Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Professor Ilhem Messaoudi is among the UCI researchers awarded the 2020 Campus-Community Research Incubator (CCRI) grant. The CCRI grants are supported by the UCI Institute for Clinical & Translational Science and the Orange County Healthcare Agency. Each awarded project’s overall goal is to address the health needs of diverse populations in Orange County that have arisen due to COVID-19.

The CCRI grants are designed to foster collaborative projects between university researchers and community organizations. To help complete the project’s goals, Professor Messaoudi will be partnering with Dean Adeline Nyamathi, Assistant Professor Sanghyuk Shin and Valerie Pham from the School of Nursing; and Dung Hua and Becky Nguyen from the Vietnamese American Cancer Foundation. Their project, “COVID-19 prevalence and psychological distress among Vietnamese American cancer patients and other community members,” will combine behavioral and laboratory data to produce useful methods to improve COVID-19 education, prevention and service delivery in local Vietnamese communities.

You can find their full project description here.