Deadline: 7-Oct-22
The Natural Hazards Center (NHC) with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) is issuing a special call for proposals focused on studying public health preparedness, response, and resilience to disasters in the inhabited U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, tribal areas, and rural communities across the United States.
Research is urgently needed to develop evidence-based practices to improve community preparedness, resilience, and the public health response to disasters in these regions. While these areas are historically, geographically, socially, and culturally unique, they are at higher risk to adverse disaster impacts—including deaths and property loss—than many other regions of the United States. This special call is designed to address these gaps in knowledge.
Focus Areas
Proposals will be prioritized that focus on at least one of the following areas:
- Developing public health tools and products that support disaster preparedness and response practice, including, but not limited to, public health databases and decision-support tools, such as the CDC Social Vulnerability Index and new scales, indices, and instruments for measuring public health and disaster preparedness.
- Developing the evidence base to support public health emergency and disaster risk communication for populations with access and functional needs.
- Studying and developing evidence-based practices for state, territorial, or tribal-level public health departments or organizations to effectively lead through the disaster life cycle in a way that improves communication, collaboration, and risk awareness before, during, and after disasters.
- Quantitatively analyzing strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of public health emergency response to improve preparedness policies or practices.
- Assessing whether public health emergency preparedness practices are effective or can achieve desired outcomes, such as examining the comparative costs and benefits of various strategies.
Priorities
This special call will prioritize funding proposals that include the following research design elements:
- Rapid: The project is short-term and focused on collecting perishable data rapidly or using existing data to generate answers to questions associated with recent or anticipated disasters.
- Quantitative, Applied, or Evaluation Research: The project is methodologically rigorous, has a high possibility of contributing to public health practice, and uses quantitative, applied, and/or evaluation research methods that fill clear gaps in the evidence base.
- Transparent: The proposal includes plans to publish data collection tools and protocols so that they can be used by other researchers or public health practitioners in the event of another major disaster.
- Population-Specific, Geographic, and Cultural Knowledge and Connections: Research teams whose members have a strong history of working with the people and/or in the geographic and/or cultural context they plan to study will be given preference.
- Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity: Projects that utilize a Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and/or Health Equity lens will be prioritized.
- Students and Early Career Researchers: While applications will not be limited to those that involve students or early career scholars, those research teams that include early-stage researchers will be prioritized for funding. Specifically, priority will be given to teams that engage one or more students or early career scholars—defined here as those who are three or fewer years post-degree.
- Engagement with Public Health Departments or Organizations: Proposals should include plans to engage jurisdictional partners and stakeholders to execute the research project and apply findings.
Award
- Available funds will support 10 to 15 awards in the amount of $15,000 to $50,000 each.
Criteria
The PDF should also include the following appendices:
- References: The list of references should be complete and consistently formatted in APA 7th edition style. There is no page limit for the reference list.
- Budget and Budget Justification: The budget and budget justification should be no longer than 500 words in length and provide a breakdown of anticipated expenditures within the predetermined budget range (in this case, $15,000 to $50,000).
- Proposals less than $15,000 will be accepted, but proposals over $50,000 will be returned without review.
- Funding should be used for expenses associated with the proposed project. Funds may be dedicated to fieldwork expenses, the purchase of research equipment or datasets; payments to data collectors, methodologists, statisticians, translators, other collaborators, or team members; participant compensation; and/or dissemination activities including for conference travel, registration expenses, or article publication fees. In terms of budget needs for field equipment, please consider exploring options available through NSF-supported RAPID facility before making requests.
- Please carefully read the “Funding Agreement”, as it provides details for how many investigators can be included in the budget and clarifies how and when the award funds will be issued. Note that:
- Overhead and indirect costs are not allowed.
- Award recipients are responsible for all personal tax-related expenses associated with accepting award payments. These potential tax obligations cannot be included in the project budget.
- Supporting Documents for Students: Master’s and PhD students are welcome to apply for this special call for funding. If a student is listed as the lead investigator they will need to submit:
- A statement explaining qualifications and ability to implement the proposed methods, a plan for managing a project team (if applicable), and a timeline for completing the proposed work during their degree program.
- A brief one-paragraph statement of support from an academic advisor, indicating that they approve of the project and support the students’ application for funding.
- Human Subjects Approval Letter: An official letter from the applicant’s human subjects committee approving the research, or waiving the need for approval, is required before an award is activated and funds are released. The proposal may be submitted before human subjects committee approval is obtained, but they recommend that human subjects approval be sought as early as possible given the short five-month timeline for completing data collection, analysis, and submitting the final report. Please see this article for additional guidance on receiving Institutional Review Board pre-approval for disaster research. Data collection may not begin until a letter of approval or waiver from a university or other organization is submitted to the Natural Hazards Center.
- Certificate of Completion: The lead investigator for each proposal must submit a PDF certificate of completion for the CONVERGE Public Health Implications of Hazards and Disaster Research Training Module. Proposals missing this certificate will be returned without review.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3QSVD7j