Deadline: 4-Jan-22
The Greenwall Foundation (GF) is requesting proposals for the Spring 2022 cycle of its bioethics grants program, Making a Difference in Real-World Bioethics Dilemmas to support research to help resolve an important emerging or unanswered bioethics problem in clinical, biomedical, or public health decision-making, policy, or practice.
The Foundation’s vision is to make bioethics integral to decisions in health care, policy, and research. Their mission is to expand bioethics knowledge to improve clinical, biomedical, and public health decision-making, policy, and practice.
Projects funded under the Making a Difference program should promote the Foundation’s vision and mission through innovative bioethics research that will have a real-world, practical impact.
Priority Topics
While they welcome all innovative proposals that will have a real-world impact, we are particularly interested in proposals that address the ethical and policy issues raised by the following priority topics:
- The COVID-19 pandemic and other public health crises, including their impact on mental health;
- Bias and discrimination against patients or clinicians, which may be based on a broad range of characteristics and which may involve institutional and systemic contributors to bias and racism as well as health disparities or social determinants of health;
- Trust in science, medicine, and public health;
- Developments in artificial intelligence;
- Responses to the opioid epidemic;
- Healthcare access, costs, and resource allocation.
- Proposals for projects that address other real-world, practical bioethics problems are also welcome.
Project Criteria
- Projects may be empirical, conceptual, or normative. All proposals should explain how they will help address a real-world bioethics dilemma. Projects to analyze the normative implications of already-completed empirical research are encouraged.
- The Foundation will support mentored projects in which a postdoctoral fellow or junior faculty member works closely with an experienced bioethics scholar. The Foundation will also consider pilot or feasibility projects to evaluate an innovative intervention to resolve a bioethics dilemma, with the goal of obtaining funding from other sources for a larger evaluation or demonstration project.
- Some highly promising projects may be funded for an initial phase, with additional funding contingent on achieving clear milestones.
- In evaluating proposals, the Foundation will consider:
- The likelihood the project will promote the Foundation’s vision and mission. Importantly, projects that aim to impact public policy should not constitute advocacy projects with predetermined conclusions.
- The innovative nature of the project’s approach and how it goes beyond previous work on the bioethics issue.
- The appropriateness and rigor of the methods, analysis plan, strategy, and approach.
- The appropriateness and inclusiveness of the project’s planned approach to dissemination and implementation, including to stakeholder audiences beyond academia and key individuals who can change practice or policy.
- The professional background of the team of investigators, including the team’s expertise in relevant disciplines, and their close, practical familiarity and real-world experience with the bioethics problems to be addressed.
- The previous success of the proposed investigators in carrying out similar projects. Junior investigators who have not previously published results from a bioethics project are advised to apply with a mentor who actively collaborates in all phases of the project.
- The success of the investigators in publishing practical bioethics articles, similar to what is proposed, in top-tier journals with a broad audience, and in disseminating the results of their research to relevant stakeholders.
- The reasonableness of the budget and project timeline. Projects with smaller budgets and shorter timelines will receive priority.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Greenwall Foundation only makes awards to affiliated individuals at institutions with tax-exempt status in the United States. In addition, an individual cannot simultaneously receive Making a Difference and Faculty Scholars Program funding from The Greenwall Foundation.
- The Foundation award grants to institutions outside the United States but such institutions must have tax-exempt status in the United States.
Guidance
- The research team needs to have relevant and appropriate expertise to carry out the proposed project.
- Successful teams commonly involve a bioethics scholar and persons with on-the-ground experience with the bioethics dilemma, for example, in clinical care; biomedical research; biotechnology, pharmaceutical, big data, and artificial intelligence companies; or public service. Such collaboration can specify the bioethics problems that clinicians, researchers, policymakers, public health officials, and others face in their daily work, and facilitate practical resolutions to these problems.
- Applicants are also encouraged to engage with relevant lay or community stakeholders throughout their project.
- They expect grantees to disseminate their research through practical articles in peer-reviewed journals that reach the appropriate audience for the topic studied, through presentations in relevant professional meetings, and in other ways that will increase real-world impact.
- Applicants should describe, for example, how they will disseminate their results beyond academic audiences, such as to lay and community groups or to leaders of institutions who could implement the project’s recommendations or act upon empirical findings (e.g., leaders of clinical services, research programs, institutional review boards, or medical education).
- The Greenwall Foundation will fund 10% indirect costs for salary and benefits only. Salaries for investigators are capped at 1.5x the current NIH cap for the basis of the percent effort allocation.
For more information, visit https://greenwall.org/making-a-difference-grants/request-for-proposals-MAD-spring-2022