The Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute’s Community Health Partnerships is calling for applicants for two award opportunities: Trailblazer Award and Trailblazer Planning Grant.

Trailblazer Award

The Trailblazer Award of up to $25,000 supports collaborative, community-engaged research projects focused on topics that have potential to improve health, examine social determinants of health or enhance health equity.

Projects that have outlined a sustainability plan that incorporates or uses existing Indiana CTSI infrastructure and/or connections to statewide health initiatives are encouraged and prioritized.

Eligible projects will propose to do one or more of the following:

• Implement exploratory research that has the potential to identify or reduce health inequities or impact social determinants of health.
• Evaluate a program that has the potential to improve health equity or impact social determinants of health.
• Implement and do a preliminary evaluation of a health-related program.

Applicants are encouraged to demonstrate how the proposed project incorporates core elements of community-engaged research.

There must be a university lead and a community lead for the project. Both partners must currently work in an Indiana-based institution or organization.

The letter of intent deadline is May 19, and proposals are due June 2.

Trailblazer Planning Grant

The Trailblazer Planning Grant of up to $5,000 supports development of community-university partnerships to improve health, examine social determinants of health or enhance health equity to result in future collaborative research proposals.

The award can be used to establish new partnerships or to strengthen/expand existing community-university partnerships to solve critical health problems affecting people in Indiana.

This award will not fund research pilot projects; it will fund activities to develop partnerships between organizations that have potential to later engage in joint research projects to address health, health equity or social determinants of health.

The expected outcome of the award is the development of a future research proposal for opportunities such as the Trailblazer Award. Examples of preferred partnership development activities include meetings, conferences, travel expenses, stakeholder interviews and quality improvement assessments.

The letter of intent deadline is Sept. 17, and the proposal deadline is Oct. 1.

Potential applicants are invited to attend a virtual Q&A session at 1 p.m. April 24.

For more information contact chep@iu.edu.