SBE CCC awards new pilot project grants
The Social, Behavioral, and Economic COVID Coordinating Center (SBE CCC) at ICPSR has awarded five pilot project grants to scholars conducting new and innovative research into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grants address critical topics related to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including long COVID, vaccine hesitancy, and trust in the healthcare system. Taken together, they represent a unique set of contributions to our understanding of the pandemic’s lasting social, behavioral, and economic effects.
The five pilot grant recipients and their projects are:
- Julie Keller, University of Rhode Island: Exploring vaccine hesitancy and factors that build vaccine confidence among refugees in Rhode Island, U.S.
- Kurt Lavetti and Adibah Abdulhadi, Ohio State University: What is long COVID? Quantifying the enduring and disparate effects of COVID-19
- Zhenlong Li, University of South Carolina: Examine the geographic and racial disparities of COVID-19 impact on obesity-related behaviors using cellphone-based place visitation data
- Caroline Rudisill, University of South Carolina: Trust, personal finances, health literacy and health service use: a two-wave survey approach
- Rob Smith, Baruch College: How and how much has New York State’s Excluded Workers Fund affected the food and housing security and health of immigrants?
SBE CCC’s pilot project grants support research that will yield insights into the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As pilot grant recipient Caroline Rudisill points out, “We know how important trust is for understanding people’s use of healthcare and the ways they interact with their healthcare systems. This study will allow us to provide evidence about how trust in the health system, household finances and patients’ use of health care and health behaviors has evolved over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are delighted to get to study these issues and thank the consortium for its support.”
Pilot grants also offer researchers the opportunity to forge new partnerships and expand the reach of the SBE COVID Consortium. “We are thrilled to have received pilot funding for our proposal on vaccine hesitancy among refugee populations,” says pilot grant recipient Julie Keller. “The need for this research was first identified by our community partners in Rhode Island. We look forward to strengthening these ties as we work together to promote health equity and improve health outcomes among refugees in the Ocean State.”
Work on the projects will begin as early as March 2023. Pilot grant recipients will join SBE CCC’s consortium of NIH-funded researchers and take part in the coordinating center’s efforts to promote interoperability and harmonization of measures across COVID-related projects.
The pilot program also helps the consortium keep pace with the rapidly changing research landscape around COVID-19. “There have been remarkable advances in our understanding of the far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as the pandemic continues into a third year, we face new challenges that require innovative research strategies. These pilot grants offer SBE CCC the flexibility to adapt to these developments and support research on questions that are of great importance,” says John Kubale, project director of SBE CCC.
Visit our Pilot Project Grants website to learn more about our grant recipients and how to apply for a grant from SBE CCC.
Jan 16, 2023