ITHS | Accepting Applications for New ITHS Pilot Program Awards

24 Jun Accepting Applications for New ITHS Pilot Program Awards

Posted on June 24, 2021 @ 12:40pm in News by Ingrid Brown

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ITHS will begin accepting applications tomorrow June 29, 2021, for our new Pilot Program awards: The Early-Stage Product Development (ESPD) award, and the Translational Research Partnership awards: the New Interdisciplinary Academic Partnership (TRP—NIAP) award and the Academic/Community Partnership (TRP—ACP) award.

Since 2008, ITHS has offered funding for new clinical and translational research projects or “pilots” to get off the ground. Funding for the Pilot Program is guided by program outcomes and stakeholder feedback, and ITHS periodically remodels the program to better respond to the needs of our community.

These new awards will replace the previous awards and offer early-career investigators more opportunities to translate research findings into improved patient health. “With these changes, we aim to further advance the core purpose of the ITHS Pilot Program—catalyzing clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary collaboration,” shared Paul Martin, MD, faculty director of the ITHS Pilot Award program and Co-Principal Investigator of ITHS.

With these changes, we aim to further advance the core purpose of the ITHS Pilot Program—catalyzing clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary collaboration.

The updated Pilot Program has been designed to provide a high level of flexibility in meeting the long-term goal of improving human health through translational research with three focus areas: biomedical innovation, new sustained interdisciplinary research collaborations, and academic/community partnerships.

Pilot Program Changes

The “Research Innovation” award will be replaced by the “Early-Stage Product Development” award to drive innovation towards more direct potential impact on human health. The “Collaboration Innovation” and “Academic/Community Partnership” awards will become the “Translational Research Partnership” awards – encompassing both types of collaboration. For each award, we will connect research teams with training and resources to help them succeed.

More Opportunities

Team Science Training: In addition to pilot funding, all ESPD and TRP teams will be invited to participate in interactive, in-person, or online Team Science training. This highly sought-after training will help researchers create customized team agreements to help them in reaching transdisciplinary research goals and sharing credit for publications and other products

Overall Funding and Support Plan: The annual overall budget for the program is $300,000. The number and dollar amounts of each award type will be adjusted to maximize the yield from the investment. ITHS will offer in-kind support for study design, implementation, and assistance in finding subsequent funding beyond the 1-year term of the award. In this way, ITHS will bring the full scope of its resources to bear in boosting the success of pilot projects.

“With experience from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned how translational research can transcend distances between investigators in different institutions and between investigators and research participants so that awards can reach widely throughout the WWAMI region,” shared Dr. Martin. ITHS is excited about the new direction of the ITHS Pilot Program and look forward to celebrating impactful results.