Investigator Development Core

SHERC’s Investigator Development Core (IDC) supports the development of early career investigators conducting health equity research in the areas of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical sciences at Northern Arizona University.

Primary Goals of SHERC’s Investigator Development Core are:

1. Enhance institutional research capacity at NAU within the areas of basic biomedical, behavioral, and/or clinical research or trial. Clinical research aims to advance medical knowledge by studying people, either through direct interaction or indirectly through the collection and analysis of blood, tissues, or other samples. A clinical trial involves research participants and follows a protocol to evaluate the effects of an intervention on health outcomes.
2. Enable junior investigators to become successful in obtaining competitive extramural support, especially from NIH, particularly on diseases, public health conditions, and access to care issues that disproportionately impact minority and other health disparity populations.
3. Foster environments conductive to career enhancement with a special emphasis on development of new and early career investigators.
4. Enhance the quality of all scientific inquiry and promote research on minority health and health disparities.
5. Establish sustainable relationships with community-based organizations.

Pilot Project Program

The Pilot Project Program (PPP) was established under the IDC to provide funding and mentoring to junior investigators, with the objective of generating preliminary data that will increase investigators’ competitiveness for external funding in health equity-related research.

The PPP provides initial seed funding for junior investigators, including assistant professors, assistant research professors and senior post-doctoral scholars to establish new impactful programs in health disparities research, with priority given to exemplary projects that address diseases that disproportionately impact health disparity populations, and lead to development and support of sustainable relationships with community-based partners.

For complete program details, and a listing of the currently funded Pilot Projects, please see the Pilot Project Program website.

The IDC works closely with the Administrative Core to provide mentoring opportunities; with the Research Infrastructure Core to enhance the quality of the research design and interpretation; and with the Community Engagement Core to develop meaningful health equity research projects that serve the needs of our community partners.

The proposed outcome of the IDC is to create cohorts of health equity researchers whose interactions will be interdisciplinary and thus synergistic.