Participate in the 2014 Student Research Paper Contest

Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) is looking for graduate and undergraduate students to submit papers relevant to the prevention, screening, surveillance, and/or population-based intervention of chronic diseases, including but not limited to arthritis, asthma, cancer, depression, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. A peer-reviewed electronic journal, PCD was established to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners in chronic disease prevention and health promotion. The journal is published weekly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

The winning manuscript will be recognized on the PCD website and will be published in a 2014 PCD release. Papers must be received electronically no later than 5:00 PM EST on January 23, 2014. More information on the contest and the submission process is available here.

Have an idea that could overcome a global health challenge? Send a proposal to The Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative!

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its funding partners in the Grand Challenges family of grant programs invite you to apply for four new grant opportunities:

1) Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to encourage innovative and unconventional global health and development solutions, is now accepting grant proposals for its latest application round. Applicants can be at any experience level; in any discipline; and from any organization, including colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.

Proposals are being accepted online until November 12, 2013 on the following topics:

• Innovations in Feedback & Accountability Systems for Agricultural Development
• Inciting Healthy Behaviors: nudge, leapfrog, disrupt, reach
• Novel Enabling Tools and Models Supporting the Development of Interventions for Severe Diarrhea and Enteric Dysfunction
• Develop the Next Generation of Condom
• The "One Health" Concept: Bringing Together Human and Animal Health

Initial grants will be US $100,000 each, and projects showing promise will have the opportunity to receive additional funding of up to US $1 million. Full descriptions of the new topics and application instructions are available at: www.grandchallenges.org/explorations.

2) Achieving Healthy Growth through Agriculture and Nutrition, the first program launched through the Grand Challenges India partnership, is now accepting applications. This program joins others within the Grand Challenges family of grant programs supported by the Gates Foundation and its partners. It seeks a comprehensive set of approaches - spanning innovation in  nutrition and agriculture and social innovation - to 1) reduce the high incidence of low birth weight, early stunting, and wasting in Indian children less than 2 years of age and 2) prevent undernutrition in women of reproductive age and in children from 0-2 years of age.

The application deadline is October 31, 2013. Details on how to apply for a grant can be found at http://www.grandchallenges.org/GrantOpportunities/Pages/GCIndia_healthygrowth.aspx.

3) Records for Life: A Design Contest that can Save Lives. This new grant opportunity seeks individuals or teams to re-examine the current child health record and design new ways to accurately track vaccine doses, increase ease of interpretation and use, and incite behavior change to make the record a valued asset for health professionals and families alike.

The application deadline is October 31, 2013. Details on how to apply for a grant can be found at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Information/Grant-Opportunities/Records-for-Life-RFP.

4) This October researchers are invited to attend Advancing Vaccines in the Genomic Era, a meeting held as part of the Keystone Symposia Global Health Series supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The meeting will be held October 31 - November 4, 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More information can be found at http://www.keystonesymposia.org/13T1.

The Grand Challenges team looks forward to receiving innovative ideas from around the world and from all disciplines, so if you have a great idea, please apply. And if you know someone else who may have a great idea, share the message!

Thank you for your commitment to solving the world's greatest health and development challenges.

~The Grand Challenges Team

Surescripts Technology Challenge

Tracking influenza in real time. Chance to win $25,000 prize!

Application Deadline: July 15, 2013

Currently, public health officials rely on a number of data sources to track influenza activity; however most of the data reported are days old when accessed. The Surescripts Technology Challenge invites applicants to create an analytical engine that can use Surescripts data captured in real time to track influenza.

We are seeking individual women applicants and women team-leaders for this challenge. Men are welcome to participate as part of teams led by women. Our goal is to provide a platform and help strengthen efforts underway to encourage women to lead in the areas of technology, health and science. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) will be serving as an advisor to Surescripts for this Challenge.

Applicants are required to submit mock-ups and navigation flow, as well as a statement of their qualifications and interest in this challenge in PDF format. Please submit your application via email to jill.mulligan@surescripts.com by July 15, 2013.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Team Lead must be a female serving as a key participating member of the tech team
• Ability for the Team Lead to present at a one-day session in Washington DC on Wednesday, November 13th
• Surescripts and ASTHO employees are not eligible
• See below for complete terms and conditions

For more information, please visit Surescripts' website. 

Practice Fusion Releases New EMR Dataset and Data Challenges

On June 6th, Practice Fusion released a new HIPAA-compliant research dataset that includes de-identified medical records of lab results, diagnoses, medications, allergies, immunizations, smoking status, visits to the doctor, and vital signs. 

In conjunction with the release of this dataset, Practice Fusion is partnering with Kaggle, "the leading platform for predictive modeling competitions," to host two public health data challenges for developers, designers, data scientists and researchers.

Prediction Challenge: This two-part challenge encourages researchers to first submit a prediction problem based on the dataset provided by Practice Fusion. Once the winning prediction problem is selected, the challenge to will be open to the entire research community. Prediction problem ideas must be submitted by June 30, 2012. The prediction contest will then run from July 5, 2012 - September 10, 2012. 

Open Challenge: Competitors are encouraged to combine Practice Fusion's clinical dataset with one or more public datasets available at www.data.gov to create something new. This can be anything from a disease map, personal health app, or a new tool. Submissions are open until September 10, 2012. 

Access the newly available dataset and learn more about these two competitions here: http://www.kaggle.com/c/pf2012.