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Through a broad set of investments collectively called Forward Promise, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation works to expand and promote the health and well-being of boys and young men of color (BYMOC). The Forward Promise national program office was launched in 2016 with the specific goal of helping BYMOC heal, grow, and thrive by investing in direct service programs and policy reform efforts that address racialized trauma as a root cause of negative health outcomes among BYMOC and in the communities where they live. Forward Promise currently is accepting applications for its Partnering with Systems to Disrupt Dehumanization program. Through the program, grants of up to $150,000 over eighteen months will be awarded to up to seven organizations and their youth-serving partners in support of efforts to increase understanding of issues faced by BYMOC in these systems and the historical role of dehumanization by these systems; uplift the current disparities that exist in the public system; deepen knowledge of culturally responsive approaches as effective strategies for addressing trauma and promoting healing; devise a plan for working together to test approaches; and identify sustainable opportunities to change the way these systems do business and approach their work with BYMOC.

The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces. Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate. For example, practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service or teaching assignments may impede research productivity, delay advancement, and create a culture of differential treatment and rewards. Similarly, policies and procedures that do not mitigate implicit bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions could lead to women and racial and ethnic minorities being evaluated less favorably, perpetuating historical under-participation in STEM academic careers and contributing to an academic climate that is not inclusive. All NSF ADVANCE proposals are expected to use intersectional approaches in the design of systemic change strategies in recognition that gender, race and ethnicity do not exist in isolation from each other and from other categories of social identity. The solicitation includes four funding tracks: Institutional Transformation (IT), Adaptation, Partnership, and Catalyst, in support of the NSF ADVANCE program goal to broaden the implementation of systemic strategies that promote equity for STEM faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession.

The NSF ADVANCE program contributes to the National Science Foundation's goal of a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce.[1]  In this solicitation, the NSF ADVANCE program seeks to build on prior NSF ADVANCE work and other research and literature concerning gender, racial, and ethnic equity.  The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM [2] faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession.  The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces.  Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate.  For example, practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service or teaching assignments may impede research productivity, delay advancement, and create a culture of differential treatment and rewards.  Similarly, policies and procedures that do not mitigate implicit bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions could lead to women and racial and ethnic minorities being evaluated less favorably, perpetuating historical under-participation in STEM academic careers and contributing to an academic climate that is not inclusive. 

The NSF ADVANCE program contributes to the National Science Foundation's goal of a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce.1 In this solicitation, the NSF ADVANCE program seeks to build on prior NSF ADVANCE work and other research and literature concerning gender, racial, and ethnic equity. The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM2 faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces. Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate. For example, practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service or teaching assignments may impede research productivity, delay advancement, and create a culture of differential treatment and rewards. Similarly, policies and procedures that do not mitigate implicit bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions could lead to women and racial and ethnic minorities being evaluated less favorably, perpetuating historical under-participation in STEM academic careers and contributing to an academic climate that is not inclusive.

The NSF ADVANCE program contributes to the National Science Foundation's goal of a more diverse and capable science and engineering workforce.1 In this solicitation, the NSF ADVANCE program seeks to build on prior NSF ADVANCE work and other research and literature concerning gender, racial, and ethnic equity. The NSF ADVANCE program goal is to broaden the implementation of evidence-based systemic change strategies that promote equity for STEM2 faculty in academic workplaces and the academic profession. The NSF ADVANCE program provides grants to enhance the systemic factors that support equity and inclusion and to mitigate the systemic factors that create inequities in the academic profession and workplaces. Systemic (or organizational) inequities may exist in areas such as policy and practice as well as in organizational culture and climate. For example, practices in academic departments that result in the inequitable allocation of service or teaching assignments may impede research productivity, delay advancement, and create a culture of differential treatment and rewards. Similarly, policies and procedures that do not mitigate implicit bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions could lead to women and racial and ethnic minorities being evaluated less favorably, perpetuating historical under-participation in STEM academic careers and contributing to an academic climate that is not inclusive.

The Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD) in the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announces the availability of Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 funds authorized under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Pub. Law 107-252, Title II, Subtitle D, Part 5, section 291 (42 United States Code (U.S.C.) 15461). Provisions under this section provide for the award of grants for Training and Technical Assistance (T/TA) to assist Protection and Advocacy Systems (P & As) in promoting full participation in the electoral process for individuals with disabilities, including registering to vote, casting a vote, and accessing polling places; developing proficiency in the use of voting systems and technologies as they affect individuals with disabilities; demonstrating and evaluating the use of such systems and technologies by individuals with disabilities (including blindness) in order to assess the availability and use of such systems and technologies for such individuals; and providing T/TA for non-visual access. (At least one recipient must provide T/TA assistance in this area.)

Timely and reliable laboratory data are an essential component of a well-functioning national health system. This FOA will support strengthening the quality, accessibility, and sustainability of the NHLS across a six-tiered network, i.e., at the national, zonal, regional, district, health center, and dispensary levels. Technical assistance will focus on improving the quality assurance of HIV rapid testing, TB microscopy and GeneXpert; Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and Viral Load (VL) testing; establishment and maintenance of efficient sample referral system and transport networks; implementation of laboratory Quality Management Systems; implementation of Laboratory Information Management Systems; scale up of EID and VL monitoring programs; quantification and forecasting of laboratory commodities; HIV Drug Resistance Surveillance; and, effective use of laboratory data for program management.

