The Emory Medical Care Foundation's small grants program supporting clinical and basic science research is being reinstituted after a year's furlough.  The next deadline is June 1.

The EMCF awards up to six grants a year to support research by Emory faculty who are based at least 50 percent of their time at Grady Memorial Hospital.

The maximum award is now $30,000 a year, up from $25,000 that was the maximum for over a decade.  Grants are only awarded to Emory faculty during their first 10 years in the Grady Health System.

Proposals are due Feb. 1, June 1  and Oct. 1 each year.

Nadine Kaslow, chair of EMCF Research Committee, says the grants often lead to external funding, resulting in career advancement for faculty. "I received funding for a research project quite early in my career," she says, adding that it helped her advance.

Kaslow sees the grants as having a three-fold purpose: they help people who haven't done much research get started, especially those early in their career. The grants give those who have a lot of clinical work, and/or a lot of teaching responsibilities, the opportunity to do research. And, "they help already established researchers shift their research career trajectories, often times to a focus on topics particularly pertinent to the Grady population," she says.

Kaslow says the grants support research that is very relevant to the health care provided for patients served by the Grady Health System.  "It really does support scholarship at Grady and it's one of the only places to get funding for the work we do. The research focuses on indigent populations, minority populations and their health care needs," she notes.

For more information, contact William Payne at 404-727-5640 or Kaslow at nkaslow@emory.edu.