Pilot Awards Program

ICTR Pilot Award Project: Black Fathers, Equal Partners in Advancing Maternal and Infant Health

Posted on

Uploaded 10/24/22
This internal document describes the outcomes and impact of the 2021 ICTR Clinical and Community Outcomes Research pilot award to Drs. Tova Walsh and Alvin Thomas. In collaboration with the African American Breastfeeding Network in Milwaukee, they completed a needs assessment among Black expectant fathers and mothers in Milwaukee, followed by a series of focus groups to gather community input to develop father-inclusive programming to support Black maternal and infant health.

File: ICTR-Pilot-Final-Report_Walsh-Thomas-102422-FINAL.pdf

ICTR Celebrates Grant Renewals with Ongoing Pilot Awards Program for 2022

Posted on

With renewed grant support from the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award and the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP), ICTR will fund 21 awards totaling $1.3 million to support clinical and translational research in Wisconsin. Christine Sorkness, PharmD, ICTR Senior Executive Director, notes,

ICTR is proud to celebrate renewal of our competitive grants from NIH and WPP by extending our uninterrupted record of funding awards that catalyze clinical and translational research and engage UW and Marshfield investigators, collaborators, and community partners. Importantly, the Pilot Awards Program continues to emphasize innovative research methods, team science, health equity, and impact.

As in previous years, we are partnering with UW departments and centers to sponsor specific awards, via our co-funding model. This approach allow both us and our partners to leverage scarce research funds to assist as many investigators as possible.

Co-funded awards are subject to an identical rigorous scientific review process, but post-review, institutional partners have the opportunity to select projects for co-funding that strategically align with their individual research priorities. The 2022 co-funding partnerships include the UW Carbone Cancer Center and the Department of Medicine’s Division of Geriatrics.

This year’s pilot portfolio includes Translational Basic & Clinical Pilot Awards (10), Novel Methods in Translational Science Pilot Grant Awards (4), Clinical & Community Outcomes Research Awards (4), Dissemination & Implementation Research Awards (2), and a Stakeholder & Patient Engaged Research Award. Awardees and their home departments span the entire UW campus, not just the schools and college that comprise the ICTR partnership (Engineering, Medicine & Public Health, Nursing, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine).

View a complete awardee list for 2022.

Launchpad Program Offers Evidence to Implementation Award for 2022

Posted on
woman presenting pitch

Pre-proposals due July 15, 2022
Required Workshop (Virtual or Recording): June 15, 2022 – Register

The 2022 Evidence to Implementation (E2I) RFA has been released! The purpose of the E2I award is to facilitate and expedite the transfer or commercialization of evidence-based or evidence-informed practices, interventions, and innovations to appropriate end-users using the D&I Launchpad™. These include self-management or other health promotion workshops and interventions, and health services innovations that improve delivery of care in the health care or community setting. Previous awards are described here.  Jane Mahoney, Director of the ICTR D&I Launchpad, notes,

The Launchpad team’s expertise will help with the future growth and sustainability of these healthcare innovations. These programs have incredible potential to make a significant impact on the health of Wisconsin and beyond

 

These awards will support creation of a Launchpad Package to support the dissemination and implementation of the evidence-based intervention or innovation. The elements of the Launchpad Package will be unique to each project, but may include a business plan – value proposition, marketing, sales, financials, intellectual property review, and any necessary tools and supporting materials.

More information, all deadlines, and application materials are available on the funding opportunities page

The Evidence to Implementation Award (E2I) is funded by UW ICTR Pilots Awards Program, which is made possible by the UW SMPH Wisconsin Partnership Program through a Strategic Grant to the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

All of Us Researcher Workbench Offers Data Access for Precision Medicine Studies

Posted on

Based in the cloud, the All of Us Researcher Workbench contains an integrated dataset that includes nearly 100,000 whole genome sequences, survey responses from nearly 330,000 participants, and information from 214,000 electronic health records, alongside physical measurements and wearable device data. The participants mirror the rich diversity of our country. Local and national efforts are underway to accelerate researcher use of this resource to deliver innovations in precision health to individuals across the U.S.

Vouchers offered by ICTR. This April, ICTR offered vouchers to support workbench use for UW research projects that could be finished by the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2022). Five vouchers have been issued to research teams from different clinical departments. They include:

  • Post-Acute Sequelae SARS Cov-2 (PASC): Can Physical Activity and Select Genomic Markers Predict Long-COVID Risk?
    Dane Cook, PhD (Department of Kinesiology)
  • Assessing Weight Trends in the All of Us Research Program Dataset
    Luke Funk, MD, MPH (Department of Surgery)
  • Producing Polygenic Risk Scores for Hundreds of Human Complex Traits Using All of Us
    Qiongshi Lu, PhD (Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics)
  • Characterizing Genetic and Clinical Variable Interactions and Their Importance in Estimating Risk of Developing Breast or Ovarian Cancers in Women
    Irene Ong, PhD (Departments of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, Obstetrics & Gynecology)
  • Idiopathic Hypersomnia in All of Us: Prevalence, Comorbidities and Genetic Polymorphism
    David Plante, MD, PhD (Department of Psychiatry)

Our local All of Us (AoU) program at UW is nested within ICTR and is led by Co-PIs Elizabeth Burnside, ICTR Deputy Executive Director, and Dorothy Farrar-Edwards, Faculty Director of the UW Collaborative Center for Health Equity. Burnside comments,

Elizabeth BurnsideWe are so pleased to support this group of innovators in clinical and translational science from diverse departments as they undertake novel projects in the All of Us Workbench. As All of Us-Wisconsin enters year five of our NIH funding, our team remains laser-focused on participant engagement, enrollment, and retention activities. Simultaneously, UW is growing a strong scientific community and building momentum for advancing precision health by taking advantage of All of Us data. Congratulations to voucher awardees!

