Funding Opportunities

This competition is currently open and accepting applications.

Request for Applications (RFA):

IHDR RESEARCH ACCELERATOR PROGRAM

IHDR is pleased to announce its inaugural research accelerator program. We aim to provide UTSA-based faculty (any track) working on health disparities modest support that will help improve their research in various ways.

Expected Uses

Awards are expected to be in the $500-$1,000 range, with $500 being a typical award but where slightly higher requests of up to $1,000 will be considered if properly justified. This amount can be used for:

• Providing honoraria to experts in the field to serve as mock reviewers of a grant application or revision of a grant. If experts are UTSA faculty, they need to be eligible for summer salary.
• Materials, equipment, or data necessary and directly related to the submission of a stronger grant proposal (e.g., related to preliminary data collection or preliminary analyses).
• Other expenditures that can be appropriately justified to strengthen a research proposal or a research project. As a general rule, we have considerable restrictions on providing travel support and will only do so in situations where support is available, travel is essential to the success of the project, is not funded by other sources, and is directly and almost exclusively related to the purpose of the project (e.g., to collect preliminary data as opposed to supporting conference travel where grantees would also meet with collaborators).

Programmatic Priorities

Preference will be given to projects that one or (preferably) more of the following priorities:

1. Seek a more nuanced, sophisticated, and/or effective integration of social and biological mechanisms to understand e.g., how race-ethnic, gender-based, sexuality-based, disability-related, socioeconomic or other forms of social disadvantage “get under the skin.”
2. Improve on the measurement and/or understanding of the social, structural, or institutional mechanisms producing health disparities.
3. Be devoted to evaluating social programs or other interventions seeking to alleviate health disparities or otherwise be a or likely to lead to the development of far-reaching, cutting-edge basic or applied disparities or health equity research.
4. Study or be otherwise related to understanding health disparities or equity affecting or benefitting populations with significant presence in Central/South Texas.

Eligibility requirements

• Be a current UTSA faculty member (any track). Faculty who have received UTSA intramural grant support or any kind of IHDR-sponsored support during the current or prior academic year are not eligible unless they demonstrate that the line of work for this grant is completely separate from the one they received from the grant, or appropriately justify the need for this additional support.
• Write a short (1-page) proposal describing your project, including:
  • How it advances understanding and/or solutions on a particular health disparity or health equity issue.
  • How it meets the programmatic priorities listed above.
  • How you would use the money and how much you are requesting (and other sources of funding used to support the project, if applicable).
  • A statement that the applicant has received no UTSA intramural grant support this or the prior AY, or an argument on the lack of overlap between this proposal and the project supported or articulating the need for the additional support.
• Have Human Subjects Certification up to date when submitting your application (please attach proof with your application materials).
• Establish/renew your IHDR affiliation. If you are a current/past IHDR affiliate, please do renew your affiliation using the same link. Following the HOP Guidelines, affiliates are appointed for three-year terms with the possibility of reappointment by the Director or, if applicable, Executive Committee. The affiliation requires Chair approval per the HOP. As such, please write to your Department Chair and ask them to send their affiliation approval to fernando.riosmena@utsa.edu or attach an email from your Chair to the application materials. If your Chair has sent approval for IHDR within the last 3 years, this is not required.

It is important to note that the Institute will provide another venue for research collaborations and additional research support. As such, affiliation with IHDR will not change the faculty workload and will not interfere with the faculty member’s contributions to the department; routing grants through IHDR will not impact the F&A return to departments.

To request affiliation and submit your application both, please fill out the form below.

IHDR Research Accelerator Program

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, but are subject to funding availability so we recommend applying within a month of this RFA’s issue (May 1, 2023). Generally, we will respond to requests by June 1^st or, for applications submitted after June 1^st, within 2 weeks.

Please contact Fernando Riosmena (fernando.riosmena@utsa.edu) if you have any questions.

This competition is currently closed. Please check back in Spring for the next round.

Request for Applications (RFA):

IHDR SUMMER FELLOWSHIP 2023

The Institute on Health Disparities Research (IHDR) at UTSA is proud to announce its inaugural IHDR Summer Fellowship competition. The fellowship will support new or continuing UTSA-based IHDR affiliates with a modest amount of summer salary to support the development of stronger research grants devoted to health disparities. This amount will be equal to one week of summer salary or $2,750, whichever is smaller. We expect to give up to four awards per year.

