Pilot Grants

The Upstream Research Center is pleased to release the third round of requests for pilot proposals to catalyze research aimed at reducing cancer inequities due to structural and social determinants of health, including, but not limited to, structural racism, poverty, income inequality, climate change, food insecurity, social isolation, and housing insecurity.

REQUIRED ELEMENTS

Projects must describe proposed research relevant to structural and social determinants experienced in persistent poverty areas. Of particular interest are a focus on areas in counties that are part of Stanford, UC Davis, and UC San Francisco’s catchment areas (i.e., Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Lake County, Madera, Marin, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sierra, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Yolo, Yuba). A detailed list of persistent poverty census tracts in the country can be found here and a map that highlights persistent poverty areas within our catchment areas can be found here.
Proposals related to Evaluation of California’s Guaranteed Income Projects (Project 1 of the parent grant) are welcome, but applicants must contact us at upstreamcenter@stanford.edu before contacting collaborators or submitting a proposal related to guaranteed income approaches.
Pilots are expected to have a deliverable, which could be a presentation, publication, poster, or report of preliminary results.

AREAS OF INTEREST

We welcome a broad range of topics related to structural social determinants and cancer risk in persistent poverty areas. Topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following examples:

Understanding how structural factors (e.g., poverty policy, climate change, structural racism) influence biological mechanisms in order to inform the development of surrogate endpoints for evaluating structural interventions.
Developing and evaluating innovative community-based interventions (e.g., health worker models, pesticide reduction strategies) to reduce cancer burden.
Developing methods (e.g., simulation models, quasi-experimental designs) to evaluate the impact of policies (e.g., basic income experiments, increasing access to broadband internet coverage, transportation interventions) on cancer incidence and mortality.

Preference will be given to:

Projects focused on addressing the needs of rural communities here within the catchment areas.
Projects focused on the development of interventions, preferably with community engagement.
Team science collaborations across two or more Upstream Research Center institutional partners (i.e., Stanford, UCD, and UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Centers).

Important Dates

Applications are due Nov 15, 2024, at 5 PM PST. We hosted an informational session on June 18, 2024. (View presentation slides and recording here).

Amount and Period of Funding

Awards will be granted for one year and must be completed within the 12-month award period, May 1, 2025, through April 30, 2026, and up to $75,000 in direct costs. Carry forward of awards cannot be supported. Allowable expenses include personnel, travel, materials, supplies, and other research expenses. All unexpended funds within the award period will be forfeited. We anticipate making three awards. At least one award will support preparation for an intervention study.

Eligibility Criteria

Stanford, UCD, and UCSF faculty with PI eligibility and post-doctoral scholars.
Post-doctoral scholar applicants are required to have at least one year remaining of their fellowship and a PI-eligible faculty mentor.
Community partners or faculty can serve as project leaders of pilot projects. However, for administrative purposes, a faculty (Stanford, UCD, UCSF) Co-Principal Investigator is needed.
Community partners will need to have UEI registration through sam.gov.
Early career scholars whose pilot project is related to a federally funded training grant would need to check with their NIH Program officer & their institution administrator if this is allowed and if there is no overlap with the Upstream grant funding period (May 1, 2025 - April 30, 2026).). These projects should be designed to be completed within the one-year time frame and are intended to generate preliminary data for additional externally funded research.
IRB Approval. Funding cannot be granted until IRB approval is obtained and reviewed at NIH, so early discussions with IRB is highly recommended. IRB approval is required for funding dispersal and are generally not a valid rationale for no-cost extension requests.

Quality: The proposed project must advance research at the intersection of persistent poverty and cancer control and meet high standards for scientific rigor and innovation.
Relevance to the mission of the Center: Proposals will be judged on how well they synergize with the Center’s research projects and the overall mission described here.
Investigators: Reviewers will be asked to evaluate the qualifications of the PI and key personnel and whether the proposal promotes cross-center and cross-network collaborations.
Community engagement: The proposal should encourage active engagement of community partners in all stages of research that contribute to future publications, presentation and/or other dissemination activities.
Scope: The proposed research must be completed within the project period and within the budget limit.