USAID/Cambodia seeks to make a five-year award focused on the goal of improving the quality of public and private health services in Cambodia in a sustainable manner through technical assistance to national and sub-national health systems. The activity will achieve this goal through four objectives: 1) improved policies, guidelines and standards for streamlined quality assurance; 2) increased efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery; 3) strengthened regulatory framework, implementation, and enforcement; and 4) strengthened pre-service public health training. Under these objectives, the award will support the Ministry of Health, Provincial Health Departments, Operational District Offices and Referral Hospital Management to improve the quality of health services through targeted technical assistance and limited introduction of new techniques, approaches, and technologies that improve quality of health services in both the public and private sector. The award will build upon existing, effective quality assurance systems and ensure that they incorporate a focus on USAID/Cambodia's technical priorities (maternal and child health, family planning, nutrition, tuberculosis, HIV and malaria). In addition, a major focus of the award will be ensuring quality of health services provided in the private sector. This will include, but is not limited to, strengthening licensing and regulation of service providers and monitoring of service quality in the private sector toward the development of an accreditation system for both public and private providers.

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), U.S. Department of Labor announces the availability of approximately $4 million total costs for up to two cooperative agreements of up to $2 million total costs each to fund technical assistance project(s) in two different countries to improve implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the elimination of child labor and forced labor in coffee supply chains. Each cooperative agreement will fund a project in one of the following countries in the Latin America/Caribbean region, where DOL's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor (TVPRA List) documents child labor and/or forced labor concerns: Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, or Nicaragua. Project outcomes include: 1) Adoption of a robust and sustainable social compliance system by private sector stakeholders in coffee supply chains; 2) Strengthened capacity of private sector stakeholders to implement a robust and sustainable social compliance system in coffee supply chains; and 3) New social compliance tools on child labor, forced labor, and acceptable conditions of work piloted in the coffee supply chain. The duration of the project will be a maximum of 4 years (48 months) from the effective date of the award. Applicants may apply for one or two of the cooperative agreements listed above. No more than two applications per applicant will be accepted. If applying for two cooperative agreements, applicants should not combine countries in a single application, but must submit separate applications for each country. Each application should request no more than $2 million total costs in funding.

PCORI seeks to fund pragmatic clinical trials, large simple trials, or large-scale observational studies that compare two or more alternatives for addressing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, or management of a disease or symptom; improving healthcare system-level approaches to managing care; communicating or disseminating research results to patients, caregivers, or clinicians; or eliminating health or healthcare disparities. Proposed studies must address critical clinical choices faced by patients, their caregivers, clinicians, or delivery systems. They must involve broadly representative patient populations and be large enough to provide precise estimates of hypothesized effectiveness differences and to support evaluation of potential differences in treatment effectiveness in patient subgroups.

The key element of the national HIV/AIDS program is ART scale up contributing towards strategic goals of treatment cascade. This project will build on the successful creation of a HIV medical information system through the ACCESS project by scaling up implementation of the MIS to treatment sites in all 12 PEPFAR focus oblasts, including capacity building of healthcare workers, improving information management, analysis and use. The project will also develop and implement a laboratory information system module. In addition, the project will work with the treatment sites to implement quality improvement and facility index testing activities in coordination with other PEPFAR and Global Fund supported activities. The major expected project results are 1) functional HIV MIS is operated by a GOU affiliated Operator at treatment sites in the 12 PEPFAR priority regions and Vinnitsa; 2) MIS data used by sites, GoU, PEPFAR , and other stakeholders; 3) laboratory module implemented; 3) quality improvement activities are implemented at all supported treatment sites; 4) high coverage facility index testing is performed at supported sites.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) invites applications for its 2018 Innovation Fellowship on the subject "Resisting Criminalization." UUSC and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) are engaged in a joint campaign that aims to "resist the harm created by criminalization" and to "create more safe, just, welcoming, and sustainable communities." The UUSC Human Rights Innovation Fellowship is a one-year $25,000 grant, awarded to an individual or non-governmental organization, designed to bring about systemic change by creating, nurturing, or spreading an innovation in human rights. For this year's theme, UUSC invites applications from individuals or organizations working on projects that seek to combat the systemic criminalization of immigrant communities, communities of color, Muslims, and LGBTQI communities in the United States - and individuals and communities at the intersections. These innovations may be legal strategies, methods of mobilization, methods of community outreach, technological or financial products or apps, path breaking applied research, advances in corporate accountability, or other new approaches. The successful proposal will be rights-based, align with UUSC's values and approach, positively impact and engage at-risk communities, and provide a new, different, and timely solution.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications to conduct innovative and feasible studies to test strategies to accelerate the adoption of guideline-based recommendations into clinical practice among populations with health disparities. Applications that propose strategies with a focus on providers who care for clinical populations with excess burden of cardiovascular, lung, blood, and sleep diseases and disorders, in concert with the health care delivery systems in which they practice, are strongly encouraged. Applications that test systems, infrastructures, and strategies to implement guideline-based care for NHLBI disorders in clinical care settings are also of high programmatic interest.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support investigative and collaborative research focused on developing and evaluating simulation modeling and systems science to understand and address minority health and health disparities.

