March 16, 2012  || Vol. 4, Issue 11
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Funding OpportunitiesFunding     
Obesity Policy Research: Evaluation and Measures
Deadline: February 7, 2013 
This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), issued by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), NIH, and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC, encourages Research Project Grant (R01) applications that propose to: (1) conduct evaluation research on obesity-related "natural experiments" (defined here as community and other population-level public policy interventions that may affect diet and physical activity behavior), and/or (2) develop and/or validate relevant community-level measures (instruments and methodologies to assess the food and physical activity environments at the community level). The overarching goal of this FOA is to inform public policy and research relevant to (1) diet and physical activity behavior, and (2) weight and health outcomes of Americans. Click here for more information. 

 

Novel Presentation of Health Related Data
Deadline: June 13, 2012 
(Department of Defense)
The expanded use of electronic medical records, personal health records, home monitoring devices, and other digital devices generate massive amounts of digital health related information. In order to use that information effectively, we need more innovative and novel ways to visualize the data. Clinicians and managers need to be better able to discern patterns in the data to make information contained in the data more useful for managing individual patients and for populations of patients. The wide range of data types and the diversity of users of the data add further complexity. The data is of all forms: text, numerical values, wave forms, audio, video and still images and the users of the data include patients, clinicians, administrators, and public health professionals. Preliminary research proposals (i.e. pre-proposals) are required and will provide the basis for invited full proposals. Click here for more information. 

 

Desistance From Crime Over the Life Course
Deadline: May 23, 2012 
(National Institute of Justice) 
This solicitation seeks proposals to conduct research that enhances knowledge of the process of desistance from crime. NIJ encourages applicants to submit proposals for bold, innovative approaches to enhancing understanding of the processes underlying desistance from crime. Several areas in need of research have been identified (see "Program-Specific Information" below). However, applications are not limited to the specified topics.Authorizing Legislation: Title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (sections 201 and 202), Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-55). Click here for more information.
 
Healthy Eating Research: Building Evidence to Prevent Childhood Obesity 
Deadline: varies 
Healthy Eating Research: Building Evidence to Prevent Childhood Obesity is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The program supports research on environmental and policy strategies with strong potential to promote healthy eating among children to prevent childhood obesity, especially among lower-income and racial and ethnic populations at highest risk for obesity. Findings are expected to advance RWJF's efforts to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. This call for proposals (CFP) is for two types of awards aimed at providing key decision- and policy-makers with evidence to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. The award types are: Round 7 grants and RWJF New Connections grants awarded through the Healthy Eating Research program. Click here for more information. 

Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) 
Deadline: Open 
(Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) 
Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) supports research, policy analysis and evaluation projects that provide policy leaders timely information on health care policy, financing and organization issues. Supported projects include: 
*examining significant issues and interventions related to health care financing and organization and their effects on health care costs, quality and access; and 
*exploring or testing major new ways to finance and organize health care that have the potential to improve access to more affordable and higher quality health services. 
Click here for more information. 

 

Science and Technology Policy Fellowship
Deadline: May 1, 2012 
(From the ASPH Friday Letter) 
The Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship program of the National Academies - consisting of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council - is designed to engage its fellows in the analytical process that informs U.S. science and technology policy. Fellows develop basic skills essential to working or participating in science policy at the federal, state or local levels. The fall 2012 session will be held August 27 through November 16. Graduate and professional school students and those who have completed graduate studies (degree awarded) within the last five years are eligible to apply. Areas of study may include any social/behavioral science, medical/health discipline, physical or biological science, any field of engineering, law/business/public administration, or any relevant interdisciplinary field. Click here for more information. 
CallsCalls
Call for Chapters
Social Work and Neuroscience
Deadline: March 31, 2012
Implications from the current decade of discovery for social work practice are tremendous. Understanding the ways in which strategic psychosocial interventions act on brain structures to change behavioral response is deeply relevant to the person-in-environment perspective integral to the social wok profession. Therefore, social workers should be committed to reciprocally promoting new developments in social neuroscience research agendas to incorporate a social work perspective that will inform social and behavioral health fields. It is crucial that social workers apply empirical knowledge from the social neuroscience literature to social work education, practitioner training, and innovative treatment development, and reciprocally contribute new scientific discoveries to this knowledge base. This book entitled "Social work and neuroscience: Implications for policy, practice and research" is contracted with Springer Publishing Company to be published in 2013. The book will be a "snapshot" of the current state of the field of social work and neuroscience and will aim to explain the latest findings in simple language, and include clear implications that can be incorporated into social workers' daily practice, teaching and future research. Please click here for more information about submitting a chapter proposal for this publication.
 
