The Office of Research and Economic Development will host the following in-person event:     

The RURAL Study in Oktibbeha County: Background and Opportunities for Collaboration  

Thursday, February 24, 2022  

9:30 - 10:30 a.m.  

Bost Theater  

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project, Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal Study, or RURAL, seeks to understand why people born in rural communities in the South live shorter and less healthy lives than their counterparts elsewhere in the same counties and across the country.  Dr. Ervin Fox, University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) professor of medicine and principal investigator for the Mississippi core of RURAL, will share information on how this study is allowing researchers to learn what causes the high burden of heart, lung, blood and sleep, disorders in Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and how to alleviate these disorders.    

Researchers will recruit and study 4,600 multi-ethnic participants from 10 of the most economically challenged rural counties in the Southern Appalachia and Mississippi Delta regions, to include cohorts from Oktibbeha and Panola counties. Led by Boston University, the six-year, $21.4 million multi-site prospective cohort study includes 50 investigators from 16 institutions. Come and learn more about this study and the potential for multi-disciplinary collaboration.     

Registration and brochure: www.research.msstate.edu/seminars