SHEA International Ambassador Program Alumni Research Grant

 

This program is funded by the SHEA Education and Research Foundation to identify, support, and foster novel research projects in healthcare epidemiology in international settings. A grant of up to $5,000 is awarded to winner(s) each calendar year.

Eligibility: Alumni of the SHEA International Ambassador Program are eligible to apply and submit research proposals that align with SHEA’s research priorities in the fields of hospital epidemiology, infection prevention, and antimicrobial stewardship. Applicants are only eligible to submit one application.

Funding: Grant awards will support projects up to $5,000USD each. Projects are supported for up to one year. This grant is administered by SHEA Education and Research Foundation with no indirect costs available to the grantee department/division. Funds are generally not made available for the applicant’s salary or for major equipment purchases.

Deliverables: Three (3) months following the completion of the funding period, the awardees are expected to submit a research summary to SHEA.  For awardees that are interested in disseminating their findings through publication or abstract and need assistance, they are encouraged to contact foundation@shea-online.org.

Application Assistance: SHEA is able to provide access to a volunteer SHEA member who speaks English as a first language and has experience with research grant writing to assist in writing this application.  These volunteers are NOT reviewers and will not be involved in the review process of any applications related to these research grants.

Review criteria: The primary criterion for evaluation of applications is the likelihood that the studies proposed will answer an important question relevant to preventing healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial resistance in under resourced settings. Approaches that involve lab based research projects, clinical research, social and behavioral questions, and problems in health policy are equally likely to be considered for funding. In addition to scientific merit, we will also consider several other secondary criteria in making awards, including whether the research is likely to provide pilot data that may result in the submission of a later application for extramural research support, whether the project is highly relevant to the problems in epidemiology and whether support is likely to be valuable to the applicant in developing a career as an epidemiologist. Proposals may involve lab-based microbial epidemiology projects, clinical epidemiology, testing of pilot interventions or health outcomes research.

A panel of reviewers selected from the external affairs committee will evaluate and score all proposals received by the deadline. We intend to select a winner of this grant by August of the same calendar year.

Interactions with reviewers: Successful applicants are eligible to make use of resources and mentorship provided by the SHEA Research Committee and/or the SHEA External Affairs Committee.

Application Procedure: Final proposals in the form of a PDF or Word DOC file, and financial support information must be submitted to foundation@shea-online.org by a date to be determined each year.

Eligible proposals must include the following information and should be limited to 5 pages:

  1. Project name
  2. Specific aims and hypothesis or hypotheses
  3. Background and significance of the project
  4. Description of research design, methods, analytic plan, and, if available, preliminary results (max 750 words).
  5. Brief description of the environment (including mentors) where work will primarily occur (max 750 words).
  6. A budget estimating the costs to carry out the project. The budget must not exceed $5,000 unless external funds have already been secured.
  7. Brief description of the investigator’s qualifications to accomplish the work
  8. Attestation of independence by mentor/faculty advisor (Letter of support.)

All applications will be reviewed for scientific merit by at least two reviewers with expertise in a proposed area of inquiry. Applicants will be notified of their proposal's status roughly two (2) months after submissions close.

Questions: Regarding administration of the SHEA Alumni IAP Research Grant should be
directed to foundation@shea-online.org. 

The Application Period will Open April 12, and close on June 17th 2022.