Programmatic Priorities

Faculty should apply only if they are aiming to use this time to write or revise a grant application. Preference will be given to projects that one or (preferably) more of the following priorities:

1. Seek a more nuanced, sophisticated, and/or effective integration of social and biological mechanisms to understand e.g., how race-ethnic, gender-based, sexuality-based, disability-related, socioeconomic or other forms of social disadvantage “get under the skin.”
2. Improve on the measurement and/or understanding of the social, structural, or institutional mechanisms producing health disparities.
3. Be devoted to evaluating social programs or other interventions seeking to alleviate health disparities or otherwise be a or likely to lead to the development of far-reaching, cutting-edge basic or applied disparities or health equity research.
4. Study or be otherwise related to understanding health disparities or equity affecting or benefitting populations with significant presence in Central/South Texas.

Preference will be given to projects that also meet one or more of the following priorities:

1. Be a junior faculty member applicants or -for tenured faculty member applicants- support collaboration with a junior faculty member or a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow.
2. Produce exchange and collaboration between faculty with complementary expertise, with some preference for the establishment or solidification of relatively recent collaborations, with some preference to collaborations between UTSA faculty or between UTSA and UTHSC-UTSA School of Public Health faculty.
3. Dovetail with or takes advantage of major initiatives at UTSA or the UTHSC-UTSA School of Public Health.
4. Foster student research experiences and includes a clear mentoring and training plan.

Expected products

The fellowship is aimed at providing faculty with some dedicated time to help produce a new extramural grant proposal submission (before the end of calendar year 2024) or a substantial revision to a prior extramural proposal in response to feedback by Q1 2024. Specific funding agency, funding mechanisms, and due dates should be clearly identified in the applications. We will consider funding faculty submitting projects with deadlines slightly or, in some cases, somewhat later than these guidelines, especially if the time is used to establish key collaborations to strengthen a future grant application. This intention needs to be noted and its rationale clearly articulated in the proposal.

Faculty receiving the fellowship are expected to route their proposal submission via IHDR. This requirement will be waived for disparities-relevant proposal resubmissions that identified a different Center/Institute at UTSA; otherwise, if the submission is new or the prior submission did not list any Center or Institute, please do route through IHDR (this will not affect the F&A contribution to your Department). If your project requires special infrastructure or intensive administrative support, Please contact Fernando Riosmena (fernando.riosmena@utsa.edu) to discuss your project (which may lead to waiving the routing requirement).

Eligibility requirements

• Be a current UTSA faculty member (any track). Faculty who have received UTSA intramural grant support or any kind of IHDR-sponsored support during the current or prior academic year are not eligible unless they demonstrate that the line of work for the fellowship is completely separate from that previously supported or appropriately justify the need for additional support.
• Show proof of summer salary eligibility for June 2023. Please contact your home College Service Center and attach verification to your proposal.
• Write a short (1-2 page) proposal describing your project, including:
  • How it advances understanding and/or solutions on a particular health disparity or health equity issue.
  • How it meets the two sets of programmatic priorities listed above.
  • A statement that the applicant has received no UTSA intramural grant support this or the prior AY, or an argument on the lack of overlap between this proposal and the project supported or articulating the need for the additional support.
• Have Human Subjects Certification up to date when submitting your application (please attach proof with your application).
• Establish/renew your IHDR affiliation. f you are a current/past IHDR affiliate, please do renew your affiliation using the same link. Following the HOP Guidelines, affiliates are appointed for three-year terms with the possibility of reappointment by the Director or, if applicable, Executive Committee. The affiliation requires Chair approval per the HOP. As such, please write to your Department Chair and ask them to send their affiliation approval to fernando.riosmena@utsa or attach an email from your Chair to the application materials. If your Chair has sent approval for IHDR within the last 3 years, this is not required.

It is important to note that the Institute will provide another venue for research collaborations and additional research support. As such, affiliation with IHDR will not change the faculty workload and will not interfere with the faculty member’s contributions to the department; routing grants through IHDR will not impact the F&A return to departments.

To request affiliation and submit your application both, please fill out this form.

The deadline to submit is Friday, May 12th. Please submit your materials using the IHDR affiliation form.  Decisions will be announced by May 19^th so awardees can move quickly to work with their Departments to amend their Summer Salary application forms.