Who is eligible to apply?

• Community organizations, 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 to have 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.

• Award recipients will need to obtain IRB approval for their work. Funding will not be granted until IRB approval is obtained and reviewed at NIH.
   

When is the application due?

Proposals are due November 15, 2024, at 5PM (Pacific Standard Time)

When is the expected project period, and when will awardees be notified?

The earliest notification date will be in February. The project period is 12 months May 1, 2025, to April 30, 2026.

When would project funding start?

May 1, 2025.

Does the $75K grant include coverage of indirect costs?

The $75K is direct costs only. Allowable expenses include personnel, travel, materials, supplies, and other research expenses.

What is the definition of Community?

"Community" can be defined broadly as a community organization or group within a relatively small geographic boundary having a common cultural heritage or ancestral background.¹

Are there specific requirements for the community partners?

Community partners will need to have UEI registration through sam.gov.

Is it just all PIs and staff's CITI training certificates?

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).

What documents are needed for human subjects research?

Approvals for human subjects should be addressed ahead of the grant-funding period. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approvals are required for funding dispersal and are generally not a valid rationale for no-cost extension requests. 

Include IRB approval numbers for human subjects, if not yet approved, reference protocol submission status

We highly encourage applicants to submit their protocols for IRB approval before submitting their proposals to Upstream for review.

As part of the overall review, reviewers will assess the feasibility of completing the pilot within the 1-year award period. 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. Funds cannot be released until IRB approval is obtained. This can delay the launch of a study. (Cost extensions are not allowed). If it is not possible to submit IRB ahead of time, we recommend contacting  upstreamcenter@stanford.edu to discuss IRB plans.

If there are additional inquiries, to whom should we address them?

Contact: Lesley Sept at upstreamcenter@stanford.edu

¹ MacQueen KM, McLellan E, Metzger DS, Kegeles S, Strauss RP, Scotti R, Blanchard L, Trotter RT 2nd. What is community? An evidence-based definition for participatory public health. Am J Public Health. 2001 Dec;91(12):1929-38. doi: 10.2105/ajph.91.12.1929 IF: 12.7 Q1 B1. PMID: 11726368 IF: 12.7 Q1 B1; PMCID: PMC1446907 IF: 12.7 Q1 B1.