Grants Funded
Grant applicants for the 2024 cycle requested a total of nearly $3 million dollars. The PSF Study Section Subcommittees of Basic & Translational Research and Clinical Research evaluated more than 100 grant applications on the following topics:
The PSF awarded research grants totaling over $650,000 dollars to support more than 20 plastic surgery research proposals.
ASPS/PSF leadership is committed to continuing to provide high levels of investigator-initiated research support to ensure that plastic surgeons have the needed research resources to be pioneers and innovators in advancing the practice of medicine.
Research Abstracts
Search The PSF database to have easy access to full-text grant abstracts from past PSF-funded research projects 2003 to present. All abstracts are the work of the Principal Investigators and were retrieved from their PSF grant applications. Several different filters may be applied to locate abstracts specific to a particular focus area or PSF funding mechanism.
Patient-Centered Care in Breast Reconstruction
Tiffany Ballard MD
2014
The Regents of the University of Michigan
Research Fellowship
Breast (Cosmetic / Reconstructive)
It is estimated that over 230,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. While the use of breast conservation therapy is growing, mastectomy remains a common treatment option. Studies have demonstrated that breast reconstruction lessens the potential adverse effects on women's body image, psychosocial well-being, and overall quality of life that may occur following mastectomy. Despite an emphasis on patient-centered care, well-designed studies comparing the options for reconstruction from the patient's point of view are limited. Further, disparities in breast cancer treatment outcomes have been documented for decades but have not been adequately investigated. The Mastectomy Reconstruction Outcomes Consortium (MROC) Study is an ongoing, prospective cohort study designed to compare the long-term outcomes for the most commonly used options for breast reconstruction following mastectomy. Utilizing the patient population enrolled in this study, the proposed PSF research fellowship will aim to evaluate the effects of race and ethnicity on reconstruction outcomes, with the goal of enabling providers to design better care for diverse populations of mastectomy patients. The results of the study will also help direct future outcomes research in underserved populations. A secondary goal of the research fellowship will be to focus on developing a foundation for a career in health sciences research. This will be accomplished through a customized training curriculum involving statistical courses and programming. Pursuing this secondary goal will afford the PSF Fellow the opportunity to develop and test new skills in the context of a multicenter, prospective outcomes study and to gain experience in data analysis and dissemination of study results.
Tiffany Nicole Ballard, MD, is a resident in the Integrated Plastic Surgery Residency Program at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI). As a first-generation college student at DePauw University (Greencastle, IN), she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry. She completed her medical training at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN), where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. During her upcoming research year, she will have the opportunity to combine her interests in breast surgery and health services research while evaluating the effects of race, ethnicity, and other socio-demographic variables on breast reconstruction outcomes among patients enrolled in the Mastectomy Reconstruction Outcomes Consortium (MROC) Study.