Reproductive Health Grants

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Experience Applied Epidemiology Fellowship

Funded by a grant from Pfizer Inc, The CDC Experience Applied Epidemiology Fellowship at CDC provides medical students with an applied hands-on training experience in epidemiology and public health. Eight competitively selected medical students from around the country who are completing their second or third year of medical school will spend up to one full year at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. While at CDC, with the guidance of experienced CDC epidemiologists, they carry out epidemiologic analyses in areas such as birth defects, injury, chronic disease, infectious disease, environmental health, reproductive health and minority health.

Training and work assignments provide opportunities to perform epidemiologic analyses and research, design public health interventions, assist in public health field experiences and report on findings through written and oral scientific presentations.

By gaining an in-depth perspective of the role epidemiology plays in protecting the health and safety of both individuals and entire populations, The CDC Experience graduates will be better prepared to pursue careers in clinical medicine, clinical epidemiology, health services research, preventive medicine and public health. They will have the potential to become future physician leaders and to substantially contribute to the quality of the health care system.

Fellowship Details
10-12 month fellowship in applied epidemiology and public health for medical students completing their second or third year of medical school
Classes begin in late summer
Stipend provided for living expenses
Fellowship Activities
Orientation to CDC and didactic training
Monthly seminars
Monthly journal clubs
Hands-on training and work experience at CDC
Participation in field experiences
Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Annual Conference attendance
Presentation of a culminating project

Application Information
Fellowship Application Materials (PDF) Application materials for the 2009 fellowships must be postmarked by December 5, 2008. For more information about The CDC Experience, please e-mail cdcexperience@cdcfoundation.org.

Trainee Travel Awards

The Trainee Affairs Committee established the travel awards in order to assist trainees with expenses to the ASA Annual Meeting.

Types of Awards:

The Thomas S.K. Chang Travel Award
Established in memory of Dr. Chang, who was a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland.

The NIH Travel Award
Established by a grant from the NIH to encourage all reproductive biology Trainees to participate in the annual ASA meetings.

Lonnie D. Russell Travel Award
Established in memory of Dr. Lonnie Russell, who was a faculty member at the
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Carbondale, IL.

Lalor Foundation International Travel Award
Established by the Lalor Foundation to encourage young investigators from countries outside the US to present their work at the ASA Annual Meeting.

For all above listed awards, the following criteria applies:

* Trainee must have his/her abstract accepted for presentation at the ASA annual meeting.
* Trainee must be the first and presenting author on the abstract.
* The mentor must also submit an email letter of support, confirming that the trainee is in need of financial assistance to attend the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Andrology and is presenting an abstract as first author.

Specific award criteria:

Thomas S.K. Chang Travel Award: Trainee must be an active member of ASA or submit membership application and payment at the time of Award application. Application must be accompanied by 2 letters of support (mentor + one other).

The NIH Travel Award: All Trainees who have abstracts accepted, are first and presenting author on the abstract, and need travel assistance to present their work are eligible for the NIH Trainee Travel Award, regardless of their membership in ASA. Underrepresented and minority trainees are given special attention for consideration under the NIH Awards. These awards are based on need and merit, with the emphasis on need.

The Lonnie D. Russell Travel Award: Trainee must be an active member of ASA or submit membership application and payment at the time of Award application. Application must be accompanied by 2 letters of support (mentor + one other).

The Lalor Foundation International Travel Award: All International Trainees (outside the US) who have abstracts accepted, are first and presenting author on the abstract, and need travel assistance to present their work are eligible for the Lalor Foundation International Travel Awards.

Awards are considered reimbursement; therefore, trainees must attend the meeting and present their paper before the travel award is presented. Trainees will be notified of the award two months prior to the Annual Meeting. If you are not selected for the Chang, or Russell awards, you are still eligible for the NIH award.

If you are interested in a travel award, you must EMAIL your completed application along with a copy of your accepted abstract to the committee chair Michael A. Palladino, PhD mpalladi@monmouth.edu. Application must be sent by January 15, 2009.

