Funding Opportunities

Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program (FY2011)
Deadline: April 4, 2011
U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) invites applications to conduct economic research that focuses on USDA's domestic food assistance and nutrition programs. The three priority research areas are (1) Food Assistance and the Macroeconomy, (2) Food Assistance and Food Choices, and (3) Using Behavioral Economics and Incentives to Promote Child Nutrition. ERS will accept proposals under this program for funding levels, inclusive of indirect cost when applicable, between $100,000 and $300,000 (for the duration of the grant and/or the cooperative agreement, not to exceed 3 years). Click here for more information.

Financial Literacy Research Projects
Deadlines: June 7, 2011; December 6, 2011
(From the Philanthropy News Digest)
The National Endowment for Financial Education, a nonprofit, national foundation wholly dedicated to improving the financial well-being of all Americans, has announced guidelines for its 2011 grant program. The NEFE grants program seeks to fund innovative research and research-based development projects that can make a profound contribution to the field of financial literacy. Of particular interest are pro-active research projects whose findings may cultivate critical thinking in the financial literacy community. Also of interest are development projects that put research recommendations into action. Project outcomes must be capable of achieving traction and measurable impact with audiences such as financial education intermediaries, researchers, practitioners, decision makers, and others who can achieve effective outreach to a target population with an unmet financial literacy need or to the general public. Click here for more information.

Affordable Care Act (ACA): Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration
Deadline: April 8, 2011
This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits Research Demonstration Cooperative Agreement (U18) applications to determine whether an integrated model of primary care and public health approaches in the community can improve underserved children's risk factors for obesity. These approaches may include policy, systems, and environmental supports that encourage nutrition and physical activity for underserved children and their families. Grantees will develop, implement, and evaluate multi-sectoral (i.e., childcare, school, community, health care), multi-level (i.e. child, family, organization, community, policy) intervention demonstration projects for underserved children ages 2-12 years and their families utilizing the Obesity Chronic Care Model and other similar models. Click here for more information.

Impact Evaluation of Combination HIV Prevention Interventions in PEPFAR Countries
Deadline: April 4, 2011
The purpose of this funding announcement is to support evaluations of the impact and cost-effectiveness of combination HIV prevention interventions on population-level HIV incidence in high prevalence, generalized HIV epidemics. Although this announcement does not cover scale-up of prevention interventions, evaluations conducted through this announcement must be coordinated with programs that are and/or will be intensively scaling up combination HIV prevention interventions in the geographic area. The scale-up of prevention programs will be funded through separate mechanisms. Click here for more information.

Second Request for Applications for Doctoral Dissertation Research Support

QIC-EC

Deadline: June 13, 2011

The National Quality Improvement Center on Early Childhood (QIC-EC) is pleased to release a second Request for Applications (RFA) for doctoral dissertation research support. Doctoral students who are eligible for this award are those who have advanced to candidacy and who are conducting research on preventing child maltreatment and promoting child and family well-being among infants and young children (0-5) who are at high-risk for abuse, neglect, and abandonment, including those impacted by substance abuse or HIV/AIDS. The QIC-EC will award $25,000 for each of two years to a maximum of two advanced-level doctoral students. The funding periods are October 1, 2011 - September 30, 2012 and October 1, 2012 - September 30, 2013. Complete application packets are due June 13, 2011. A pre-application webinar for interested doctoral students and graduate faculty is scheduled for Thursday, March 3, 2011 from 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. EST. For more information, click here.

AGESW Pre-Dissertation Initiative
Deadline: May 1, 2011
The Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) Pre-Dissertation Initiative is accepting applications to provide support for a second cohort of ten doctoral students who have completed the first year of doctoral studies. The goal of the Initiative is to support dissertation and career development in gerontological social work research and education. Recipients will receive more than ten hours of programming delivered by nationally recognized experts in gerontological social work research and teaching designed to prepare participants for an academic career in gerontological social work. The program will be delivered at the 2011 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference. Awardees will be selected by the AGESW Pre-Dissertation Advisory Council. To apply, please click here.

National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research Launches Surveillance Resource

A compilation of 75+ U.S. surveillance systems provides researchers with a one-stop resource on childhood obesity data

The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) announce the launch of a new, free online resource to help researchers and practitioners more easily investigate childhood obesity in America. NCCOR's Catalogue of Surveillance Systems describes in detail existing surveillance systems that collect data related to childhood obesity. It provides one-stop access to more than 75 surveys and other data sets, allowing users to search and select surveys that provide a wealth of data at the national, state, and local levels on a range of variables, including school policies and health outcomes, as well as eating and exercise behaviors. Health officials at the city and state level also can find data related to their programs. Using the Catalogue, researchers can:

    * identify surveillance systems to meet their research and program needs

    * compare attributes across systems

    * find information about the systems

    * link directly to the systems to download data or other information.

The Catalogue of Surveillance Systems is available here. To register for upcoming webinars on the features and uses of the Catalogue, please send an e-mail to css@aed.org.