The national RWJF Investigator Awards program, administered by Rutgers' Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, funds approximately 10 research initiatives annually. Projects must develop, interpret or substantially advance ideas or knowledge that can improve health or health care policy in the United States. Investigators can receive up to $275,000 to fund research over three years.
The newly funded projects will address issues such as how cultural influences have shaped the understanding and management of pain, the right to health care, whether models of epidemics and social contagion can be used to explain adolescent violence, the role of regulation in protecting human subjects and how the federal budget process has shaped public-health policy.
"We have chosen an extraordinarily talented group of investigators addressing some of the most challenging basic and applied issues in health, health care and health policy," said David Mechanic, Investigator Awards national program director and director of Rutgers' Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.
"Terrorism, the slowdown in the economy, the precarious situation of state budgets, the federal deficit and rising health care costs strain our health system and raise significant challenges for health policy," said David Colby, senior program officer at RWJF. "The Investigator Awards program has been designed to encourage the development of innovative ideas. Results of these projects will provide fresh insights to inform the health-policy process."
A 12-member national advisory committee and RWJF representatives selected the new recipien
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Contact: Stacey Hersh
shersh@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
28-May-2002