American Society of Andrology
1100 E. Woodfield Road, Suite 520, Schaumburg, IL 60173
Phone: 847/619-4909 · Fax: 847/517-7229 · E-Mail: info@andrologysociety.com

Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory Based Sciences

Application deadlines for 2010 awards:

Letter of Intent: March 2, 2009 by 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Full Application (by invitation only): May 15, 2009 by 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time
By electronic application only.

Five-year institutional training awards provide $500,000 a year to bridge the gap between the population and computational sciences and the laboratory-based biological sciences. The award will support the training of researchers between existing concentrations of research strength in population approaches to human health and in basic biological sciences. The goal is to establish training programs by partnering researchers working in schools of medicine and schools (or academic divisions) of public health.

Eligibility
Understanding human health will be a focal priority for the programs that are funded. There is ample room for building on institutional strengths to achieve this focus, for example: institutional interests in chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, genetic diseases, toxicology and environmental exposures, reproductive health, and other areas where questions relating to human health are ripe for exploration at both the population and molecular scales. Likewise, institutional strengths in applied mathematics and modeling, statistics, genomics, bioinformatics and other informatics and data-driven sciences including geography and demographics, and phenomic approaches could provide excellent foundations for programs which encourage such work, as would strengths in population biology; epidemiology; human or disease ecology, anthropology, econometrics, and other population-focused quantitative fields.
Supported programs will train graduate students to the Ph.D. level, but programs may additionally propose giving training access to postdoctoral fellows, medical students, medical residents, masters students, undergraduates, or other kinds of trainees. Some examples of problems where such an approach would be beneficial include but are not limited to

multifactorial disease processes
evolution of and relationships between host, pathogen, vector, and reservoirs
biomarker identification and validation
effects of environmental exposure to toxins, allergens, and immunogens

Proposals

Degree-granting institutions in the U.S. or Canada may submit applications.
Proposals must be driven by core components within medical and public health schools, but beyond those required components, departments or centers located within non-medical parts of a university, existing inter-institutional collaboratives, research museums, free-standing research institutes, and other non-profit institutions that provide advanced-level training are all acceptable as potential additional partners. Dental, osteopathic, and veterinary medical schools are appropriate applicants.
Comparative medicine and animal science departments are advised to discuss their planned proposal with the program officer to ensure that their proposal will be human-focused enough to be competitive.
Proposals that cross institutional boundaries are encouraged.
Research groups working at national laboratories and within the federal government are allowable as partners, but funding to students doing research within these institutions must be channeled through an appropriate degree-granting institution.
For-profit companies may not participate in the application, but could be valuable partners in such training programs. Proposals that may offer students access to research opportunities involving work in or data from the for-profit sector are welcome.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Post Office Box 13901
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3901

Telephone: (919) 991-5100
Fax: (919) 991-5160

Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Inc.

Program Guidelines

The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation was incorporated in 1952, and since then has provided financial assistance to a wide variety of charitable organizations. Over the years, our program guidelines have evolved and changed. At present, we are concentrating our resources in the following three fields:

* Ensuring Access to Comprehensive Reproductive Health Information and Services
* Strengthening Cultural Institutions
* Improving the Performance of Public Institutions in New York