Additional Evaluation Criteria for applications working with community partners

Responsiveness and relevance to community partner priorities. The proposal should demonstrate a detailed understanding of the community partner’s priorities, describing how the project will facilitate the advancement of these goals
Capacity building. The proposed research should strengthen bi-directional relationships between the Center’s researchers and community partners and build the research and data capacity of both institutional and community partners in community-engaged research. This needs to be reflected in the budget, demonstrating an equitable allocation of resources between community partners and researchers.
Letter of Support. A brief letter of support from the identified community partner describing their role on the project (e.g., Project Lead, subcontractor, vendor), compensation, and their plan to disseminate key findings back to the community is required.

Upload application material as a single pdf file to the application online submission form. Page limits are indicated for each attachment. Format: Arial 11-point font, 1/2-inch margins all around, single-spaced.

Your submission should provide the following:

1. A cover sheet (1-page limit) that includes:

Title of proposal
Name(s), institution(s), mentor, titles, department, name(s) of community partners (if applicable), and emails of key personnel
4-sentence summary of proposed project
Amount of funding requested

2. Research plan, not to exceed 4 pages; this can include a timeline.

Specific Aims: Provide the pilot projects’ specific aims, methods, and define and explain the Persistent Poverty census tract areas’ need for a cancer control program, particularly of low-income and underserved populations, and what research gap this would address. Interventions should include a description of how implementation will be evaluated.
Research Partnership(s): Describe the different partners that will collaborate on the pilot project. Provide a justification for the research partnership(s) and their role.
Cancer Center Resource Use: If applicable, provide a background statement on any relevant existing services or resources offered at the cancer center, and any staff expertise for the expansion or incorporation into a new program for this effort.
Workplan: Outline a work plan that provides a timeline for development and/or implementation of the research, which should include milestones for tracking the progress of the work. Awardees will be required to present their work in progress to the Upstream Regional Community Advisory Board twice during the 12-month project period.
Program Lead(s): Include a statement of the qualifications for the identified lead(s) of the program.

3. Statement of relevance to the overall aims of the Upstream Research Center (1/2- page limit) Describe in lay language how this project will advance the overall aims of Upstream Research Center

4. Community engagement plan (1/2- page limit) If applicable, describe the process that the lead staff member(s) will use to identify the appropriate framework and to incorporate strategies to elicit input from and address cancer control needs of the clinics and/or the communities they serve in Persistent Poverty areas.

5. A modular budget and budget justification download fillable template here

6. NIH Biosketch for PI and key personnel are required for the PI, Co-Investigator(s), and each key personnel involved in the pilot project. Biosketch template here

7. Letters of support: Applicants proposing to work with community partners or clinics are required to submit letters of support (at least one letter for each partner or clinic that will be actively involved in the project).

8. Protection of human subjects documents (if applicable).

For human subjects research, project investigators and their research staff must complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) training online (Group 7: IRB BioMed/GCP Research for All Medical Investigators and Staff).
Include IRB approval numbers for human subjects, if not yet approved, reference eprotocol submission status.

Notes:

We highly encourage applicants to submit their protocols for IRB approval before submitting their proposals to Upstream for review. In many cases, studies cannot be completed in the time frame if IRB approval is not in place at the start of the award cycle. If it is not possible to submit IRB ahead of time, we recommend contacting upstreamcenter@stanford.edu to discuss IRB plans.
Figures and tables included within the body of the proposal will count towards the 4-page limit.
All applications must use 11 point Arial, Georgia, Helvetica or Palatino Linotype font with half inch margins.
References may be included and are not part of the page limit.
Do not include appendices to the proposal.
Applications that do not comply with the requirements will not be considered for review.
Extensions will not be granted, including extensions that would not require additional funding.
Funding will not be dispersed without clearance of any applicable IRB or IRB exemption requirements.
Award recipients must provide confirmation if the research does not involve human subjects.
A detailed budget and justification will be required at the time of award.