Advanced Research Cooperation in Environmental Health

Program Description

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has initiated many programs over the past twenty years to assist minority-serving institutions to develop the scientific resources necessary to participate in the NIH research mission. Although there have been successes, investigators at minority institutions have not generally been competitive for mainstream NIH research programs. NIEHS believes there is a critical need for a focused program to increase participation of minority schools and investigators in the health research mission of the Institute. To address the need for increased minority participation, the NIEHS has developed the Advanced Research Cooperation in Environmental Health (ARCH) program, which focuses on establishing research partnerships between investigators at Research Intensive Universities (RIUs) with significant environmental health sciences research and investigators at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) with a strong interest in such research.

The ARCH grant is a mechanism for support of a broadly-based research program involving investigators at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) or Tribal Colleges and established investigators at RIUs. It is intended to facilitate sharing of knowledge and common resources. The goal of the ARCH grant is to establish a group of investigators at an MSI that can successfully compete for NIH/NIEHS Research Project Grant (RPG) support, typically R01 grants. To achieve this goal, ARCH grants provide support for a broadly based multi-disciplinary research program that has a well-defined central research focus or objective. The NIEHS envisions the support received from the ARCH grant as the foundation necessary for achieving the above stated goal. It is anticipated that MSI scientists will compete for other types of NIH/NIEHS grants during the period of ARCH funding as part of the overall strategy for this effort.

Program Contacts

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