# Personality-informed care model for 9/11-related comorbid conditions

> **NIH ALLCDC U01** · STATE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK STONY BROOK · 2020 · $599,346

## Abstract

Fifteen years after 9/11, many World Trade Center (WTC) responders continue to suffer from signature WTC-
related physical and mental disorders. Prevalent and persistent comorbidity between these disorders
challenges traditional treatments. The present proposal aims to explicate vulnerability and resilience factors in
WTC responders, and use this knowledge to develop a person-focused care model for comorbid medical and
psychiatric conditions. The proposal focuses on personality, which in preliminary cross-sectional studies of
WTC responder population was among the strongest predictors of physical and mental disorders, persistence
of symptoms, social and occupational impairment, and treatment utilization, even when controlling for WTC-
related diagnoses. This is in line with the literature confirming that personality is one of the most powerful
predictors of vulnerability and resilience in response to disasters, leading to large differences in illness course
and treatment response, which person-focused medicine can recognize and address. However, longitudinal
investigation is necessary to establish that personality predicts outcomes and elucidate specific mechanisms
by which it affects illness course. Furthermore, the feasibility of personality-informed care model that targets
personality vulnerability in addition to physical and mental disorders remains to be evaluated. The current
study will recruit and follow 400 WTC responders from Long Island site of the WTC Health Program as they
present for annual monitoring. In the observational part of the study, participants will complete a state-of-the-art
personality assessment during the baseline visit. At that and at two subsequent annual visits, they will
complete, during 1 week, daily measures of symptoms, lung function, cognitive processes, stressors, and
functional impairment, and we will also obtain their diagnostic and services information. These analyses will
determine which personality vulnerabilities uniquely contribute to worse illness course, functioning and
treatment utilization, and clarify the underpinning mechanisms. Furthermore, this information will allow a
construction of a predictive model and will identify key vulnerabilities that can be targets of treatment. The
treatment part of the study will test the feasibility of improving health outcomes by treating personality
vulnerabilities using an approach informed by the constructed model. We will target the most significant of
these vulnerabilities in a proof-of-concept randomized clinical trial (RCT), where 60 patients with comorbid
disorders who have the vulnerability will be randomized to personality-informed treatment (PT) vs. control
treatment (CT). We hypothesize that PT will be more effective in changing this vulnerability and related
mechanisms than CT. Taken together, the proposed study will be the first to rigorously investigate personality
assessment as a tool of personality-informed medicine to predict and treat mental an...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9948532
- **Project number:** 5U01OH011321-05
- **Recipient organization:** STATE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK STONY BROOK
- **Principal Investigator:** Roman I Kotov
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** ALLCDC
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $599,346
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-01 → 2021-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9948532

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9948532, Personality-informed care model for 9/11-related comorbid conditions (5U01OH011321-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9948532. Licensed CC0.

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