# HAWAII CLINICAL RESEARCH NETWORK FOR HEALTH EQUITY

> **NIH NIH UH3** · UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA · 2024 · $619,264

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
The Hawaii Clinical Research Network for Health Equity (HICRN-HE) proposed 2 pilot projects
involving non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), now more recently called metabolic
dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) using transient elastrography (TE)
[‘FibroScan’], a noninvasive ultrasound technique that can provide measurements of both liver
fat and fibrosis in a one-step evaluation. These 2 projects targeted urban primary care
community settings on the Island of Oahu where our medical school is located with the goal to
assess its relationship to social determinants of health and to see if FibroScan assessments
should be part of standard of care within primary care settings. This Administrative Supplement
application now proposes to expand the study to the rural neighbor islands – specifically to the
Big Island of Hawaii, Kauai and Molokai. We propose to increase the current target sample of
878 participants to an additional 600 participants – 200 at each site. In expanding the sample
size of the 2 projects, we seek to expand the study both from our current urban emphasis to
Hawaii’s rural population (our ‘neighbor’ islands) and to capture broadly the representative
ethnic diversity of the population in Hawaii. We will be able to obtain a more complete
understanding of the relationship between social determinants of health and NAFLD, and
whether ‘point of care’ testing with FibroScans should be advocated as a public health policy.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11191198
- **Project number:** 3UH3MD018358-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
- **Principal Investigator:** Venkataraman Balaraman
- **Activity code:** UH3 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $619,264
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2022-09-24 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11191198

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11191198, HAWAII CLINICAL RESEARCH NETWORK FOR HEALTH EQUITY (3UH3MD018358-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11191198. Licensed CC0.

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