Category: Funding Opportunities

Call for Applications: Petrie-Flom Academic Fellowship, 2014-2016

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Applications for the Petrie-Flom Center 2014-2016 Academic Fellowships are due on November 18, 2013. (Please note that applications submitted before November 18 will not be reviewed early.)

PURPOSE: The Academic Fellowship is a postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate, and promote promising scholars early in their careers. Fellows are selected from among recent graduates, young academics, and mid-career practitioners who are committed to spending two years at the Center pursuing publishable research that is likely to make a significant contribution to the field of health law policy, medical innovation policy, or bioethics. For more information about current and past fellows, please visit the Fellowship Programs section of our website.

ELIGIBILITY: By the start of the fellowship term, applicants must hold an advanced degree in a discipline that they intend to apply to issues falling under the Center’s umbrella. The Center particularly encourages applications from those who intend to pursue careers as tenure-track law professors, but will consider any applicant who demonstrates an interest and ability to produce outstanding scholarship at the intersection of law and health policy, bioethics, or biotechnology during the term of the fellowship. Applicants will be evaluated by the quality and probable significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic and professional achievement.

For more information, see the full call for applications here or contact Administrative Director Cristine Hutchison-Jones.

Popular Distrust of Health Science: A Crowdsourced Solution

crobertson Leave a comment

Benjamin Waterhouse's GraveBy Christopher Robertson

Enjoying the fall foliage in Mt. Auburn Cemetery yesterday, I came across this marker for Benjamin Waterhouse.  In the overwrought language that is appropriate on a grave marker:  “In 1800 he introduced to the new world the blessing of vaccination.  Overcame popular prejudice and distrust by testing it on his own children and thus established a title to the gratitude of future generations.”

No less today, there seems to be plenty of popular distrust of elite science.  (And it doesn’t help that so much of contemporary science is infected by conflicts of interest.)  Self-experimentation does have a long venerable history, which has recently become more prominent in the quantified self movement.  (I’m not sure about experimenting on my kid though.)

Tomorrow, I’m heading to NYC to make a pitch to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Fund, for major funding to launch a new project that would create a platform for robust, randomized experiments of lifestyle interventions (think: migraine management, diets, exercise regimens, nutritional supplements) for which there is virtually no FDA oversight and thus no regulatory imperative for rigorous scientific investigations.  Nonetheless, these lifestyle factors are the primary drivers of health and healthcare costs.  By crowdsourcing these sorts of experiments in an sound ethical framework robust against institutional corruption, I hope to develop gold-standard scientific knowledge with huge samples, but also build public engagement, public understanding, and public trust of health science.

The crowd uses Wikipedia to organize knowledge, and Indiegogo to invest in new health devices.  The crowd needs a platform to create knowledge too, especially through randomized interventions, which have the potential to actually change behaviors for the better and eliminate the confounding factors that undermine observational studies.

So, wish me luck in NYC tomorrow:   https://bit.ly/pioneerpitch

Call for Applications: Petrie-Flom Academic Fellowship, 2014-2016

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Petrie-Flom Center is now accepting applications for 2014-2016 Academic Fellowships.

PURPOSE: The Academic Fellowship is a postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate, and promote promising scholars early in their careers. Fellows are selected from among recent graduates, young academics, and mid-career practitioners who are committed to spending two years at the Center pursuing publishable research that is likely to make a significant contribution to the field of health law policy, medical innovation policy, or bioethics. For more information about current and past fellows, please visit the Fellowship Programs section of our website.

ELIGIBILITY: By the start of the fellowship term, applicants must hold an advanced degree in a discipline that they intend to apply to issues falling under the Center’s umbrella. The Center particularly encourages applications from those who intend to pursue careers as tenure-track law professors, but will consider any applicant who demonstrates an interest and ability to produce outstanding scholarship at the intersection of law and health policy, bioethics, or biotechnology during the term of the fellowship. Applicants will be evaluated by the quality and probable significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic and professional achievement.

APPLICATION: Applications will be accepted from September 16, 2013 through November 18, 2013. Please note that applications submitted before November 18 will not be reviewed early.

For more information, see the full call for applications here or contact Administrative Director Cristine Hutchison-Jones.

Call for Applications: Petrie-Flom Center Academic Fellowship, 2014-2016

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Petrie-Flom Center invites applications for 2014-2016 Academic Fellowships.

PURPOSE: The Academic Fellowship is a postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate, and promote promising scholars early in their careers. Fellows are selected from among recent graduates, young academics, and mid-career practitioners who are committed to spending two years at the Center pursuing publishable research that is likely to make a significant contribution to the field of health law policy, medical innovation policy, or bioethics. For more information about current and past fellows, please visit the Fellowship Programs section of our website.

