The Charles H. Hood Foundation 2021 Major Grants Initiative call for applications is closed. The previous call is below for your reference only.  This call for applications is scheduled to be update in 2021 and the deadline is anticipated to be in Spring/Summer of 2021. Please check the ECOR website and your emails from MGH Research News for updates. Click here to sign up to receive MGH Research News.

Charles H. Hood Foundation 2022 Major Grants Initiative to Advance Child Health

MGH Internal Preliminary Application Deadline
Wednesday, March 31, 2021 – 5:00 PM

 

DESCRIPTION OF THE AWARD


The Charles H. Hood Foundation 2022 Major Grants Initiative to Advance Child Health supports outstanding investigators conducting innovative and transformative research in child health.  The overall goal of the program remains the funding of translational or clinical research that will improve child health, children's clinical outcomes, or improve health care access, affordability, and quality. For the 2022 grant cycle, the Hood Foundation requests applications related to Child and Adolescent Mental Health.  

"The Major Grants Initiative is a component of the Hood Foundation’s research funding portfolio. Since 1942, the Foundation has supported investigators at New England research institutions to improve the health and quality of life for children. The Hood Foundation Child Health Research Awards Program has launched the careers of 635 junior faculty whose discoveries have contributed to significant improvements in child health. Since 1989, the Foundation has also supported 49 Postdoctoral Fellows conducting projects spanning the continuum from basic laboratory research to clinical and health services research. Since the inauguration of the Major Grant program in 2014, 14 senior investigators have received over $5,500,000 in research support."

MGH is eligible to nominate one candidate. Preliminary applications will be reviewed and assessed by a panel of senior MGH faculty members.  The selected MGH nominee must complete the Hood Foundation's online Letter of Intent by Monday, May 3, 2021 at noon. If invited to submit a full proposal, he/she must submit a full proposal to the sponsor by Monday, September 13, 2021 at noon.

 

AWARD AMOUNT

This award will be a total of $450,000 over two years ($225,000 per year, inclusive of 10% indirect costs). The award period is from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023

This funding opportunity is not exempt from the 15% indirect cost (IDC) floor minimum. However, ECOR policy states that for MGH investigators selected through a competitive process as the institutional nominee for a grant opportunity, in which the grant will bring in less than 15% indirect cost (IDC), ECOR will cover the IDC gap up to a maximum of $50,000 per year.

DEADLINES    

MGH Internal Preliminary Application Deadline:  Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - 5:00 p.m.
Notification to MGH Candidate: Late April 2021
Sponsor Letter of Intent Deadline: Monday, May 3, 2021 - 12:00 p.m.
Invited Full Proposal Deadline: Monday, September 13, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. 
 
ELIGIBILITY
  • Applicants must have a full-time primary faculty appointment at MGH.
 
RESEARCH FOCUS
 
“In developing a new priority area for the Hood Foundation Major Grant program, the Trustees reviewed current research in child health that has both resulted in highly cited publications and indicated a need for additional funding throughout New England. Based on this information, the new priority for the 2021 Major Grant program will be Child and Adolescent Mental Health. This broad topic includes research into autism, attention deficit disorder, eating disorders, affective disorders including depression and anxiety, substance use disorder, and other mental illnesses that cause suffering and dysfunction for children and adolescents, up to the age of 21.

The Foundation will consider proposals across the translational research spectrum, including

  • Basis science and laboratory investigations that focus on brain mechanisms involved in complex behaviors and child development;
  • Clinical research directed at better understanding the trajectory of mental illness through childhood and adolescence;
  • Research directed at discovering and evaluating treatments and cures for child and adolescent mental illness;
  • Research directed at discovering and evaluating approaches to the prevention of child and adolescent mental illness; and/or
  •  Healthcare systems and public health research focused on reducing the burden of mental illness among children and adolescents.

The Foundation will not support research:

• Focused on adult mental illness, even if those conditions may have begun in childhood or involved conditions of childhood; or

• Involving pregnant women and the fetuses they carry, even if otherwise related to this topic.“

Innovations
The Major Grants are intended to fund innovative work that may be difficult to fund with traditional grant mechanisms. For example, relatively few child health researchers make use of advanced statistical and computational techniques, ranging from computational biology to health services research to geographic information systems. In addition to traditional project-related costs, all projects funded under this Program may include the use of funds to bring new techniques or novel collaborations into child health research. 

Collaboration
The Charles H. Hood foundation encourages collaboration between investigators and institutions. If the project would benefit from a collaborative approach, please describe the nature of the collaboration and the scientific benefits. Although collaboration is not required for the 2022 cycle, evidence of meaningful collaboration will be considered in funding decisions.
 
Note: If the Hood Major Grant funds are intended to augment a currently funded study, clearly describe the additional research to be conducted with Hood funding."
 

REVIEW CRITERIA

  • Investigators: Qualifications of the Principal Investigator and evidence of exceptional creativity. Where applicable, the qualifications of the entire collaborative research team will be considered.
  • Innovation: Research Project is highly innovative in methodology, research hypotheses, or patient population.
  • Impact: Successful proposals must describe research that would likely lead to important improvements in child health, knowledge of child health and disease, or children's clinical outcomes or health care access, affordability, and quality.

 

MGH INTERNAL PRELIMINARY APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

The MGH internal preliminary application must include the following 4 items:  

  1. Project Title
  2. NIH Biosketch. Use the current NIH biosketch format. Click here for a sample NIH biosketch.  
  3. Research Project (maximum of 3 pages, excluding references) Please include the following sections:
  • Lay Summary (up to 350 words) should be a non-technical summary that addresses its relevance to one of the Foundation’s areas of focus, and its potential for a significant impact on improving clinical outcomes, health care access, affordability and quality.
  • Background
  • Methods
  • Innovation
  • Implications for Child Health  

  4. Justification (up to 200 words): Please briefly describe why you are uniquely suited to be selected as the MGH Nominee for this award.

 

FORMAT GUIDELINES

  • Use margins of one inch or greater on all four sides.
  • Use Arial 11pt font size
  • Use single or double line spacing within paragraphs, double line spacing between paragraphs
  • Upload PDF documents only.  Limit characters to A-Z, a-z and 0-9 when naming PDF documents.  Do not use periods, commas or dashes in the file name.

HOW TO APPLY
 

ECOR accepts all applications online via the MGRI Online Grant Management Portal.  The system has been designed to allow users to:

  • Create a personal profile, which will auto-populate your future ECOR applications
  • Assign a delegate to submit applications on your behalf (optional)
  • View current calls and apply to open opportunities 
  • Save and edit current applications in progress
  • Submit completed applications.

Instructions for Applying Online:

  1. Create your account: Log in using your Partners credentials and fill-out the profile information.
  2. Complete the application: Once your profile is complete, you will automatically progress through the online application. If you cannot complete the application at one time, “save” the application and return to it at a later time to finish. Before submitting your application, you will have the ability to make changes to the application.
  3. Submit your application: Once you have completed the application click on the “submit” button at the bottom of the page. Once you submit it, you will not be able to make further changes unless you send a request to ECOR (note that once the deadline passes, requests to make changes will not be accepted).

Useful tips:

  • To avoid losing your work, remember to save frequently
  • You can only upload PDF documents
  • If you previously created a profile, please ensure your information is current prior to submitting an application.

Click 'Apply' below to begin the application.

QUESTIONS
If you have any questions, please email ECOR.

To see a current list of past awardees, click here. Look under Major Grant Awards to find winners pertaining to this particular opportunity, however the category of research was  Neonatology and Brain Science and Child Development at the time.