Grant Program

The Cottage Health Research Grant Program promotes educational activities related to medical research and facilitates quality medical research by providing financial and grant preparation support for proposed research projects affiliated with Cottage Health. Through this grant program CHRI intends to support the medical and scientific community and equip it with the tools it needs to enhance:

• the latest clinical medical research
• the basic science and principles of emerging technology
• the newest medical instrumentation and commercial pharmaceutical developments

By educating and supporting the biomedical community, we hope to ensure a healthier future through research.

Program Overview

Cottage Health’s active research program has a base endowment of $2.4 million. Since the program’s inception in 1986, more than 175 research proposals have been accepted and funded.

The Research Program was established to encourage research by health professionals at Cottage and was later expanded to include biomedical research conducted by other scientists within the community. The program provides up to $100,000 annually for innovative new ideas and small research projects.

The program gives priority to projects requiring "seed money" for initiating or continuing research for which additional funding from other sources will subsequently be sought. Criteria for funding include significance, scientific merit, probability of successful completion, and potential for obtaining extramural continuation of funding.

Any health professional affiliated with Cottage Health is eligible to submit an application for funding. Health professionals or scientists not affiliated with Cottage are eligible to submit grant proposals to the Research Program; however, a Cottage-affiliated health professional must collaborate on the proposal and the research must be performed locally.

Past grant recipients include:

• Parent-Child Bio-Behavioral Synchrony in Autism
  Principal Investigator: Dr. Ty Vernon (UCSB) and Dr. Laura Sices (Cottage Health)
• Cannabinoid Neuroprotection of Retinal Ganglion Cells in Glaucoma
  Principal Investigators: Dr. Benjamin Reese (UCSB) and Dr. Wilson Wu (Cottage Health)
• Smartphone-based combination diagnostic for influenza and COVID-19
  Principal Investigators: Dr. Michael Mahan (UCSB) and Drs. Lynn Fitzgibbons and Jeff Fried (Cottage Health)
• A Gamification/Behavioral Economics Health Intervention for Overweight and Obese Children and Adolescents in a Primary Care Setting
  Principal Investigator: Dr. James Brewer (Cottage Health)
• Relationship Between Cannabis Use and Opioid Prescribing Among Patients with Chronic Pain
  Principal Investigators: Dr. Thomas Clobes (CSUCI) and Dr. Matthew Kraybill (Cottage Health)

Research Advisory Committee

The Research Advisory Committee (RAC) serves as a forum to facilitate communication, engage members of the research community, and address policies that effect research at Cottage Health. The RAC includes representation of Clinical and Basic Science Departments and Centers from Cottage Health, UCSB, SBCC and Westmont. The RAC places a high priority on strengthening our clinical and translational research programs and ensuring that appropriate core facilities/competencies are available to support the needs of our researchers. On an annual basis, the RAC reviews the operations, administrative organization, and budgets of CHRI and makes recommendations for change as needed.

The role of the RAC in the internal grant program:

• A submitted application is sent to a minimum of two reviewers from the RAC. The Cottage Health Research Grant Program application scoring system uses a 9-point rating scale (1 = poor; 9 = exceptional in whole numbers, no decimals) for Overall Impact and Criterion scores for all applications.
• The full proposal and budget are presented to the entire RAC for a funding recommendation.
• The entire review process may take up to eight weeks.

Requests for proposals are issued in spring and awarded in summer for project periods of one-year cycles. Grant awards may range from $25,000 -$50,000 per project. Successful proposals will offer the potential for translational development that could lead to high impact, near-term clinical application in disease detection, prevention, diagnosis, staging, or treatment.