The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville received a $3.4 million research project grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The five-year grant will support research focused on the use of physical activity to treat disease and promote health. A program called Exercise is Medicine Greenville was launched in 2016 to identify and enroll eligible patients in community-based physical-activity programs designed to prevent, manage and treat their chronic diseases.
“This research is a big step toward helping health care systems promote physical activity in the communities where our patients work, live, pray and play,” said Jennifer Trilk, director of USC School of Medicine Greenville’s lifestyle medicine programs.
USC School of Medicine Greenville partners with Prisma Health and the YMCA of Greenville and Oconee Counties to operate the EIMG model. Meenu Jindal, medical director of Prisma Health’s internal medicine clinics, said the model provides an opportunity for health care providers to work with patients who can’t afford a physical-activity program otherwise or have unique lifestyle challenge to help them stay healthy.
The NIH grant will help fund a new research project that aims to increase the identification and referral of patients to the physical activity programs through the EIMG model. Trilk and Mark Stoutenberg, co-director of the Wolson Research Institute for Health and Well-Being at Durham University, lead the project.
The research team will examine referral rates and patient enrollment through the EIMG model from 24 Prisma Health primary care clinics across the Upstate. Strategies will be identified to increase the number of patients receiving referrals.
In addition, the research will examine the effectiveness of the EIMG program and provide insight into the cost-effectiveness of using physical activity as a population-health-management strategy.
“Our goal with this research project is to learn how to better engage as many Prisma Health patients in EIMG so that they can enjoy the multitude of mental, physical, and emotional benefits from being physically active,” Stoutenberg said.
