Are you a librarian? Do you work in public health? If so, you should consider attending the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting this year in Washington, DC from October 29 – November 2, 2011. This year’s theme is Healthy Communities Promote Healthy Minds & Bodies.

This should be a particularly great year to attend as a librarian, since librarians do a lot of important community work. Our public health impact can be seen both directly through health literacy projects and outreach as well as indirectly through education of future nurses, doctors, and public health workers. And, there is funding available through the Sewell Fund to help subsidize costs of attendance at the meeting!

What can you expect from attending APHA? Librarian attendees from the past 10 years report a wide variety of outcomes from attending the meeting. Outcomes range from being written into grants; having parts of their salaries paid by other departments; being asked to give presentations at local, state, national, and international meetings; being asked to become regular faculty members in schools of public health; and in general earning the respect of their public health colleagues.

Please visit the MLA PH/HA Section website to learn the full details of the Sewell Stipend and download an application today. The deadline for applications is Friday July 29, 2011.

Do you have an innovative plan to use Healthy People 2020 to improve the health of your community? Awards are available for community based organizations (not-for-profit) to address one or more Healthy People 2020 topic areas—with a special emphasis on environmental justice, health equity, or healthy behaviors across all life stages. Funding may only be used to support activities above and beyond general operations. In order to be eligible for consideration, proposed projects must address at least one of the Healthy People 2020 topics and incorporate at least one of the following priorities that are linked to the Healthy People 2020 overarching goals:

• Environmental justice: supporting the rights of all people to live in a healthy environment.
• Health equity: dealing with issues that cause some groups of people to have worse health than others.
• Healthy behaviors across all life stages: activities to improve the opportunities for people of all ages to make healthy choices.

The RFP is available online for download, as a PDF and Word document. Summary of the funding information is as follows:

• This is a one-time funding opportunity.
• Awards will range from $5,000 to $10,000.
• Up to 170 projects will be funded.
• Multiple submissions representing a single eligible entity will not be reviewed.
• Non-profit, community-based organizations with budgets less than $750,000 can apply for these funds.
• All funded activities must be completed by May 31, 2012.
• Proposals are due by 7:00 p.m. EDT, August 5, 2011.

If you have any questions regarding this proposal, please contact John Snow, Inc. via email at communities@jsi.com or via phone at 1.800.839.0934.

The National Institutes of Health has announced five new Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) to accelerate scientific discoveries into treatments for patients. Administered by the National Center for Research Resources, these 2011 grants extend the CTSA consortium to 30 states and the District of Columbia. With these recent awards, the NIH is funding 60 CTSA institutions. The five new institutions are the Pennsylvania State University, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City; University of Kentucky, Lexington; and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

The NIH news release about the 2011 awards is available, along with more information about the CTSAs and related science advances.

In addition, NIH has awarded the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with a grant to encourage and facilitate collaboration, sharing and interaction among the CTSAs, as well as with other NIH-funded institutions and organizations. For more information, view the Vanderbilt news release.

The National Health Council (NHC), with input from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has developed HealthResearchFunding.Org, a new initiative launched in February, 2011, designed to bring together researchers and potential funding organizations. The goal of the database is to promote solutions to health care concerns faced by more than 133 million Americans living with chronic diseases and disabilities, and their caregivers.

The NIH receives more than 50,000 grant applications per year, which are then peer reviewed, and about half are deemed scientifically meritorious and worthy of funding. Of these, fewer than half actually receive funding. By using this new resource, potential research supporters both within and outside the NHC community can more efficiently identify and evaluate NIH-reviewed research proposals. In turn, research institutions can spend less time and effort looking for financial support, and more time developing new treatments for patients. And investigators who have developed specific research proposals gain a broad audience of potential funding sources from the nonprofit sector.

The process works by invitation of researchers with proposals that have been reviewed by the NIH or by an NHC member patient advocacy organization to register with the web site and submit an abstract. This gives researchers the ability to search for organizations that fund research. NHC member organizations are able to search for research proposals, individual researchers, or other funding organizations. The site will eventually expand to include corporations and private investors.

The National Health Council is composed of more than 100 health-related organizations and businesses, about 50 of which include the nation’s leading patient advocacy groups. Examples of member organizations include the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the March of Dimes. NHC member organizations may add their own requests for research proposals to the database, and seek possible funding collaboration with other organizations.

Health DATAbytes is an online conversation featuring health experts and advocates providing examples of using data to make healthy changes to benefit communities and address health disparities. The blog postings are designed to help people with a wide range of data expertise to better understand and use data to seek funding, plan and evaluate programs, or advance public policies to promote healthier communities. In addition to the expert commentary, Health DATAbytes provides data tips and tricks, and links to upcoming data training sessions. Blog postings reflect a broad range of health topics. Recent listings include the health effects of living near major roadways, neighborhoods lacking healthy food outlets (food deserts), and the effect of state budget cuts on support services for the elderly and disabled.

Health DATAbytes is a new initiative from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, as part of its Health DATA (Data. Advocacy. Training. Assistance.) Program. The aim of this program is to make data easily understandable to a wide variety of public health and health advocacy personnel, as well as members of the general community. Another goal of the program is to increase capacity of these groups to locate and present credible data related to particular health programs.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), has released two new funding opportunities. These include the Public Health Training Centers (PHTCs) Program, with a grant application deadline of May 23, 2011, and the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), with an application due date of May 25, 2011.

