NIH ( NIDCD) R15 – Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) Program

Compiled from NIH website by Megan Tobin

Funding priorities: The purpose of the Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) program is to stimulate research in educational institutions that provide baccalaureate or advanced degrees for a significant number of the Nation’s research scientists, but that have not been major recipients of NIH support. AREA grants are intended to support small-scale research projects proposed by faculty members of eligible, domestic institutions, to expose students to meritorious research projects, and to strengthen the research environment of the applicant institution.

Type of grants funded: Research

Level of funding provided: Applicants may request up to $300,000 in direct costs plus applicable Facilities & Administrative (F&A), project period is limited to 3 years,grants are renewable.

Eligibility:

  • Institutional Eligibility:
    • Only domestic institutions of higher education are eligible.
    • The institution must offer baccalaureate or advanced degrees in the health-related sciences.
    • The institution may not receive more than $6 million per year in NIH support in each of 4 of the last 7 years. Please view the AREA Program Ineligible Institutions website for more information.
  • Principal Investigator Eligibility:
    • The PI must have a primary faculty appointment at an AREA-eligible institution.
    • The PI may not be the PI of an active NIH research grant at the time of an AREA award.
    • The PI may not be awarded more than one AREA grant at a time.

Submission guidelines:

  • Page limits table:
    • Intro = 1 pages
    • Specific aims = 1 pages
    • Research strategy = 12 pages
    • Biographical sketch = 4 pages
  • Include required information about facilities and other resources:
    • A profile of the students of the applicant institution/academic component and any information or estimate of the number who have obtained a baccalaureate degree and gone on to obtain an academic or professional doctoral degree in the health-related sciences during the last five years.
    • A description of the special characteristics of the institution/academic component that make it appropriate for an AREA grant,
    • A description of the likely impact of an AREA grant on the PD(s)/PI(s) and the research environment of the institution/academic component.
    • If relevant, a statement of institutional support for the proposed research project (e.g., equipment, laboratory space, release time, matching funds, etc.).
  • Include required information about the investigators (biographical sketch):
    • Include a summary of his or her previous and/or current experience in supervising students in research in the Personal Statement.
    • The PD(s)/PI(s) also should indicate which peer-reviewed publications involved students under his or her supervision.
  • Budget:
    • Request your entire budget the first year.
  • Review criteria:
    • Reviewers will provide an overall impact/priority score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to:
      • Make an important scientific contribution to the research field(s) involved
        • e.g. If the aims of the project are achieved, how will scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice be improved?
      • Provide research opportunities to students
        • e.g. Does the application provide sufficient evidence that the project can stimulate the interests of students so that they consider a career in the biomedical or behavioral sciences?
      • Strengthen the research environment of the institution
        • e.g. Will the AREA award have a substantial effect on the school/academic component in terms of strengthening the research environment and exposing students to research?

Deadlines for grant submissions:

  • Standard application deadlines:
    • February 25
    • June 25
    • October 25

Website links for additional information:

  • See NIH site for grant homepage and further detailed grant announcement.
  • You are urged to contact AREA representatives regarding potential interest in your project and current funding plans.
    • List of contacts at the various institutes

Category: Federal

Examples of funded grants:

  • BALTHAZAR, CATHERINE HANSON (2010), GOVERNORS STATE UNIVERSITY
  • BUILDING COMPLEX LANGUAGE: EFFECT OF TREATMENT AND DOSAGE
  • The objective of this proposal is to examine outcomes of a treatment intervention designed to increase functional use of complex (multi-clausal) sentences in school-age students with primary language impairments that impact literacy and academic achievement. The treatment protocol includes: (1) three types of complex sentences (adverbial, relative, object complement), (2) encounters with complex sentences in real texts and across all modalities (speaking, listening, reading, writing), and (3) activities that engage metalinguistic understanding of complex sentences. Specific objectives are to (1) document treatment effect in terms of size and scope in decontextualized as well as naturalistic language contexts, (2) document the effect of treatment intensity (dosage), (3) explore effects of sentence complexity subtype on treatment outcomes, and (4) explore relationships between treatment outcomes and participant variables (pre-treatment knowledge of complex sentences, verbal working memory, and non-verbal cognition).
    DESIGN: This early clinical efficacy study will utilize two designs. Ten participants per year over three years will complete the treatment, randomly assigned to one of two dosage levels. As each participant finishes, efficacy and effect size will be measured using a multiple-baseline single-subject design. Once all 30 participants have completed the treatment, effect size and the impact of dosage (treatment intensity) will be evaluated using a pretest-posttest group design, and correlations between participant characteristics and individual patterns of performance will be carefully described and analyzed.
    PARTICIPANTS: This study targets school-age students with a Speech-Language Impairment and/or a Specific Learning Disability between the ages of 10 and 14 who are receiving services from a Speech- language Pathologist (SLP) for one or more higher-level language behaviors. It is expected that participants will demonstrate higher levels of fluency with complex sentences compared with pretreatment baseline levels and that treatment effects will be reflected in several modalities and in naturalistic language contexts.
    PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Students with language impairments and learning disabilities account for more than 60% of all students served under IDEA Part B in schools. Reduced levels of comprehension and production of complex sentences is well documented in the population of older children and adolescents with primary language impairment, as is the impact of oral language deficits on later literacy outcomes. This investigation of treatment for specific higher-level language skills in older school-age students addresses a scarcity of controlled research in this area.
  • SOTO, GLORIA (2012), SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
  • CONVERSATION-BASED INTERVENTION IN AAC
  • Children with motor-speech disorders who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are reported to experience a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical difficulties. Poor vocabulary and grammatical skills profoundly impact an individual’s life in a number of ways, including academically, socially and vocationally. This study is driven by the need for additional research on intervention methods for vocabulary and grammatical development in children with severe motor-speech disorders who use AAC. Our long-term goal is to better understand the contexts and mechanisms that support vocabulary and grammatical acquisition for children who use AAC due to severe communication impairments. The specific objective of this application is to determine whether participation in conversations about personal experiences results in sustained and generalized vocabulary growth and improved grammatical skills in children with severe motor- speech disorders who use AAC. Our central hypothesis is that intervention focused on participation in conversations about personal experiences will significantly increase the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills in this population and that these gains will be sustained and generalized. The rationale underlying this research is that understanding the contexts and mechanisms which support vocabulary and grammatical development in this population has the potential to translate into better clinical treatments for an estimated 5% of all school-age children in the US who receive Special Education services. Our hypothesis will be tested by pursuing two specific aims: 1) to determine the effects of a conversation-based intervention on vocabulary acquisition and 2) on the grammatical skills of children with motor-speech disorders who use AAC. The study will use an experimental repeated measures single-subject design to measure the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of 18 school-age children with motor-speech disorders who use AAC before, during and after participation in a conversation-based intervention. Our approach, which is solidly grounded in current theories of vocabulary and grammatical development, is innovative because it will test these theories using a novel combination of measures to assess the vocabulary and grammatical skills of participants over time, and because it utilizes naturally occurring conversations with adults blinded to the intervention procedures to test for generalization of learned skills. The proposed research is significant because it is expected to provide validated clinical strategies to support the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills acquisition of school-age children with severe motor-speech disorders who use AAC. Accomplishing our objectives with the help of undergraduate and graduate students of communication disorders is consistent with AREA program objectives as it will expose students to meritorious research, will promote the importance of research as a foundation for clinical practice, and will build research infrastructure at an urban comprehensive public university.