Call for Abstracts
End-of-Life Special Interest Group of SSWR
Deadline: April 20, 2012
The End-of-Life Special Interest Group of the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR) is proposing a symposium session for the upcoming SSWR Annual Conference (January 2013). Research abstracts addressing a range of end-of-life issues will be considered that address the conference theme: Social Work for a Just Society: Making Visible the Stakes and Stakeholders. For example, identifying and addressing disparities in end-of-life care across the lifespan and in different settings; communication issues; treatment decisions; palliative care; and disease-specific care at the end of life would be appropriate. Address questions to and submit abstracts to symposium coordinator: Ellen L. Csikai at ecsikai@sw.ua.edu no later than April 20, 2011. The coordinator will then organize the abstracts and submit to SSWR for the SIG symposium. Abstracts should be formatted according to the instructions given on the SSWR website. 

 

Call for Submissions
Presidential Poster Session on Interdisciplinary Science, Inter-professional Practice, and Obesity
Deadline: May 15, 2012
American Psychological Association (APA) President Dr. Suzanne Bennett Johnson invites you to submit posters featuring your latest work and take part in an exciting, new Presidential Poster session at the 2012 APA convention in Orlando, FL on Saturday August 5, 2012 from 4-6 p.m. in the Orlando Convention Center. APA divisions and governance groups worked with Dr. Johnson to create three collaborative and innovative program tracks of 20 hours each for the 2012 APA convention in Orlando, FL. The program tracks focus on interdisciplinary science, inter-professional practice, and obesity. We invite you to participate in a special poster session on Saturday showcasing up to 60 posters on each track topic, for a total of 180 posters. There will be guided tours by experts in the field through the posters and light refreshments will be served. Click here for more information. 
Conferences & Trainingsconf
HCUP Data Users Workshop
April 25, 2012
Rockville, MD
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will sponsor a full-day hands-on workshop for health services researchers interested in using Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) data resources. Participants will be exposed to HCUP databases and related tools (including HCUPnet) via hands-on manipulation of the data. Click here for more information.

Crossing Boundaries: Public & Private Roles in Assuring Child Well-Being
April 27-28, 2012
Chicago, IL
The 2012 Council on Contemporary Families Annual Conference, co-sponsored by the University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium, will focus on the public and private roles in assuring child well-being. The Council on Contemporary Families is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families. Our members include demographers, economists, family therapists, historians, political scientists, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, as well as other family social scientists and practitioners. Click here for more information. 
Research Publications & Data Resourcesdata
New Data from ICPSR
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community. Below is a list of new data collection additions to the ICPSR data archive: 

*28661 Gansu Poverty and Education Project, Wave 1, 2000
*32504 CBS News/Vanity Fair Monthly Poll #3, August 2010
*33061 CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll #1, October 2010
*33204 CBS News/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair National Survey, December 2010
*33207 CBS News/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Monthly Poll #3, November 2010
*33461 Census of Population and Housing, 2010 [United States]: Summary File 1 

Click here for more information and more datasets.

