Opportunities and Innovation Fund Component

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OPPORTUNITIES AND INNOVATION FUND COMPONENT ABSTRACT Investing in the next generation of researchers is essential to develop a well-trained, creative, and diverse workforce capable of addressing the child health outcomes that are the focus of the ECHO Program and the broader NIH agenda. The ECHO CC Opportunities and Innovation Fund (OIF) Component will manage awards to early investigators to conduct research that will promote their career development, support innovative projects that introduce new tools and technologies to the ECHO Program, and promote collaborations. This will be facilitated by DCRI's extensive experience in establishing systems to solicit, collect and review scientific applications and implementing small, efficient, impactful pediatric studies. The specific aims of the OIF component of the ECHO CC, led by Drs. Linda Adair and Junfeng Zhang are to 1) provide infrastructure and tools for solicitation, review, and an award process that will support research by a diverse group of early investigators; and 2) provide support to ensure high quality study operations and timely completion and dissemination of research results and career development for awardees. The OIF Component will effectively manage five OIF funding cycles over seven years with two teams led by CC Faculty and highly experienced project leaders. One team will develop scientific focus areas to guide OIF applications, prepare and widely disseminate requests for applications (RFA), manage letters of intent and applications with high level tracking software; organize highly qualified review panels for evaluation of applications, and work with NIH to inform their funding decisions. The application solicitation process will include special attention to strategies to enhance diversity among applicants. A second team will focus on the administration of funded projects, including oversight of all aspects of compliance, effective management of budgets, solicitation and review of progress reports from funded young investigators, and support for career development activities. The latter will include a series of 10 OIF Networking and Development webinars each year for OIF early investigators to 1) educate early investigators on the ECHO OIF support services available to them including the ECHO publications committee process; working with the Data Analysis Center and other CC Components; and opportunities for stakeholder engagement; 2) foster peer learning and collaboration through presentations of work in progress; 3) enhance career development and grant skills including how to write successful career development applications, develop and nurture diverse research teams and establish a research portfolio. OIF early investigators will receive individualized support from dedicated project leaders assigned to oversee their research protocol and identify challenges and implement solutions to overcome them.