![\"<p>Merrill](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Singer018_lg.jpg\" "\\"Merrill")
<\/a>Principal investigators on the grant are Merrill Singer, a UConn professor of anthropology and CHIP affiliate; Jean Schensul, founding director of ICR; and Barbara Guthrie, an associate professor of nursing at Yale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this country the HIV\/AIDS epidemic is disproportionately centered in the African American community, and also the Latino and Native American communities,\u201d says Singer. \u201cThose communities are getting infected, not getting tested, and not getting into treatment at higher rates. They have worse outcomes, including higher fatality rates. Yet people of similar backgrounds are not populating the HIV\/ AIDS research arena, for a whole host of reasons that begin long before they get their Ph.D.\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 30 years into this epidemic, and 25 percent of the people with HIV in this country don\u2019t even know they\u2019re infected,\u201d he notes. \u201cWe need a varied group of researchers to address an epidemic as complex as this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recognizing the importance of high-quality mentoring and access to practical experience in setting new investigators\u2019 trajectories for productivity and success, the PIs will recruit a total of 20 underrepresented scholars at the advanced post-doctoral and junior faculty level to participate in an intensive six-week summer institute.<\/p>\n
The summer institute will include a research education curriculum, training, and professional development opportunities. It will also develop and roll out a mentoring typology that addresses structural and individual barriers to the advancement of program participants in community-based HIV research; and evaluate the effect and efficacy of the overall program on the scholars and mentors and their respective organizations.<\/p>\n
Four scholars a year will participate in the summer institute, taking classes and special group instructional offerings at UConn, Yale, and ICR, and working one-on-one with mentors, based on their research interests. Although they will only be present at CHIP, CIRA, and ICR during the summer, the participants will be considered scholars and will communicate with their mentors for the entire year.<\/p>\n
After taking part in the summer institute, some of the scholars will be invited back to CHIP, CIRA, or ICR the following summer to write grant applications with the assistance of their mentors.<\/p>\n
Singer says some of the scholars he and his colleagues will recruit may be working at institutions with a teaching, rather than a research, focus. Some may never have had training in grant writing. Most will probably lack a collaborative, multidisciplinary network of researchers like the one behind this grant.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a relatively small number of scholars we\u2019ll mentor through this grant, but it would be enough to have an impact if all of them develop expertise in HIV\/AIDS community-based research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Singer says the grant focuses on community-based or participatory research, where members of the target communities have input into the study\u2019s design, because of the strong applied focus of much HIV\/AIDS research.<\/p>\n
In addition to helping organize the summer institute and recruit participants, Singer will match participants to mentors at CHIP. To date, three CHIP PIs have agreed to serve as mentors.<\/p>\n
CHIP will also provide funding for pilot studies. The funds will be awarded through a competitive process similar to that for other CHIP seed grants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good for CHIP to be a partner in this post-doctoral training grant,\u201d Singer says. \u201cIt enhances CHIP\u2019s national reputation to be seen taking the lead in the training of underrepresented scholars in this field.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UConn researchers will mentor minority scholars in community-based research, thanks to a new grant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-27566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 15:53:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37280,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions\/37280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}