05/19/2023 Edition 96
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Perinatal Health Initiative |
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The Office of Minority Health (OMH) is dedicated to improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that will help eliminate health disparities. Through its demonstration projects, OMH supports the identification of effective approaches for improving health outcomes with the goal of promoting dissemination and sustainability of these approaches. OMH intends projects funded under the Healthy Families Community-Based Perinatal Health Initiative (COPHI) to develop innovative models for integrating community-based maternal support services (COMSS) into perinatal systems of care. COMSS are social and supportive services that address social determinants of health (SDOH), such as health literacy; pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting education; cultural and linguistic diversity; exposure to trauma, housing; food; and transportation. These services are provided during pregnancy, labor and delivery and after delivery by trained individuals, such as doulas and community health workers. Integrating COMSS into perinatal systems of care will ultimately improve pregnant and post-partum people's health outcomes and reduce racial and ethnic disparities.
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The work completed under this new cooperative agreement will build upon the prior work of the Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN). The current Cooperative Agreement No. OD-33975-19-75-4-36 was issued in 2019. Since 2001, ODEP has funded various iterations of EARN. This national employer-focused policy, research, and technical assistance center provides information and resources to help employers recruit, hire, retain and advance people with disabilities.
The Department is committed to improving access to Good Jobs for all American workers. EARN’s workplace research, policy development, and technical assistance center identifies and promotes the adoption of innovative and equitable evidence-based policy and practice solutions. These solutions help public and private sector employers of all sizes recruit, hire, retain, and advance people with disabilities into good jobs, including those from historically underserved communities. Executive Order 14091 defines “underserved communities” as “those populations as well as geographic communities that have been systematically denied the opportunity to participate fully in aspects of economic, social, and civic life, as defined in Executive Orders 13985 and 14020.” “Good Jobs” have been defined by the Departments of Labor and Commerce to be those that reflect certain Good Jobs Principals, including DEIA.
EARN’s policy process includes analysis of current employment policies and practices,
identification of workplace barriers, development of actionable policy and practice solutions for employer adoption, promotion of these through targeted communication channels, and evaluation of employer implementation. Wider adoption of disability-inclusive policies and practices depend upon engaged employers, employer intermediaries, labor management partnerships, and intermediaries representing historically underserved communities.
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Citizen Science Seed Funding |
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Expected annual program budget for new awards: Up to $720K in Astrophysics, Heliophysics and Planetary Science ($80K average per award) and up to $100K in Biological and Physical Sciences.
Number of awards pending adequate proposals of merit: Up to three awards in Astrophysics, up to three awards in Heliophysics, up to three awards in Planetary Science, and up to two awards in Biological and Physical Sciences
Citizen science is a form of open collaboration in which individuals or organizations participate voluntarily in the scientific process. The Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) aims to support scientists and other experts to develop citizen science projects and to expand the pool of scientists who use citizen science techniques in their science investigations.
Four Divisions of the SMD are participating in the CSSFP: the Astrophysics Division, the Biological and Physical Sciences Division, the Heliophysics Division and the Planetary Science Division. All proposals must address one or more goal(s) or objective(s) relevant to at least one of these participating SMD divisions.
In SMD, "Citizen Science Projects" are defined as science projects that rely on volunteers. In effective citizen science projects, scientists (subject matter experts) give feedback to and receive feedback from these volunteers. Volunteer participation is required for CSSFP funding, as is a strong science motivation of the proposed investigation. In addition, for projects that are not already open to volunteers, proposals must describe when and how projects will be made “open” to new volunteers (this step is sometimes called “launching” the citizen science project). Note that the term "citizen science" does not pertain to citizenship in any particular country, and that "citizen scientists" may include "amateur" scientists.
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Smart and Connected Communities |
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Supports use-inspired research that addresses communities' social, economic and environmental challenges. Projects must work with community stakeholders on pilots that integrate intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments.
Communities in the United States (US) and around the world are entering a new era of transformation in which residents and their surrounding environments are increasingly connected through rapidly-changing intelligent technologies. This transformation offers great promise for improved wellbeing and prosperity but poses significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society. The goal of the NSF Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program solicitation is to accelerate the creation of the scientific and engineering foundations that will enable smart and connected communities to bring about new levels of economic opportunity and growth, safety and security, health and wellness, accessibility and inclusivity, and overall quality of life. For the purposes of this solicitation, communities are defined as having geographically-delineated boundaries—such as towns, cities, counties, neighborhoods, community districts, rural areas, and tribal regions—consisting of various populations, with the structure and ability to engage in meaningful ways with proposed research activities. A “smart and connected community” is, in turn, defined as a community that synergistically integrates intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, learn, or travel within it.
The S&CC program encourages researchers to work with community stakeholders to identify and define challenges they are facing, enabling those challenges to motivate use-inspired research questions. For this solicitation, community stakeholders may include some or all of the following: residents, neighborhood or community groups, nonprofit or philanthropic organizations, businesses, as well as municipal organizations such as libraries, museums, educational institutions, public works departments, and health and social services agencies. The S&CC program supports integrative research that addresses fundamental technological and social science dimensions of smart and connected communities and pilots solutions together with communities. Importantly, the program is interested in projects that consider the sustainability of the research outcomes beyond the life of the project, including the scalability and transferability of the proposed solutions.
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Althea Sheets, Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities Development Manager, Office of Sponsored Programs, althea.sheets@unlv.edu, 702-895-1880
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