Contact: Maridith Geuder
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A veteran Mississippi State faculty member with an international recognition for research now will have a key position with an organization working to improve health in the Mississippi Delta.
Janice Chambers, one of the university's William L. Giles Distinguished Professors, is becoming research director for Delta Health Alliance, a non-profit collaboration of state institutions and agencies.
She retains a half-time appointment as professor of basic sciences in MSU's College of Veterinary Medicine, where she long has directed the Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
"Dr. Chambers brings extensive experience to this position, with more than $30 million in competitive research grants," said David Shaw, MSU vice president for research and economic development. "We are confident she will help build research capacity for a comprehensive program that targets some of the greatest needs in our state."
In addition to MSU, partners in the alliance include Delta State and Mississippi Valley State universities, the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Delta Council.
Founded in 2001, the organization has brought resources of participating institutions to bear on issues ranging from diabetes and obesity to the retention of nurses in the 18-county core Delta region. (For more, visit http://www.deltahealthalliance.org/.)
"Working with licensed child care centers, Mississippi State has existing research programs through the alliance to help improve dental care and to improve health education in families with young children," said Greg Bohach, the university's vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine.
"In partnership with our collaborating institutions, we believe this is a wonderful opportunity to help expand what the alliance as a whole can do in the Delta," Bohach added.
Last year, Chambers was appointed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as vice chair of the Human Studies Review Board, a congressionally mandated committee reviewing scientific and ethical research of human subjects.
Earlier in 2009, she became the first woman to receive the International Society of Toxicology's Education Award, and in 2005, became the first and only woman to receive the American Chemical Society/Agrochemical Division's International Award for Research.
On campus, she is principal investigator of an $891,000 National Institutes of Health grant to study health disparities related to cardiovascular disease, as well as a $960,000 grant from the Department of Defense to develop new, more effective antidotes against nerve agents.
She is credited with establishing courses in toxicology that led, over time, to state College Board approval of a doctoral program in toxicology at MSU, the only one of its kind in Mississippi.
Chambers is a University of San Francisco biology graduate who completed a doctorate in animal physiology at Mississippi State.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.