Project Types and Award Information

The IRG seeks to catalyze community-engaged, interdisciplinary, cross-campus research that creates solutions to the gaps, risks, and opportunities for health and wellness that lie at the intersections of population health, personalized medicine, and the evolving communication and information context in New Jersey and beyond.

The IRG aims to support both individual investigator and collaborative projects. While each supported project will have its particular aims relative to the key aim, motivation, and focus of the IRG, the IRG seeks to develop a portfolio of projects that, when taken together, offer a more comprehensive engagement in creating solutions and generating knowledge.

Below the supported project types and expectations are defined, related activities listed, and some potential funding sources identified.

Collaborative Projects

• Multidisciplinary teams that include community partner(s) and that have four or more investigators across two or more Rutgers academic units.
• Successful projects will address the key aims, motivation, and focus of the IRG.
• Preference given to teams composed of relevant, diverse expertise from social-behavioral sciences, medical science, computer-information-engineering science, and humanities.
• See specific requirements here.

Awards

• $165,000 – $170,000 will be awarded to up to 10 teams.
• Funding amounts between $10,000 and $25,000

Proposed Project Expectations

Every supported project will:

• Identify and work with Community Stakeholders to define health and wellness problems, needs, or challenges, particularly those where communication, information, or media are key factors.
• Develop multidisciplinary teams to address the defined problems. All collaborative projects must include (at least) an academic researcher (including medical scientists) and a community stakeholder.
  • For this purpose, community stakeholder is defined broadly in both a practical and theoretical sense. Theoretically, ‘community’ in a population health sense refers both to groups of people who have the same disease/illness and also to groups who share a common feature such as geography, politics, or demographics. Practically, a community stakeholder could include practicing professionals in any of the determinants of health (such as clinical health care workers, social workers, policy-makers), representatives of the community-of-focus of the defined problem, or non-profit organizations with a focus on population health.
  • Ideally, multidisciplinary teams will include members from more than one region of the state.
• Participate in all IRG activities as outlined in the award conditions and IRG timelines.
• Document and disseminate results of each project.
  • All funding recipients, both individual and collaborative, should aim to submit (at least) preliminary results to appropriate scholarly outlets. For graduate students, dissertations or dissertation proposals will satisfy this requirement. Evidence of positive reviews and acceptance for presentation or publication should be noted.
  • Beyond more traditional academic outlets, reports suitable for dissemination to community partners and white papers for broader dissemination should be created commensurate with achievements.
  • Successful implementation of solutions is another way to meet the goals of dissemination, provided the implementation is prototyped and documented.
• Generate submissions for further funding to federal agencies and major funders in addition to any smaller funding applications. Collaborative projects should seek larger funding opportunities including as appropriate training grants and coordination networks. Faculty fellowships and graduate student awards should also generate submissions to appropriate funding competitions.

For all supported projects, the CDHW will:

• Provide coordinating events that motivate, connect, and articulate the work within and among the supported projects.
• Document and disseminate results from the various collaborative projects, fellowships, and graduate student award.
• Report the collective impact of this Community Design for Health and Wellness proposal.
• Report content insights for practice, science, and policy regarding the creation of innovative, sustainable solutions to community-defined challenges for achieving health and wellness at the intersection of upstream health determinants including the emerging landscape of information, media, and communication.
• Report process insights about an iterative, design approach that puts community-defined challenges at the center of the project. Special attention will be given to the process of achieving successful multi-lateral relationships that build sustainable individual and community health.