Grant competition for the Public Health Training Centers (PHTC) Program involves available funding of $6.5 million to support up to ten new Public Health Training Centers (PHTCs) as cooperative agreements in an amount up to $650,000 each annually. These Centers provide education, training and other services to help meet public health workforce needs and address related shortages. Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH)-accredited schools are eligible to apply.

The Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP) helps provide tutoring, mentoring and other services for students from disadvantaged backgrounds pursuing careers as physician assistants; in behavioral and mental health, public and allied health; dentistry; optometry; pharmacy; and in general, osteopathic, chiropractic, podiatric and veterinary medicine. HRSA expects to make approximately $9.8 million available to fund 14 academic institutions and training programs.

Feel free to share this information with colleagues and peers who may be interested!

Valerie Florance, PhD, Director of NLM’s Division of Extramural Programs, was featured in a March 9, 2011 article in NLM in Focus. Extramural Programs is the only part of NLM authorized to award grants. In 2010, NLM made 185 awards, totaling nearly $50 million in a mix of new and continuing grants. Forty-one of the new awards, totaling $37 million, were made with American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.

In the interview, Dr. Florance discusses the goals of NLM’s extramural programs, the five types of NLM grants available, future directions for the field of biomedical informatics, and how librarians fit into that vision. She also addresses outcomes-based measurement of grant success.

NLM in Focus is an electronic newsletter featuring behind-the-scenes looks at the National Library of Medicine, and showcasing its programs and services, research projects, and staff talents. RSS subscriptions are available for NLM in Focus, to provide notification whenever new stories are posted. More information is available on the FAQ page.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has announced the solicitation of quotations for 2011 HIV/AIDS Community Information Projects (RFQ No. NLM-0011-049-SES), from organizations and libraries to design and conduct projects that will improve access to HIV/AIDS related health information for patients, the affected community, and their caregivers. Standard Awards are offered for up to $60,000; Express Awards are offered for up to $10,000. Quotations are due to NLM on Tuesday, April 19, 2011. It is anticipated that awards will be made on or about August 1, 2011.

The solicitation for the 2011 HIV/AIDS Community Information Outreach Projects is posted on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site. Small Businesses can apply to a specific set-aside (NLM-0011-0049-KDB). The Federal Business Opportunities Web site will also list all notices, updates, and modifications to the RFQ.

Projects must involve one or more of the following information access categories: information retrieval; skills development, state-of-the-art resources; resource development; and/or document access. Emphasis is placed upon the following types of organizations or arrangements for developing these programs: community-based organizations (CBOs) or patient advocacy groups currently providing HIV/AIDS-related services to the affected community; public libraries serving communities in the provision of HIV/AIDS-related information and resources; health departments or other local, municipal, or state agencies working to improve public health; faith-based organizations currently providing HIV/AIDS-related services; and/or multi-type consortia of the above-listed organizations that may be in existence or formed specifically for this project.

The NLM primary point of contact for the solicitation is Keturah D. Busey, Business Opportunity Specialist, and the secondary point of contact is Robin D. Hope-Williams, Contracting Officer.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) invites applications from US educational institutions that wish to provide training for research careers in biomedical informatics. Since 1975, NLM has been the leading federal sponsor of research training in biomedical informatics.

Awards will be made for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral education in a range of informatics areas including:

• Health care/clinical informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to direct patient care, such as advanced clinical decision support systems and multimedia electronic health records, to the provision of informational support to health care consumers. Special tracks might be proposed for nursing informatics, dental informatics, imaging informatics, or other appropriate clinical themes.
• Translational bioinformatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to support “bench to bedside to practice” translational research, such as genome-phenome relationships, pharmacogenomics, or personalized medicine. Special tracks might be proposed in health effects of environmental factors, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), or other similar areas.
• Clinical research informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to support basic clinical trials and comparative effectiveness research. Special tracks might be proposed in areas such as biostatistics, in-silico trials, merging and mining large disparate data sets that mix images, text and data.
• Public health informatics: Applications of informatics principles and methods to build integrated resources for health services research, for decision support in public health agencies, to support regional or global health research, or syndromic surveillance. Special tracks might be proposed in areas such as health literacy, information design for consumers, health effects of climate change.

Organizations funded by NLM to do this training are responsible for defining an appropriately rigorous curriculum, selecting a diverse cadre of high-quality trainees, and providing research mentoring training in the responsible conduct of research and other resources that help trainees transition to successful research careers.

For details about the solicitation including deadline, scope and levels of support available, please see the funding opportunity announcement: NLM Institutional Training Grants for Research Training in Biomedical Informatics (T-15) http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-LM-11-001.html.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) is now accepting applications for The Donald A. B. Lindberg Research Fellowship. The purpose of this fellowship is to fund research aimed at expanding the research knowledgebase, linking the information services provided by librarians to improved health care and advances in biomedical research. The endowment will provide a $10,000 grant, awarded by MLA through a competitive grant process, to a qualified health sciences librarian, informatician, health professional, researcher, educator, or health administrator.  Research in alignment with MLA’s research agenda’s top ranked research questions is preferred over other areas of research and is located at http://www.mlanet.org/research/agenda_2008.html.

An application and more information about the fellowship can be accessed at www.mlanet.org/awards/grants/ or by contacting Lisa C. Fried, MLA’s Credentialing, Professional Recognition and Career Coordinator at mlapd2@mlahq.org.

The awardee will be notified in late February 2011.