NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing equitable access to food and health technologies in the Delta (AR, LA, MS)

This NSF Engines Development Award will lay the groundwork for a future NSF Engine in the lower Mississippi River Delta to develop a regional workforce of diverse technicians, practitioners, researchers, and entrepreneurs; initiate the creation of new companies and associated economic opportunities that emanate from them; translate discoveries and new technologies developed in and across academic environments and private sector initiatives to the market; and achieve better and more equitable health and economic outcomes across a region with disparities that are longstanding and disproportionately shared by low-income communities and communities of color across the nation. Led by the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, this project includes diverse regional stakeholders representing ten academic research institutions, seven for-profit companies, various state government agencies, seventeen nonprofits, and two minority-owned community development finance institutions.

This planning effort will build upon previous federal investments in the region in basic and applied research in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, smart agriculture, biomedical informatics, and data analytics. It will build strategic partnerships across state lines co-creating a regional ecosystem that supports improved health and economic outcomes for all residents, many of whom are on society's geographic, political, and economic fringes.

The vision for the eventual NSF Engine is an innovative incubator of novel solutions to achieve equitable health and economic outcomes for the residents of the proposed region and beyond. Based upon the documented basic needs of the region’s population for food and health care, combined with the challenges and successful responses from the COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity is ripe for use-inspired research and development of innovative and entrepreneurial rural solutions that will not only address the targeted region but also offer potential solutions for other rural areas of the nation.

The eventual Engine will revolve around new delivery models for healthy food, technology-assisted diagnosis, monitoring and prevention and treatment for chronic diseases, and non-traditional diagnostic and pharmacologic therapeutics, focusing on innovations, advancements, and infrastructures that improve health care for under-served populations. Successful translation of these innovations into practice will require workforce development and new financing models for entrepreneurial success tailored for rural communities.

Successful development of the ecosystem will require focused efforts to overcome historical marginalization and discrimination of certain communities and the development of local intellectual assets for sustainable growth.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.