The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded a $4.3 million grant over five years to the University of Iowa (UI) to continue the Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) in the College of Public Health. The grant will help Iowa researchers advance the science of injury prevention, develop and evaluate interventions, and collaborate with partners for public action to prevent injuries and violence.

Injuries are the leading cause of death for people ages 1 to 54. CDC-funded injury control research centers, including the UI IPRC, are leading research and prevention efforts nationwide to address adverse childhood experiences, opioid overdoses, older adult falls, suicide, sexual violence, transportation-related injuries, and emerging injury challenges.

“This grant allows UI IPRC research and practice partners to place rural communities’ social and structural barriers to injury and violence prevention at the forefront of our research and prevention efforts,” says Carri Casteel, director of the UI IPRC and professor of occupational and environmental health.

The UI IPRC engages about 70 faculty and research scientists in 30 departments and nine colleges across the UI campus. The center grant includes four interdisciplinary research projects led by UI investigators:

• Adverse childhood experiences and accelerated epigenetic aging in adulthood: A longitudinal investigation of resilience among low-income Black Americans (Mark Berg, Sociology and Criminology/ UI Public Policy Center, Project Lead)
• Dual injury epidemics in the United States: Examining the pattern, cause, and consequence of emergent racial disparities in overdose and suicide among rural populations (Jonathan Platt, Epidemiology, Project Lead) 
• A statewide evaluation of emergency departments’ treatment capacity and management of substance use disorders (Priyanka Vakkalanka, Emergency Medicine, Project Lead) 
• Translational research to refer rural older adults to evidence-based falls prevention programs (Sato Ashida, Community and Behavioral Health, Project Lead)

The UI IPRC has received continuous funding from the CDC since 1991.