Sanford Health Receives $4.25 Million Grant from National Institutes of Health

Scott Engel

Sanford Health researcher, Scott Engel, Ph.D., along with his co-Principal Investigators, Kristine Steffen, Ph.D., Pharm.D. (NDSU) and Leslie Heinberg, Ph.D. (Cleveland Clinic), were recently awarded a $4.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Engel’s lab of researchers are devoted to investigating patient outcomes after bariatric surgery.  

The focus of the grant is for a project called “Biobehavioral mechanistic Model of Alcohol Use Following Bariatric Surgery: The BREW ME Model.” The study will investigate the relationship between metabolic and bariatric surgery and post-operative hazardous alcohol use. Research shows that patients who undergo bariatric surgery are at an increased risk for an alcohol use disorder.

“We know most people do quite well following bariatric surgery,” said Dr. Engel. “There is a small, but meaningful group of bariatric surgery patients who experience poor outcomes, especially related to alcohol use after surgery. With this grant, we’ll be able to extend our current work in two ways:  1) rather than simply getting self-reported alcohol intake, we will use objective measurement of alcohol consumption using a sensor worn on the wrist that gives us real-time measurement of alcohol use, and 2) we will examine the role of the gut microbiome in the development of hazardous alcohol use after surgery. These extensions of our work will help us to understand more accurately who develops hazardous alcohol use after surgery and why this happens.” 

The grant will support the lab through 2029. For more information about Sanford Research, visit research.sanfordhealth.org.