Hampton Roads consortium opens research HQ

The Hampton Roads Biomedical Research Consortium opened its headquarters at Old Dominion University’s Tri-Cities Center in Suffolk Friday.

The consortium is a partnership between ODU, Norfolk State University, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Sentara Healthcare Inc., and was founded in June 2020. Its goal is to address health care disparities, jumpstart scientific research and advance biomedical innovation for the region.

The center’s technology includes an innovation and prototype lab, which includes a digital anatomy printer and a 5G digital learning lab. The consortium has already brought in $10 million in federal grants and has another $15 million in federal grants pending.

“The Hampton Roads Biomedical Research Consortium has been working on putting together a research space where we can bring collaborators, from universities, from the health care systems, and really also from the community to work on population health,” said Morris Foster, ODU’s vice president for research. “We have a wonderful computational environment here where we work on confidential data, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) data, those kinds of things. Also, we can help people create the technologies that have ultimately become products for medical purposes, for prevention of disease, for all of those things. We also hope to inspire a biohealth economy for the region.”

The presidents of ODU, EVMS and NSU, along with Michael Gentry, Sentara’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, spoke at Friday’s opening.

“Our work together in this new space is about improving our region as well as people’s lives,” said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill.

Dr. Alfred Abuhamad, president, provost and dean of the School of Medicine at EVMS, noted that the consortium’s research is focused on the community and is key to “our ability to make a difference in the future” and “leverage our strength to really affect change in the community.”

The creation of the Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center at ODU — folding the medical school into the university — was included in bills sponsored by state Sen. Louise Lucas and Del. Barry Knight, which passed unanimously during the 2023 Virginia General Assembly regular session. In March, Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed a change in wording that would not allow the merger until requirements relating to cooperative agreements and joint ventures are met and approved by the chairs of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Appropriations Committee and the governor. If the House of Delegates and state Senate approve the governor’s amendments later this month, the Eastern Virginia Health Sciences Center would go into effect Jan. 1, 2024.

Foster said the schools working together through the consortium, which was first discussed in 2018, “really seeded a lot of the integration that is now happening between ODU and EVMS.” He said it showed them that they can “play well together.”

But other partnerships between ODU, EVMS, Sentara and NSU have also been in the works, including the consortium.

“The state government had the foresight to see the importance of the collaboration that could happen and could definitely positively affect the health disparities we see, particularly in Hampton Roads, but throughout the nation,” NSU President Javaune Adams-Gaston said. “The relationship between EVMS, ODU, NSU and Sentara has been a wonderful opportunity for us to begin to say, ‘We are better as a collaborative, we can make a difference in those individuals who are suffering.’ … We don’t have the answers today, but through this research consortium, we will have the answers to infant mortality …  and so many more disparities that are occurring across our region.”