Ensuring Access to Comprehensive Reproductive Health Information and Services

Over the past two decades it has become abundantly clear that a new breed of conservative politics has spread throughout the country. We have watched as conservative secular and religious institutions collaborated to build an intellectual and political infrastructure that has worked on many fronts to erode public support for family planning, comprehensive sexuality education, and access to comprehensive reproductive health care. And while abortion was an early flashpoint around which conservatives organized, the pro-life movement, epitomized by James Dobson of Focus on the Family and R. Albert Mohler, Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has broadened its agenda to include some, if not all forms of birth control. Edward R. Martin, Jr., an attorney representing Americans United for Life, was quoted in the New York Times in May of 2006 as saying “We see contraception and abortion as part of a mindset that’s worrisome in terms of respecting life. If you’re trying to build a culture of life, then you have to start from the very beginning of life, from conception, and you have to include how we think and act with regard to sexuality and contraception.” This reconceptualization of the pro-life movement’s position on sexuality and contraception began early in the new century following scientific advances that resulted in the use of ultrasound and other technologies to ensure fetal survival at increasingly early stages of development. This gave rise to a set of new concerns including the issues of fetal pain, fetal personhood and, ultimately, fetal rights.

When George W. Bush was elected in 2000, these and other issues such as “abstinence-only-until-marriage” education began to gain political traction. In response to the wishes of his socially conservative base, the president moved forward with a spate of socially conservative appointments to sensitive positions within the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and to positions on international commissions that represent the United States on global reproductive health policy issues. These appointments and the election of a Republican Congress resulted in a gradual diminution of family planning services throughout the United States. While federal support for Title X family planning funding has remained constant, support for abstinence-only education has been on the rise. Under President Bush, support for these programs has increased from $80 million in 2001 to $204 million in 2007. Further, some say that the Bush Administration has used its AIDS relief program in Africa to send its abstinence message abroad, de-emphasizing the use of condoms that prevent spread of the disease, thereby further endangering the population at risk. On another front, Mr. Bush’s election in 2000 coincided with the initial marketing of two pharmaceutical products designed to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Marketing of Mifeprex (used to induce early abortion) and Plan B (used for emergency contraception) was delayed for years by FDA inaction. Following ultimate approval, the family planning battle moved to the pharmacy where some personnel, protected by new laws, are refusing to fill prescriptions because such action would violate their religious or moral beliefs. The consequence of all of this is that states are now awash in legislative initiatives that will, if approved, make comprehensive reproductive health care increasingly difficult to obtain.

The good news is that the political winds appear to be shifting. The midterm elections of 2006 brought Democratic majorities to both houses of Congress. In addition, the ongoing war in Iraq and its increasing unpopularity have resulted in plummeting polling data for the president and the supporters of the war. The result has been a new willingness on the part of progressive leaders to step forward and go on record in support of legislation to increase women’s access to family planning information and services.

The objective of our work in this field is to protect and expand women’s access to reproductive health services in the belief that the ability to control one’s fertility and prevent unintended pregnancy is fundamental to the advancement of women’s opportunities. The strategy employed by the Foundation toachieve this objective is to support policy analysis, advocacy, litigation, research, message developmentand/or organizing aimed at:

* Promoting the implementation of laws, policies and practices that will enable all women to have access to comprehensive reproductive health information and services, including emergency contraception and abortion;
* Challenging laws and legal decisions that undermine reproductive rights and developing legal theory in support of these rights;
* Advancing the use of electronic advocacy to mobilize an informed grassroots constituency;
* Developing new pro-choice messages, based on current opinion research, that resonate with a broad public;
* Informing the development of judicial selection criteria that will produce non-ideological courts; and
* Promoting the use of comprehensive sexuality education curricula in the schools.

The Foundation makes support available to national and regional organizations working on these issues.

Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Inc.

Grant Aplication Procedures

We are interested in learning as much as possible about the applicant. This includes budgets (past, current, projected), audited financial statements, an IRS letter explaining tax status, names and occupations of trustees, and examples of past accomplishments. The individual project proposal should include, in addition to a description of the planned work, a budget, expected outcomes, plans for evaluation, background of those involved, and a statement of plans for future support. The main body of the application should not exceed fifteen pages. Also, a one page summary is required.

The Board of Directors meets four times per year: January, April, July, and October. The Foundation receives and reviews proposals year-round.

The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation welcomes proposals within the areas of its present concentration. Proposals should be addressed to Margaret C. Ayers at the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, 135 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10065-7045.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope we can be of assistance.