This proposal seeks support for the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program (STX MSTP) at theUniversity of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), a federally designated Hispanic-servinginstitution in a minority-majority city. As national leader in clinical and translational research on Hispanic,military, and Veteran health issues, UTHSCSA addresses regional health disparities that present both challengesand opportunities for medical research that are of nationwide relevance.

Postoperative complications and readmissions rates are higher in minority and low socioeconomic status (SES)patients. Low SES is associated with frailty, one of the best predictors of 30-day postoperative complicationsand early hospital readmission. Despite their influence on health outcomes, frailty and social risk factors are notconsidered in risk adjustment for reimbursement and quality measures. CMS developed financial incentive-based programs to improve quality of care.

This application is for renewal of the T32 comprehensive institutional research-training grantCOSTAR (Craniofacial Oral-Biology Student Training in Academic Research). Building onlongstanding institutional research training experience, COSTAR has trained 26 DDS/PhDstudents, 41 PhD students, 26 Post-doctoral Fellows, 4 faculty fellows, and 147 summer dentalstudent research fellows since first funded in 2002.

Co-abuse of cocaine and alcohol is one of the most common, and dangerous drug pairings, as evidenced bytheir concurrent use being a major cause for emergency hospitalization. Thus, this drug combination is notonly a serious health threat to the individual user, but a major public health burden. Currently, there are noeffective treatments for addiction to cocaine and ethanol, underscoring the vital need to understand themechanistic basis of this highly addictive drug pairing in order to discover new targets for therapeuticintervention.