Whatever your career stage or biomedical research discipline, you can discover valuable information through the RePORT (Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools) website of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). RePORT modules provide free and user-friendly access to a myriad of data and records about past and current research projects funded by the NIH, as well as several other federal agencies. Below are a few examples of ways these tools could help you.

Challenge: You have an idea for a grant proposal, and you want to find out if any similar or overlapping studies have been funded in the past few years and which institutes funded them.

Solution: Click to the RePORT Expenditures and Results RePORTER module and do a simple keyword search or an advanced search that narrows results down according to criteria such as institute, award type or project start date. Regarding each project found in the search, you can click to read the abstract and public health relevance narrative of the original grant, name and institution of the principal investigators, study section that reviewed the grant, project period, year-by-year direct costs, links to publications that have emerged from the study and many more details.

Challenge: You are looking for mentorship or peer feedback from federally funded researchers in Omaha or across the University of Nebraska system, who have interests relevant to yours.

Solution: Go to the RePORTER module and click on the “Active Funding by State” tool. Or use the advanced search tool and focus the search on funded organization, while leaving the key words blank or more broad. Suppose you’re looking for local early-career investigators who have competed successfully for fellowships or career development awards – you can use the “Activity Code” search box to narrow the search on terms like F30 or K08.

Challenge: You know it’s important to contact a program officer for feedback on your grant idea, but you have no idea whom to reach out to. Or, your grant application is well underway, and you don’t know which review panel(s) to request to review the proposal. 

Solution: Within RePORT, go to the “Matchmaker” module and find the search box that prompts you to “Enter abstracts or other scientific text to find potential Program Officials, ICs, and review panels for your research.” Paste your abstract, draft specific aims, or even a few rough sentences and you will be on your way. The results pages are set up for intuitive navigation to identify the program officials and review panels that most often engage with grants on similar subject matter.

CHRI Priorities & Activities:

We are also continuing with faculty development opportunities. The Pediatric Academic Workshop is August 12 and the registration link for the morning’s lectures can be found here. This is a great opportunity to learn or review your skills in using databases, navigating promotion and tenure, writing scientific papers and grants, and researching references. The faculty is outstanding, and it will be a great learning opportunity.

I encourage you to consider the opportunity to fund your initial research work with our CHRI internal grant process. Applications are accepted quarterly, and every application is reviewed with a great attention to detail. Unfunded grants are given important feedback with the intention that the grant application will be revised and resubmitted for reconsideration. Our goal is to fund all applications through this formative process. If you have any questions about the grant process, please contact Bill Rizzo, MD.

At CHRI our goal is to ensure your success in research. If there are ways that you need to be supported that are not currently available, please let me know.

Don’t forget to block your calendars for the CHRI First Annual Conference and plan to register and submit your work for presentation. Please see the Conference web page for additional event information and abstract submission guidelines. We have scheduled two great keynote speakers, and it will be a great day to celebrate child health research in Nebraska!

 I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). During my training, I completed four years of Anatomic and Clinical Pathology and three additional fellowships, including advanced specializations in Cytopathology, Surgical Pathology, and Hematopathology. My areas of expertise are placental pathology, digital pathology, cytopathology, telecytology, and immunohistochemistry.

My research focuses on placental tissue and immunostaining to identify the expression pattern, intensity, and cellular localization of specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPM) receptors. I have experience with QuPath software platform for whole slide image analysis. I use this digital technology to analyze the level of expression of SPM. 

Our research analyzed placental tissue, a vastly underutilized resource. Research of this organ has the potential to provide insight into the pathophysiology of placental dysfunction, allowing for the early diagnosis and prevention of placenta‑mediated pregnancy complications. Our research and analysis of GPR18 and FPR2 expression in human placental tissue will help uncover the role of pro‑resolving lipid mediators against inflammation and vascular injury in pregnancy and perinatal disease.

CHRI provides the opportunity to work with colleagues and researchers with similar research interests.  

The CHRI Conference will be primarily an in-person event that also includes some virtual elements. Thursday, Nov. 3 events will go from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. at Children's Hospital & Medical Center Solarium (light appetizers served). The Friday, Nov. 4 schedule will run from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at UNO's Scott Conference Center, with breakfast and lunch served. Complimentary parking will be available at both locations, but we ask that you indicate if you need guest parking at Children's Hospital for the Thursday session so we can best accommodate our guests.

