MaineHealth is getting a $13,2 million grant to improve healthcare in rural areas through research in key areas.

The grant will fund studies to improve outcomes for emergency conditions such as heart attacks, strokes and babies needing resuscitation at birth.

It’ll also fund research to help improve how patients with opioid use disorder are treated in the intensive care unit.

A third project seeks to create a greater understanding of sympathetic overactivation syndrome (SOS), when the body remains in a perpetual state of “fight or flight,” after a patient suffers bleeding into the space between the brain and skull.

MaineHealth is receiving the grant from the federal National Institute of Health and fall under the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE), with a five year grant to improve conditions in less populated areas of Maine with fewer resources.

“This acute care COBRE not only addresses issues directly affecting the health of our communities, it provides the infrastructure to build our research capabilities into the future,” MaineHealth Vice President of Research Jessica Chertow said in the release.