The Academic Pediatric Association Board of Directors announces the 2012 award cycle of the Academic Pediatric Association Young Investigator Awards Program. The program provides awards of up to $10,000 or $15,000 (depending upon the specific program) for research by fellows or junior faculty related to child health promotion, health services research, teaching, or patient care. Projects must be consistent with the goals of the APA; preference is given to projects that have the potential to lead to further studies.  Submission of a two-page initial proposal to be received by November 7, 2011, using the online submission program.

The American Academy of Pediatrics announces the availability of Healthy Active Living Grants:

• To support 6 AAP chapter/residency program pairs
• To address physical activity in early childhood
• Grants of $25,000 each
• 18-month funding period
• Funded by the Metlife Foundation

Calls for proposals now open.  Applications due November 18, 2011. Application guidelines and application available at www.aap.org.

The American Medical Association Foundation established the Seed Grant Research Program in 2000 to encourage medical students, physician residents and fellows to enter the research field. The program provides $2,500 grants to help them conduct small basic science, applied, or clincal research.  Grant awards will support research of:

• Cardiovascular/Pulmonary Disease
• HIV/AIDS
• Neoplastic Diseases
• Pancreatic Cancer

All materials must be recieved by 5:00pm CST on December 5, 2011. For more information visit AMA.

VIRTUAL SPROUTS WEB-BASED GARDENING GAMES

In February of 2010, the First Lady formed the first-ever federal task force to address the epidemic of childhood obesity in the U.S., with one of the key pillars being making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families and using gardening as a primary vehicle to engage the public in this initiative. The First Lady's Organic Garden at the White House has been used to help teach children about a wide variety of topics, such as how to make healthy food choices and prevent obesity. Here at USC, the LA Sprouts project, funded by Kaiser and the USC Childhood Obesity Research Core (headed up by Jaimie Davis, one of the Virtual Sprouts team members, has been bringing gardening to schools around Los Angeles. Although we can't physically bring gardens to everyone right now, we can teach children and families to garden, to grow healthy foods in their back yards, community gardens, balconies and even their living rooms. The use of gardening as a teaching tool has tremendous potential to influence the diets of American families, and ultimately to prevent childhood obesity. Therefore, Virtual Sprouts was developed to extend the reach of gardening as an educational tool and act as a sister project to LA Sprouts.

Our program will target low income, minority populations in Los Angeles, including children ages 8 to 11, their parents, other family members, teachers and the community. Virtual Sprouts will serve as a highly engaging and innovative research education program to improve PreK-12 research career opportunities and the community's understanding of the health science advances in obesity and nutrition that are supported by NIH-funded clinical and basic research. Our program has the potential to revolutionize Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education on obesity, promote healthy food choices and decrease obesity rates, especially in minority youth at high risk of obesity and related disorders. In their web-based garden, children and families will learn to select what crops to plant, plant their own garden, watch it grow, tend the crops, harvest them, and prepare them as part of a healthy diet. Our goal is to positively influence dietary intake and prevent/treat obesity in minority youth through meaningful play. Virtual Sprouts brings a novel combination of technology and teaching to bear on pediatric obesity in urban Los Angeles, and will employ interactive, web-based game techniques, rich narrative, a pedagogical agent, and experiential learning to achieve the aims of the program.

 
 Virtual Sprouts roll-out will begin with USC Family of schools and teachers. We will target outreach to 100 teachers and 3,000 children in grades 3-5 in seven schools. Over 90% of students targeted for the game intervention are from low-income, minority populations, and over half of teachers are African American or Latino. Our program will include teacher in-service professional development and classroom-based informal science education. We will then move to disseminate through USC's CTSI partner Community Clinics. We will place kiosks in three safety net clinics to reach 83,000 patients, including 3,000 children aged 8-11 and their families from an underserved, low income and largely Latino (70%) population receiving public healthcare services. Clinic patients and family members will access kiosks to play our game and get information on the Virtual Sprouts website, where they can play the game on-line at home and in other community venues. Finally, we are partnering with the California Science Center to incorporate Virtual Sprouts into an existing community outreach program of the Center focused on nutrition and obesity ("SuperKids Academy") implemented at the USC Family of Schools and through an on-site Science Center program. Our targeted audience includes 1.4 million Science Center annual visitors, of which over half are from minority populations and 200,000 of which are children aged 8-11.

Virtual Sproutsis poised to have broad reach and high impact because internet technology is widely accessible and extremely popular among youth, and games and virtual environments enhance learning and improve achievement. LA is 'ripe' for a gardening intervention that would have a broad reach to children and communities and increase nutrition knowledge and advance home, community and school gardening as achievable and attractive options for increasing access to healthy foods in an affordable manner.