The CHRI Conference is scheduled to include:

Abstract submission will be open until September 15, 2022.

Outstanding scientific work submitted will be recognized at the Conference as follows:

The top 3-4 submissions will be asked to present during the morning plenary session at the CHRI Conference on Friday, Nov. 4 at the Scott Conference Center

The top 4 submissions in each of the 6 AOEs will be asked to present during the AOE Breakout Sessions in the afternoon on Friday, Nov. 4 at the Scott Conference Center

The subsequent 4 high-scoring submissions will be invited to bring a poster and participate in a rapid-fire presentation event on Friday, Nov. 4 at the Scott Conference Center

Investigators who submit must be registered or register for the CHRI Conference by the registration deadline (October 21, 2022)

Please be aware that the CHRI Conference is an in-person event.*

*Exception: The Global Health Breakout Session will be offered in a hybrid format due to the nature of its theme and its members’ locations. We welcome submissions from our international affiliate members, as long as they can plan to attend to present via Zoom during the specified times (Friday, Nov. 4 at 1:00pm Central Time).

Notifications to presenters will be made by October 10, 2022.

Abstracts will be evaluated according to the following criteria below. Please make sure to address each criterion while limiting your entry to 400 words. Submitted abstracts will not be edited for typing, spelling or grammatical errors.

Congratulations to Ashley Servais, MPH, CHRI Senior Research Manager, for being named UNMC College of Medicine Employee of the month. Ashley was nominated by Ann Anderson Berry, MD, PhD, CHRI Executive Director, who wrote, "Ashley does a phenomenal job running the Pediatric Research Office and has improved so many systems over the last two years. Her team is amazing, professional and highly productive, particularly doing research during the COVID-19 pandemic." Ashley wrote in her Employee of the Month profile that, "My favorite part of this job is getting to work with so many motivated basic science and clinical researchers on a wide variety of projects, all focused on improving child health." Read the full article here. Great job, Ashley!

The workshop will also feature the popular paper-in-a-day active learning model, which invites participants to team up as co-authors on a real project. Take note - the Paper in a Day exercise is in-person and limited to the first 15 registrants. Please sign-up, only if you are certain that you will be able to attend. 

When: August 12 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Where: Children's Hospital & Medical Center, Glow Auditorium and Indian Hills East conference facility

Format: Hybrid (Paper in a Day available only to in-person attendees who register for this segment)

Anticipated Agenda - please note that we have adjusted the schedule to better accommodate those attending virtually

Rebecca Cantu. MD rmcantu@uams.edu

Title Associate Professor

Institution University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Department Peds Pediatrics, College of Medicine

Division Peds Hospital Medicine

Topic Just the Databasics: Getting Started with Databases for Research 

The 2022 Pediatric Cancer Research Symposium will feature a Poster Session on Wednesday, August 31 starting at 7:00am at the Truhlsen Event Center (inside Sorrell) on the UNMC Campus. The poster session will go from 7:00-8:00am and will also be available during breaks and the lunch hour.

Below are the details for the poster submission. We are looking forward to showcasing your work if you are interested in participating!

Rebecca Slotkowski, PhD/MD candidate, has been recognized as a UNMC Graduate Student of Distinction. She was selected after receiving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award (NRSA) Predoctoral Fellowship. Slotkowski is featured on the UNMC Graduate Studies Students of Distinction page. Click here to read more about her NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship award.

The CityMatCH conference will be held Sept. 21-23, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. More information will be added to the website as it becomes available. Register here.

The Child Health Research Institute has partnered with CityMatCH to hire Caitlin Ray as an additional grants writer to support CHRI members. Ray has a BA in English and Theatre from Hamline University, as well as an MA in English from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville. Her dissertation focuses on the rhetoric of rare diseases in healthcare settings and advocacy work. She will work closely with Matt Sandbulte, PhD, current CHRI grants and scientific writer, to support the needs of CHRI researchers. Ray is trained in writing in the humanities context and coaching scholars in their writing. She also has experience in qualitative research and patient-centered research and advocacy.