NIH director tours ACHE research facility; praises the ‘academic freedom’

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli expressed her excitement at work and research being conducted by the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education during a tour of its facilities on Monday (Oct. 21).

Bertagnolli’s visit to ACHE was part of an Arkansas tour hosted by U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Rogers, Monday and Tuesday (Oct. 22).

“I am just thrilled to be able to spend the day learning about this amazing institution, being able to meet with the students and see the incredibly quality of the student body and to be able to view all the resources that are available not only to the students but to the building scientific community here,” Bertagnolli said.

The resources provided through ACHE and the administration’s support will allow that scientific community to do “incredible things for the people of Arkansas,” she said.

Included in the tour was a look at the research facilities at the ACHE Research Institute Health and Wellness Center located at the former Golden Living facilities on Fianna Way in Fort Smith. Kyle Parker, ACHE president and CEO, said part of why the research center will make a difference in Arkansas is they think differently.

“I want to do research to solve a problem, not to do research for the sake of research,” Parker said.

For example, that means those working at the center will look into what neurological impact aircraft being used at the foreign military pilot training center in Fort Smith will have on pilots and how they can reduce that, he said.

“Can we help create, through the incubation programs, g-suits capable of handling the kind of forces that these planes submit on these pilots, giving them more longevity as opposed to potential neurological damage being done?” Parker said. “It’s about figuring out solutions as opposed to just identifying them.”

He said he tells recruits that one of the great advantages of the facility is that it can be molded into what they need for research but that also means they need to think outside the box and come up with the best ways to use the facility.

“But if we don’t think differently, if we don’t go out there and try things that we know might fail, if we don’t start weeding fails, we don’t find something that works,” Parker said.

The center’s 90,000-square-foot, biomedical research lab, which will be one of the largest medical research facilities in the nation, according to ACHE, will also conduct research on cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and much more. There also will be allergy testing and muscle mass testing on some of the new weight-loss drugs.

“I think you’ve got an environment here that should really be able to attract top talent. You’re going to have some things that the major centers don’t have,” said Bertagnolli, who is the 17th director of the nation’s medical research agency. “You have the infrastructure and on top of that you are going to have the academic freedom to get that core team.”

Though some areas have not yet been completed and some equipment is still to be delivered, the research center is open and operating, according to Dr. Jeff Osborn, vice president of research.