Call summary :

Overview

Proposal Q&A Session
The Natural Hazards Center—with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)—is issuing a special call for proposals for public health disaster research in the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, tribal nations, and rural communities across the United States. Disasters cause disproportionate harm in these places, yet they remain understudied. This special call is designed to promote novel research with strong public health applications that will help to shield populations from future hazard events by improving their disaster preparedness and response.
Community-based research that is led by investigators with strong ties to local collaborators can help these communities achieve this goal by clarifying problems and bringing solutions into focus. This fourth call of the Public Health Disaster Research Award Program seeks to fund studies that involve community engagement, while also having broader applicability for public health practice and policy. We are especially interested in research that advances rigorous conceptualization and measurement of equity as both a process and an outcome that is necessary to reduce current and future disaster risk.

Award Details At-A-Glance
• Available funds will support 3 to 6 awards in the amount of $25,000 to $50,000 each.
• Proposals are due by 5:00 p.m. MDT on Friday, September 29, 2023. Applicants must complete pre-proposal requirements as detailed in this special call.
• Award announcements will be made no later than Wednesday, October 25, 2023.

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Research Criteria

Focus Areas
Proposals will be prioritized that focus on or advance one or more of the following topics within state, territorial, or tribal areas:
• Public health emergency and disaster risk communication for populations with access and functional needs.
• Evidence-based practices for public health departments to improve equitable communication, collaboration, and risk awareness before, during, and after disasters.
• Quantitative analysis of strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of public health emergency response to improve preparedness policies or practices.
• Assessment of whether public health emergency preparedness practices are effective or can achieve desired outcomes, such as examining the comparative costs and benefits of various strategies.
• Public health tools and products that support disaster preparedness and response practice, including public health databases, decision-support tools, scales, indices, and instruments for measuring public health and disaster preparedness.
• Ethical and equitable partnerships with representatives of local public health departments, community-based organizations, and Indigenous communities.

Research Design and Collaborations
Proposals that include the following research design elements will be prioritized:
• Rapid. The project is short-term and focused on collecting perishable data or using existing data to generate answers to pressing questions associated with recent or anticipated disasters.
• Interdisciplinary and convergence-oriented. Applicants must demonstrate how the project is advancing convergence-oriented science by building a research team from multiple disciplines and forming close ties with local collaborators to ensure the research is problem-focused and solutions-based.
• Collaboration with local public health departments, community-based organizations, or local communities. Successful applicants will have detailed plans to collaborate with community partners in designing and executing the research project and returning the results to the community after the research is completed. Applicants with a previous track record of developing and sustaining collaborations with community partners will be prioritized for funding.
• Population-specific, geographic, and cultural knowledge and connections. Research teams whose members have a strong history of working with the people and/or in the geographic and/or cultural context they plan to study will be given preference. Culturally competent proposals will be prioritized.
• Transparent. Applicants will be encouraged to include plans to publish their research instruments and data using DesignSafe so that other researchers or public health practitioners can use them in the event of another major disaster.
• Students and early career researchers. While applications will not be limited to students or early career scholars, those research teams that involve early-stage researchers will be prioritized for funding. Specifical