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New HCV Screening Project in Rhode Island
Rhode Island Foundation names winners of Innovation Fellowships
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April 16, 2013 12:01 am
By Alex Kuffner
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The Rhode Island Foundation is set to announce Tuesday that projects aimed at eradicating hepatitis C and encouraging design by young people were chosen as winners of this year's Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship.
The winners -- Dr. Lynn Taylor, an infectious diseases specialist at Miriam Hospital, and Adrienne Gagnon, executive director of Providence-based DownCity Design -- will each receive $300,000 over the next three years to implement their ideas.
A seven-member panel chaired by Rhode Island Foundation president and CEO Neil D. Steinberg selected Taylor and Gagnon from 183 proposals.
The fellowships are aimed at supporting innovative projects that will improve life in Rhode Island. They are funded by Providence philanthropists John and Letitia Carter.
Here are links to videos on the projects proposed by Taylor, Gagnon and the five other finalists for the fellowships: Lynae Brayboy; Laura Briggs, Domenico Pacifici and Jonathan Knowles; Al Dahlberg; Angela Jackson; and Leo Pollock.
2013 Rhode Island Innovation Fellows to focus on 'design thinking' and Hepatitis C eradication to improve state
http://www.rifoundation.org
Two original ideas focusing on eradicating Hepatitis C and expanding "design thinking" have been selected as winners of the 2013 Rhode Island Innovation Fellowship, an annual program in its second year designed to stimulate solutions by Rhode Islanders to Rhode Island challenges. Made possible through the generosity and vision of philanthropists Letitia and John Carter, the Fellowship provides two individuals with up to $300,000 over three years to develop, test, and implement innovative ideas that have the potential to dramatically improve any area of life in Rhode Island.
The two winners, Adrienne Gagnon and Lynn Taylor, were chosen from a pool of 180 original proposals by a selection panel chaired by President and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation Neil D. Steinberg.
"We congratulate Adrienne and Lynn on their forward-thinking and creative approaches to addressing challenges and creating change in Rhode Island," said Steinberg. "The Foundation is grateful for Letitia and John Carter's dedication to and passion for Rhode Island and is proud to have transformed their dreams into one of the Foundation's boldest programs.
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Gagnon's project, Innovation by Design, will help foster the next generation of Rhode Island innovators by bringing the transformative tools of "design thinking" to students across the state. Her program will send out mobile design labs - repurposed from retired shipping containers - to parks, school yards, and vacant lots in Rhode Island's core cities, and engage students in free, hands-on design programs that will improve our communities. Gagnon envisions students working together to design and create structures, products, public awareness campaigns, and other interventions to strengthen their neighborhoods, while also gaining academic and life skills. The Innovation by Design project will develop an online, interactive design curriculum portal that will be available to all Rhode Island school districts, and will also offer a summer institute for teachers on using design thinking in classrooms.
"I believe that by offering Rhode Island youth the tools of design thinking, we can create a generation of entrepreneurs, of creators, of engaged citizens who see challenges as opportunities and work together to solve them," said Gagnon, who also co-founded the non-profit organization DownCity Design in 2009. "This fellowship will fund not just one great idea, but an entire generation of Rhode Island residents full of great ideas."
Taylor's project, Rhode Island Defeats Hep C, aims to make Rhode Island the first state to eradicate the Hepatitis C virus infection (HCV). Taylor - a physician, researcher, public health advocate, and HCV expert - calls HCV a "time bomb in Rhode Island" and says the epidemic will peak in the state over the next two decades unless dramatic action is taken. With the medical community now on the verge of a radical, "game-changing" shift in HCV therapy, Taylor says the cure rate can potentially be 100 percent. The key to achieving that cure rate in Rhode Island is to scale up the delivery system, which barely exists now in the state.
Taylor's project is a comprehensive plan that includes several steps: awareness, rapid testing, linkage to care, building infrastructure for a sustainable model, and evaluation.
"At no other time in history have we had such opportunity to eradicate this harmful, costly epidemic," said Taylor, assistant professor of medicine at Brown University and director of Miriam Hospital's HIV/Viral Hepatitis Coinfection Program. "Rhode Island has the optimal size epidemiologically, cooperation between stakeholders, scientific acumen, and medical establishments that make it possible to be the first state to defeat HCV. With this fellowship, we can save money and lives in Rhode Island, bring in additional resources, and lead the nation in curtailing this epidemic."
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