ELIGIBILITY: By the start of the fellowship term, applicants must hold an advanced degree in a discipline that they intend to apply to issues falling under the Center’s umbrella. The Center particularly encourages applications from those who intend to pursue careers as tenure-track law professors, but will consider any applicant who demonstrates an interest and ability to produce outstanding scholarship at the intersection of law and health policy, bioethics, or biotechnology during the term of the fellowship. Applicants will be evaluated by the quality and probable significance of their research proposals, and by their record of academic and professional achievement.

APPLICATION: Applications will be accepted from September 16, 2013 through November 18, 2013.

For more information, see the full call for applications here or contact Administrative Director Cristine Hutchison-Jones.

More on NSF and NIH Funding

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

By Scott Burris

Here’s where some in Congress would like us to go:

ScienceInsider reports:

The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would replace peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a set of funding criteria chosen by Congress. For good measure, it would also set in motion a process to determine whether the same criteria should be adopted by every other federal science agency.

Whether or not you think of this as a partisan attack on science, it challenges the idea of science as an independent way of pursuing knowledge. The fact that this is even on the table, and could be taken seriously, shows how effective the attack on science has been.  It seems to reflect a terrible paradox:  on the one hand, social scientists are pissing some people off in a big way, which is a good sign we are doing something right in the inconvenient truth department; but on the other hand, I don’t see a lot of people rising to our defense, which suggest we matter to fewer people than we should.

This bill may or may not go anywhere, but anyone who cares about evidence-informed governance and the ability of the US to solve its problems ought to be concerned.

 

While We Sleep?

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

By Scott Burris

Nothing threatens a know-nothing more than the prospect of someone knowing something. Hence there has been increasing pressure on and from some in Congress to reduce government funding of social science research.  I hope every reader of this blog is aware that an appropriations rider added by Tom Coburn has drastically restricted NSF funding of political science research. That’s an ugly development, on par with the scandalous cuts to CDC that put paid to its gun research agenda years ago.

But the big funder of social and behavioral research in health is the NIH. In the past two weeks, I have heard via two different insiders that the agency is under pressure to significantly cut back on social and behavioral research, at least research with any important links to public policy. Now it is true that NIH does far too little policy-relevant research as it stands, but many fine researchers do important work related to law and policy with NIH support, and the important influence of law on health means we need more, not fewer, NIH-supported careers.

So I am hoping I am getting false information. What are you hearing?

Job Opening — Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Seeking Bioethicist

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

HJF is seeking a Bioethicist to provide support under an NIH-funded contract to the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of NIH, located on Rockledge Drive in Bethesda, Maryland.  Under the NIH Contract, HJF’s separate operating division, HJF-DAIDS, provides scientific and operations support to DAIDS including the Basic Sciences Program (BSP). Responsibilities include researching and preparing background materials on bioethical issues relevant to NIH/NIAID research for use by NIAID staff; reviewing clinical trial protocols upon request; working with NIAID staff to identify, coordinate, and resolve issues concerning ethical principles and the application of United States and international regulations and ethical guidelines in international settings; providing expert input in planning and organizing stakeholder meetings on bioethics topics.  Excellent research, oral communication and writing skills needed, and experience and advanced training in bioethics required.

For more information and to apply, please see www.hjf.org and click on Careers.

Oxford Ethox Centre Bioethics Scholarship

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarship – The Ethox Centre – University of Oxford
DEADLINE: 2nd April 2013 

The Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarships, funded by the Ethox Foundation, are awarded annually to post-doctoral or early-career researchers to enable them to spend up to a month at the Ethox Centre working on a topic relating to one of the Centre’s four main research areas: clinical ethics; research ethics; public health ethics; or global health bioethics.

For more information about the scheme and the application procedure, please visit the Ethox website at https://www.ethox.org.uk/.

Healthcare Compliance Certification Program – 2013 Health Law Student Scholarship

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Seton Hall Law School Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law & Policy is offering two scholarships to attend the Healthcare Compliance Certification Program, June 10-13, 2013, a multi-day educational program that addresses the myriad of legal and compliance issues faced by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The award recognizes promising health law students with an aptitude for and commitment to a career in health law focusing on legal and compliance issues within the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical technology industries.

Submission deadline is February 8, 2013.  Details regarding eligibility, judging, and requirements can be found here.

Dissertation Grants for Public Health Law Research

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

The Public Health Law Research program’s Strategic and Targeted Research Program funds research to fill critical gaps in the public health law evidence base. As part of this effort, PHLR is offering dissertation grants to train doctoral students in public health law research methods, including the development of legal datasets. PHLR invites current PhD students in accredited doctoral degree programs to apply.

Dissertation grants will be awarded for up to $20,000 each for 12 months maximum, and they include qualitative or quantitative studies of the health effects of specific laws or regulations and/or related underlying mechanisms of effect, and mapping studies that create a multi-jurisdictional dataset of laws suitable for quantitative research.

Up to $100,000 will be available under this program. Learn more about the call for proposals and how to apply: https://phlr.org/strp