The Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety (MCOHS) is now accepting applications for their pilot projects research training program.   Grants ranging from $5,000 to a maximum of $20,000 are available to occupational health and safety (OHS) researchers at educational institutions in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Areas of OHS include industrial hygiene, occupational and environmental health nursing, occupational and environmental epidemiology, occupational and environmental medicine, occupational health services research and policy, injury epidemiology and safety, ergonomics, toxicology, health physics, and occupational health psychology.

Application deadline is April 19, 2019.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) is applicable only to educational institutions and targets (1) newly-independent principal investigators (PIs); (2) experienced PIs pursuing OHS as a new direction for research; and (3) doctoral research trainees working under the supervision of a PI. Priority will be given to:

• Research proposals with a high potential for affecting the practice of OHS;
• Research ideas that have the potential for: i) resulting in peer-reviewed publications; and ii) being developed into proposals for more substantial funding, based on results from this research grant (very important);
• PIs working in complementary or non-traditional disciplines who wish to become more actively involved in addressing occupational safety and health issues;
• PIs attempting to develop innovative research efforts in collaboration with faculty from the MCOHS-ERC;
• Junior PIs needing initial support for innovative research areas who lack support from other sources; and
• Doctoral students undertaking research required for their degree

Research must be relevant to the occupational health and safety field and focus on the NIOSH NORA objectives. Potential types of projects include intervention studies, risk factor analyses, and exposure assessments affecting a broad range of employee groups, including construction workers, farmers, industrial process workers, and small business owners.

Doctoral students applying for funds must list an advisor, who must have faculty ranking at the same institution. The faculty advisor will be responsible for overseeing the expenditure of funds.