 

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)
HCUP recently released two new Methods Series reports.
-Methods Report #2011-06, entitled Methods Applying AHRQ Quality Indicators to Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Data for Ninth (2011) NHQR and NHDR Report, describes the methods for applying the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QIs) to HCUP data for the NHQR and NHDR. Analyses were conducted to calculate costs associated with QIs, determine benchmarks for State performance for the QIs, compare inpatient and emergency department use for select QI measures, and evaluate readmissions for select chronic conditions.
-Methods Report #2011-07, Evaluation of the State Ambulatory Surgery Databases, Available through the HCUP Central Distributor, provides an overview of the HCUP 2009 Central Distributor SASD, and compares the SASD against the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey.
Since December 2011, the following HCUP Statistical Briefs have been released:
#124 Clostridium difficile Infections (CDI) in Hospital Stays, 2009
#125 Cancer Hospitalizations for Adults, 2009
#126 Circumcisions Performed in U.S. Community Hospitals, 2009
#127 30-Day Readmissions following Hospitalizations for Chronic vs. Acute Conditions, 2008
These and other HCUP Statistical Briefs can be found on the HCUP-US Website. 

 

DATA SNAPSHOT ON HIGH-POVERTY COMMUNITIES
(From KidsCount)
All children need strong families and supportive communities to realize their full potential. For the nearly 8 million children under age 18 living in areas of concentrated poverty in the United States, critical resources for their healthy growth and development - including high-performing schools, quality medical care and safe outdoor spaces - are often out of reach. The chance that a child will live in an area of concentrated poverty has grown significantly over the last decade. In fact, the latest data available show that the number of children living in these communities has risen by 1.6 million, a 25 percent increase since 2000. Click here to read more. 
 
PERFORMING UNDER PRESSURE: ANNUAL FINDINGS OF A 50-STATE SURVEY OF ELIGIBILITY, ENROLLMENT, RENEWAL, AND COST-SHARING POLICIES IN MEDICAID AND CHIP, 2011-2012
In this eleventh annual report, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families provide results from a 50-state survey of eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost-sharing policies in Medicaid and CHIP. The data identify changes implemented during 2011 and present policies in place for children, pregnant women, parents, and other non-disabled adults as of January 1, 2012. Click here to read the full report. 
News & Noticesnews 
Feds Launch Major Reform of Grants Policy
On February 28, 2012, the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the beginning of one of the most comprehensive reforms of federal grants policy in the last four decades. In response, The Grantsmanship Center has produced two new articles on this historic initiative. These articles are free for the benefit and use of public and nonprofit organizations. They're intended to keep you informed, provide useful resources, and help you spread the word to those who should be aware of the proposed reforms.   
-OMB & Federal Awarding Agencies Kick Off New Global Grant Reform Initiative Focusing on Grant Administration, Auditing Policy & Cost Administration
-What Might a Unified Guidance Document on Grant Administration Look Like?

NETWORK SCIENCE 
Coming in Spring 2013 
Published by Cambridge University Press 
EDITORS: 
Lada Adamic, University of Michigan, USA; Ulrik Brandes, University of Konstanz, Germany; Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, USA; Sanjeev Goyal, University of Cambridge, UK; Garry Robins, University of Melbourne, Australia; Thomas Valente, University of Southern California, USA; Alessandro Vespignani, Northeastern University, USA; Stanley Wasserman, Indiana University USA 
AIMS AND SCOPE:
The discipline is ready for a comprehensive journal, open to papers from all relevant areas. Network Science is a defining work, shaping this new discipline. The journal welcomes contributions from researchers in all areas working on network theory, methods, and data. Network Science is a new journal for a new discipline -- one using the network paradigm, focusing on actors and relational linkages, to inform research, methodology, and applications from many fields across the natural, social, engineering and informational sciences. Given growing understanding of the interconnectedness and globalization of the world, network methods are an increasingly recognized way to research aspects of modern society along with the individuals, organizations, and other actors within it. For information about submitting your manuscript for publication, please see our website.
About SWRnet
Formerly known as the IASWR Listserv, SWRnet (Social Work Research Network) was launched in October 2009 to continue serving the social work research community by providing regular updates on funding opportunities, calls for papers, conference deadlines and newly published research.

 

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Requests to post announcements related to social work research can be submitted to SWRnet@bu.edu. Please contact us with questions or comments.

 

Contact:

Doctoral Candidate, Interdisciplinary Sociology & Social Welfare Policy
Associate Professor

Boston University School of Social Work