from ‘what is the matter?’ to ‘what matters most’ to the patient.”

PROMOTE will use a framework with a heavy emphasis on health resilience and recovery and simultaneously influence factors that increase individuals’ ability to overcome a health challenge. JHSON researchers have partnered with the Center for Social Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art to use human-centered design, which leverages experience and feedback of patients and caregivers to better develop and test ideas.