This notice solicits applications for projects under the Community-based Approaches to Strengthening Economic Supports for Working Families Initiative to serve low-income working families disproportionately at risk for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including racial and ethnic minority families. This initiative seeks to determine if implementation of earned income tax credit outreach and education activities in communities at higher risk for ACEs can result in (1) increased EITC receipt and (2) changes in risk and/or protective factors for ACEs. OMH expects recipients to demonstrate effective outreach strategies to communities disproportionately at higher risk for ACEs, including racial and ethnic minority communities, and a collaborative multi-sectoral approach which should include partners in community-level sectors and community-based organizations, such as social services agencies, child support agencies, home visiting programs, early childhood service providers, housing agencies, business/labor organizations, and health systems. In the long term, OMH expects projects to lead formalized and sustainable systems change and enhanced partnerships that foster economic stability in order to prevent ACEs. OMH anticipates funding up to six grants for $300,000 to $450,000 each per year, for up to three years.

This FOA encourages research on stigma, particularly in health conditions, settings, and populations where it is not well characterized although the burden is high, and/or where the development and implementation of interventions to reduce its detrimental effects are now possible.  The R21 mechanism is intended to encourage new exploratory and developmental research projects. For example, such projects could assess the feasibility of a novel area of investigation or a new experimental system that has the potential to enhance health-related research. Another example could include the unique and innovative use of an existing methodology to explore a new scientific area. These studies may involve considerable risk but may lead to a breakthrough in a particular area, or to the development of novel techniques, agents, methodologies, models, or applications that could have a major impact on a field of biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research.  Applications submitted under this mechanism should be exploratory and novel. These studies should break new ground or extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications.

For many decades, an increasing number of women have obtained STEM doctoral degrees, however, women, particularly women of color, continue to be significantly underrepresented in almost all STEM academic positions.  While the degree of underrepresentation varies among STEM disciplines, women's advancement to senior professorial ranks and leadership roles is an issue in all fields.  The underrepresentation of women is also a critical issue for the nation, at large, as its need to develop a globally competitive and diverse workforce increases. Research has shown that women's representation and advancement in academic STEM positions are affected by many external factors that are unrelated to their ability, interest and technical skills (Spencer, et al, 1999; Halpern and Tan, 2001; Hyde, 2005; National Academy of Sciences, 2007).  Such factors include, but are not limited to: stereotype threat, societal impacts, organizational constraints of academic institutions; differential effect of work and family demands; implicit and explicit bias; and lack of women in academic leadership and decision-making positions.  The cumulative effect of such diverse factors has been to create infrastructural barriers that impact the number of women entering, persisting and advancing in STEM careers. Thus, the goal of the ADVANCE program is to develop systemic approaches to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers, thereby contributing to the development of a more diverse science and engineering workforce.  ADVANCE also has as its goal to seminally contribute to and inform the general knowledge base on gender equity in the academic STEM disciplines.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Program furthers the Department's mission by advancing knowledge regarding the confluence of crime, justice, and culture in various societal contexts. It supports research on the intersections of race, offending, victimization, and the fair administration of justice for both juveniles and adults. This solicitation seeks investigator-initiated proposals to conduct research on topics linked to race and crime in violence and victimization, crime and prevention, and justice systems (policing, courts, community and institutional corrections). For FY2017, NIJ is particularly interested in research on homicide and other violence in minority communities, and criminal court topics. Funding categories include: 1) W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars who are advanced in their careers; and 2) W.E.B. Du Bois Fellows who are early in their careers.

The purpose of this FOA is to encourage behavioral and social science research on the causes and solutions to health and disabilities disparities in the U. S. population. Health disparities between, on the one hand, racial/ethnic populations, lower socioeconomic classes, and rural residents and, on the other hand, the overall U.S. population are major public health concerns. Emphasis is placed on research in and among three broad areas of action: 1) public policy, 2) health care, and 3) disease/disability prevention. Particular attention is given to reducing health gaps among groups. Applications that utilize an interdisciplinary approach, investigate multiple levels of analysis, incorporate a life-course perspective, and/or employ innovative methods such as systems science or community-based participatory research are particularly encouraged.

The purpose of this FOA is to encourage behavioral and social science research on the causes and solutions to health and disabilities disparities in the U. S. population. Health disparities between, on the one hand, racial/ethnic populations, lower socioeconomic classes, and rural residents and, on the other hand, the overall U.S. population are major public health concerns. Emphasis is placed on research in and among three broad areas of action: 1) public policy, 2) health care, and 3) disease/disability prevention. Particular attention is given to reducing health gaps among groups. Applications that utilize an interdisciplinary approach, investigate multiple levels of analysis, incorporate a life-course perspective, and/or employ innovative methods such as systems science or community-based participatory research are particularly encouraged.