Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Services (ARIES) of Centennial College and College of Massage Therapist of Ontario (CMTO) are very pleased to announce the 2017 Massage Therapy Research Fund (MTRF) competition. The MTRF funding competition is now open to support high quality and rigorous research in massage therapy. We invite researchers to submit research project proposals till the application deadline on December 18, 2017 (11:59 p.m. ET). Grant recipients will be announced in February, 2018.

In this cycle of funding competition:

• Up to $60,000 grant amount is available to fund projects.
• The maximum grant amount for a project is $40,000.
• The number of grants will depend on the number of quality submissions received.

Eligible research topics include, but are not limited to:

• Massage therapy effectiveness, efficacy and safety
• Access to and delivery of massage therapy services
• Professionalization of massage therapy
• Massage Therapy competencies and competency assessment
• Evaluation of massage therapy practice

You can find more information at www.mtrf.ca. Please promote and disseminate. For questions, please contact Dr. Pouria Tavakkoli Avval, Program Manager, Massage Therapy Research Fund at ptavakkoliavval@centennialcollege.ca.

The FY17 Defense Appropriations Act provides $5 million (M) to the Department of Defense Lupus Research Program (LRP) to support innovative and impactful research that addresses fundamental issues in lupus.  As directed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Defense Health Agency (DHA) J9, Research and Development Directorate manages the Defense Health Program (DHP) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. The managing agent for the anticipated Program Announcements/Funding Opportunities is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).

FY17 LRP Program Announcements and General Application Instructions for the following award mechanisms are posted on the Grants.gov website. 

Applications submitted to the FY17 LRP must address at least one of the three Focus Areas listed below:

•           Understand lupus disease heterogeneity including, but not limited to, progressive stages of lupus disease over time, strategies and technologies to subtype patients, lupus disease mechanisms, biopsychosocial studies, personalized medicine, variation in treatment and its effects on patient outcomes, socioeconomic studies, environmental studies, and epidemiological studies.

•           Understand how the underlying genetic components of lupus disease relate to clinical disease characteristics using functional genomic studies.

•           Determine the pathobiology of lupus in target human tissues including, but not limited to, imaging studies, genetics of lupus disease in particular tissues, and metabolomics.

http://cdmrp.army.mil/funding/lrp

Concept Award – Letter of Intent Due December 21, 2017, Full Application Due January 4, 2018

• Investigators at all academic levels
• Supports high-risk studies that have the potential to reveal new avenues for investigation into lupus.
• Must describe how the new idea will enhance existing knowledge of lupus.

·         Must address at least one of the FY17 LRP Focus Areas

·         Submission of letter of intent is required prior to full application submission

·         Inclusion of preliminary data is encouraged

·         Clinical trials are not allowed

·         Maximum funding of $150,000 for total costs

• Maximum period of performance is 1 year

Impact Award – Letter of Intent Due December 21, 2017, Full Application Due January 4, 2018

• Assistant Professor level or above (or equivalent)
• Supports new high-risk, high-reward ideas that could lead to critical discoveries or major advancements in the field of lupus research.
• Must describe how the new idea will enhance existing knowledge of lupus or develop a novel course of investigation.
• Emphasis is on impact

·         Must address at least one of the FY17 LRP Focus Areas

·         Submission of letter of intent is required prior to full application submission

·         Inclusion of preliminary data is encouraged

·         Clinical trials are not allowed

·         Maximum funding of $525,000 for total costs

• Maximum period of performance is 3 years

A pre-application is required and must be submitted through the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) at https://eBRAP.org prior to the pre-application deadline. All applications must conform to the final Program Announcements and General Application Instructions that will be available for electronic downloading from the Grants.gov website.  The application package containing the required forms for each award mechanism will also be found on Grants.gov.  A listing of all CDMRP funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420. 

Applications must be submitted through the federal government’s single-entry portal, Grants.gov.  Submission deadlines are not available until the Program Announcements are released.  For email notification when Program Announcements are released, subscribe to program-specific news and updates under “Email Subscriptions” on the eBRAP homepage at https://eBRAP.org.  For more information about the LRP or other CDMRP-administered programs, please visit the CDMRP website (http://cdmrp.army.mil).