Administrative Supplements Offered by NIH. On May 20, the NIH released an additional, larger mechanism to support use of the workbench for precision medicine research by investigators with current active funding from NIH. The initiative will fund up to 20 supplemental awards in FY2022 and is due July 5, 2022. More details can be found here: Notice of Special Interest: Administrative Supplements to Advance Precision Medicine Using the All of Us Research Program’s Data (NOT-PM-22-002). Read More.

About 80% of the data in the Researcher Workbench is contributed by participants who represent communities that are historically underrepresented in research, including people from racial and ethnic minority groups, people from sexual and gender minority groups, and residents of rural areas. This diversity of participants is what makes the database such a valuable resource for research. Farrar-Edwards notes,

Dorothy Farrar-EdwardsThe Workbench provides data that have never been available before. The All of Us Program is committed to accelerating precision medicine – and enhancing  health equity – particularly for those groups that have never been adequately represented in biomedical research.

 

ICTR Pilot Awards Support Community-Engaged Research, Collaboration

Posted on

UW ICTR has announced the 2021 Pilot Awards; 14 projects were funded totaling $1.02 million that encompass community engaged and health services research, novel methods, and collaborations with our partners at Marshfield Clinic. Christine Sorkness, ICTR Senior Associate Executive Director, comments,

As always, the ICTR pilot awards team is indebted to the scientific and community reviewers of these applications, especially during these challenging times. We are grateful for the expertise and commitment. Thank you!

RFAs covered in this announcement include those for Clinical & Community Outcomes Research (CCOR, five awards), Novel Methods (four awards), Stakeholder & Patient Engaged Research (SPER, three awards), and Marshfield Clinic/Marshfield Clinic Research Institute-UW Madison Collaborative Research (two awards). The Translational Basic & Clinical Research Awards will be announced separately in June.

List of 2021 Pilot Awards

ICTR is funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), through a Clinical and Translational Science Award most recently renewed in 2017. Pilot awards supporting community-engaged research are also supported via a strategic grant to ICTR from the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP). Maureen Smith, ICTR Director for Community Academic Partnerships and Director of the Health Innovation Program, notes,

Maureen Smith, MD, PhD, MPHThe community-partnered pilot projects included in the 2021 awards reflect the shared mission of ICTR and WPP to improve health and advance health equity in Wisconsin and are especially strong in addressing health disparities and contemporary health issues, developing new interdisciplinary teams, and supporting early career investigators.

Our partnership with WPP is a key component of the ICTR Strategic Vision to Improve the Health of All in Wisconsin.

Kate Judge, Program Manager for ICTR Community Academic Partnerships and part of the Pilot Awards program, elaborates,

The outstanding community-partnered research teams selected are responding to Wisconsin’s current health challenges including Black infant mortality; mental health of school-aged children; young adults with cancer; incarcerated adults; rural telehealth for seniors; opioid addiction; and consequences of the COVID epidemic in Wisconsin. It’s a privilege to support a new generation of dedicated researchers; all are first-time pilot awardees and most are junior investigators.

The 2021 awards also continue the ICTR record of playing a key role in accelerating basic discovery research, developing novel methods, and promoting partnerships with our partner institution, Marshfield Clinic. Peggy Hatfield, Co-Manager of the Pilot Awards Program and Administrative Director for Workforce Development, adds,

We are excited to co-fund two pilot projects this year led by UW-Madison & Marshfield Co-PIs. These projects echo values important to both ICTR partners, namely fostering research careers of junior investigators and facilitating collaborative translational teams. We look forward to celebrating the innovative project outcomes from these and all our 2021 awardees.

 

Launchpad Program Offers Evidence to Implementation Awards for 2021

Posted on

The 2020 Evidence to Implementation (E2I) RFA has been released for a third round of applications. New in 2018, the purpose of the E2I award is to expedite dissemination of evidence based practices, interventions, and innovations to appropriate end-users using the D&I Launchpad Program. These include self-management or other health promotion workshops and interventions, and health services innovations that improve delivery of care in the health care or community setting. Previous awards are described here.  Jane Mahoney, Director of the ICTR D&I Launchpad program, notes,

The Launchpad team’s expertise will help with the future growth and sustainability of these healthcare innovations. These programs have incredible potential to make a significant impact on the health of Wisconsin and beyond.

Preproposals are due November 30, 2020

These awards will support creation of a Launchpad Package to support the dissemination and implementation of the evidence-based intervention or innovation. The elements of the Launchpad Package will be unique to each project, but may include a business plan – value proposition, marketing, sales, financials, intellectual property review, and any necessary tools and supporting materials.

More information, all deadlines, and application materials are available on the funding opportunities page.

Corrections: Preproposal deadline extended.