Congratulations to Gloria Sclar, PhD, MPH, Scientific Manager, on being selected to lead a groundbreaking five-year project, funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).This initiative (ProjectCONNECT) will be launched through Maine Medical Center-Preble Street Learning Collaborative and will bring a much-needed mobile harm reduction, housing, and treatment program to Greater Portland, reaching out to individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness, with co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders.

Our summer students gave their final presentations on August 7 to a packed house! This combined celebration included MaineHealth Non-Clinical and Research Interns. Best wishes and congratulations to this year’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program participants.

Impactful research recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine about improving access and acceptability of COVID-19 testing in vulnerable populations. Led by David Ngandu and Gloria D. Sclar, PhD, MPH, and in collaboration with other MaineHealth colleagues, this journal article describes a project that was dedicated to reaching vulnerable populations using low‑barrier COVID‑19 testing clinics. The MaineHealth research team created a partnership with three community-based organizations (CBOs) to help create walk-up testing clinics in Portland, Maine: Preble Street, Greater Portland Health, and the Portland Community Free Clinic! This work was supported by a RADx-UP supplement to the Northern New England Clinical & Translation Research Network supplement grant.

Erika Mayer, PhD, is a Research Data Analyst. Listen to the video to hear Erika talk about one of her projects she’s working on — an eye tracking project to assess ultrasound interpretation.