Point of Contact:

CDMRP Help Desk

301-682-5507
help@eBrap.org

Futher details about the Global Call, including LOI instructions, Selection Criteria, and more are available online. 

Visit www.cifar.ca/cifar-global-call-for-ideas

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) invites the global research community to submit proposals for new programs that address complex, fundamental questions of importance to the world. Ideas must be novel, bold and potentially transformative to warrant the creation of a long-term, interdisciplinary and collaborative research program. Proposals will be accepted from all areas of research.

• Call for Letters of Intent opens: November 15, 2017 
• LOI deadline: January 21, 2018 
• Announcement of short-listed proposals: Spring 2018 
• Final proposal deadline: Fall 2018 
• Announcement of competition results: Spring 2019

The iCT Rewarding Success is expected to:

1. Incentivize multidisciplinary research teams and their healthcare and innovation partners to design, adopt, and evaluate interventions implemented into a healthcare delivery organization that enhance value-based care, health system sustainability, and health outcomes.
2. Support innovative process transformations that improve health outcomes and value for Canada’s healthcare investment.

In Canada, the dramatic and increasing number of overdoses and deaths related to the use of opioids is a national public health crisis. The Government of Canada is committed to tackling this crisis and has emphasized the need for a strong evidence base through the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy (CDSS), and the Joint Statement of Action to Address the Opioid Crisis. This funding opportunity will support expedited knowledge synthesis grants to rapidly inform policies on opioids related to one or more pillars of CDSS (i.e. prevention, treatment, harm reduction and enforcement).

Knowledge syntheses are the cornerstone of knowledge translation. They interpret vast libraries of scientific literature into knowledge that is reliable, relevant and readable for knowledge users. Syntheses are comprehensive and apply scientific methods to literature analysis which minimizes the risk of bias and error that may accompany single studies, so health policy and practice decisions are less likely to be based on insufficient or premature evidence. Syntheses are also a means to integrate established literature with other forms of knowledge, to map the state of current knowledge on a topic, revealing to knowledge users where there is or is not strong evidence to inform their decisions, or to guide researchers to new areas of research.

This Funding Opportunity is expected to:

• Address the pressing evidence needs of knowledge users within one or more pillars of the CDSS.
• Increase the application of knowledge related to one or more pillars of the CDSS in policy and decision-making, in order to address the most urgent elements of the opioid crisis, including opioid-related mortality rates.
• Encourage syntheses that consider sub-populations and/or the biological and social determinants of problematic opioid use.

The objective of the Economic Forecasting funding opportunity is to:

• Advance knowledge in health economic forecasting of the cost of primary and secondary prevention, and early intervention services.
• Build capacity to produce financial projections that would more easily allow government departments to understand the impact of scaling evidence-based primary and secondary prevention interventions on their budgets over time

The specific objectives of this funding opportunity are:

• To add value to the current state of basic biomedical knowledge on a given topic that has potential to, but has not yet fully elucidated, the impact of sex on biological mechanisms or pathophysiology.
• To promote increased awareness, knowledge and self-efficacy among biomedical researchers regarding the integration of sex as a variable in their research.
• To contribute to the improvement of women and men’s health in Canada and the world.

The St. Joseph’s Care Group (SJCG) Award in Applied Health Research is available to a full-time graduate student at Lakehead University pursuing research related to the service areas of SJCG. The service areas are: Addictions & Mental Health, Rehabilitative Care & Chronic Disease Management, and Seniors’ Health. More information can be found at www.sjcg.net. The recipient of the award must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada, and be residing in Thunder Bay during the tenure of the award. The recipient must be working with a supervisor who is a member of the Centre for Applied Health Research (CAHR) at SJCG. In addition, the recipient must not hold another major award/scholarship (valued at $15,000 or greater). The award is administered through the CAHR at SJCG and is valued at $10,000 from December 1, 2017 to August 31, 2018. Information about the CAHR is available at www.cahr.sjcg.net.

Application documents are available by contacting Carrie Gibbons at gibbonsc@tbh.net.

Deadline: October 31, 2017