Jennifer Maratt, MD, MS, has been awarded a VA Health Services Research and Development Career Development Award (CDA) to begin in 2024. The five-year CDA, created by the VA to provide junior researchers with mentoring by established VA researchers, focuses on the areas of biomedical laboratory, clinical science, health services, and rehabilitation research.
This award will build on Dr. Maratt’s previous KL2 Young Investigator pilot award from the Indiana CTSI, which she received in 2020 as a junior faculty member. She credits this award with allowing her the protected time and resources to be able to pursue her research interests, as well as the ability to learn more about career development, grant writing, and project management.
“My KL2 pilot project focused on understanding surveillance decision-making from the perspectives of patients and providers. Through this qualitative study, we were able to start identifying barriers and facilitators for surveillance along with gaps in care coordination,” said Maratt.
Working with a team of multidisciplinary mentors, Maratt is eager to learn more about using national data to understand trends in surveillance colonoscopy use, and developing and testing interventions in the areas of colorectal cancer prevention and risk stratification.
The goal is to utilize a national VA sample to identify the proportion of patients who undergo early, timely, or delayed surveillance and factors associated with each to improve access to colonoscopy resources.
“Ultimately, through this work, I hope to develop effective, patient- and provider-centered interventions to improve use of colonoscopy with the downstream effects of improving access to endoscopy, while engaging patients in decision making. I am incredibly grateful for the support that I received from the Indiana CTSI leadership and staff, as well as my mentorship team including Drs. Thomas Imperiale, Marianne Mathias, Laura Myers and Teresa Damush.”
