Sean Follmer

In In 2020, stroke was the leading cause of serious long-term disability in the United States. 3.9% of the U.S. population older than 18 years of age is expected to have had a stroke by 2030. Stroke is caused by a failure of blood circulation in the brain; major risk factors for stroke include high blood pressure and diabetes, which in the U.S. are more prevalent in low-income, medically underserved communities3-6. This is especially true for Hispanic and Latinx communities, who have been shown to have higher risk of stroke than Non-Hispanic whites.

We believe that there is a fundamental need to understand and address inequities in stroke rehabilitation outcomes for Hispanic and Latinx communities. We aim to better understand the social determinants of these disparities in outcomes for medically underserved Hispanic and Latinx communities and to reduce these disparities through the lens of appropriate technology design using a creative, embedded, and science-driven co-design process.

During the RREJ Seed Grant program, we will use the results of an ongoing online survey to design and conduct in-person interviews in two communities that are examples of the people we aim to serve: (1) Brownsville in Cameron County, TX, which is both a Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) designated medically underserved area (MUA) and a health provider scarce area (HPSA). These results of this project will be used to bolster the significance of and provide preliminary data for a series of two grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health -- first an exploratory/developmental R21 proposal, and then a research project R01 proposal.