The university’s Medical Center received a $10 million grant for cooperative research from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes to fund research that the university hopes will address disparities in stroke care in the District of Columbia.

Although the grant will involve researchers from 20 local institutions, Chelsea Kidwell, an associate neurology professor at the Medical Center will serve as the project’s principle investigator.

“We know that the type of stroke care people get in the United States depends at least in part on their race and socioeconomic status,” Kidwell said in the 24 Oct. university press release. “What better place to attempt to reduce these disparities than in the nation’s capital, where so many patients are coming from medically underserved communities?”

The research grant will be broken down into three separate research projects, each of which will be overseen by Kidwell: the Acute Stroke Program of Interventions Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disparities (known as Project ASPIRE), Preventing Recurrence of Thromboembolic Events Through Coordinated Treatment in the District of Columbia (known as Project PROTECT DC) and the Differences in the Imaging of Primary Hemorrhage Based on Ethnicity or Race (known as Project DECIPHER).

The head researcher of Project ASPIRE will be Amie Hsia, assistant neurology professor at the Medical Center. Hsia will focus her research on the amount and methods of treatment used on stroke victims in the city, according to the press release.

Project PROTECT DC, which will be led by Alexander Dromerick, a professor of medicine at Georgetown, will investigate the utility of health workers in the community in ensuring that patients follow their assigned at-home regimens in order to prevent recurring strokes.

Project DECIPHER will look into a recent report that African-American patients are at greater risk than the rest of the greater population for chronic brain microbleeds.

The researchers hope to register patients in the three projects by the end of the calendar year.

Kidwell, Hsia, Dromerick, Richard Benson, program director of the office of minority health and research in the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Wexler were unable to be reached for comment.