Introduction

The World Health Organization's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean is pleased to announce the tenth call for research proposals under the grant for Research in Priority Areas of Public Health (2016–2017) . The aim of the grant is to promote health research as a tool for national development programming, and to increase the use of evidence-based action and health planning for provision of equitable health care.

The focus for this round are the five strategic areas identified by the WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2012 strategic paper “Shaping the future of health in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region: reinforcing the role of WHO”, namely: health system development and strengthening; emergency preparedness and response; communicable disease prevention and control; maternal, child health and nutrition; and prevention and control of noncommunicable and mental health disorders with special emphasis on cross-cutting initiatives such as universal health coverage. Through a competitive process of selection, funds are provided to successful research proposals in these areas.

Also, since the adoption of the new Sustainable Development Goals agenda, a growing emphasis on ‘leave no one behind’ requires that action be taken in the field of reducing inequities and protecting and promoting human rights and gender equality. Thus, when preparing your research proposals please consider marginalized and underserved populations’ health needs and risks; and disaggregation of collected data by sex, age and socioeconomic quintiles in your analysis plan.

Objectives of the grant

The general objective of the grant is to promote regional research in the five strategic areas of the Regional Office's work.

The specific objectives of this round are to:

Submission of research proposals

All proposals should be signed by the Principal Investigator and the head of the concerned institution and submitted in English only, along with Annex II of the application form "Research ethics checklist". Proposals that do not meet these criteria will be considered incomplete, and will not be processed.

Proposals should be submitted via email to: emrgorpd@who.int with a copy to emrgorpd@who.int.

Deadline

The deadline for submission of completed applications is 15 December 2016. Any applications received after this date will not be considered for funding.

Subsidies and duration

The award amount will range from US$ 10 000 to US$ 15 000 for each proposal, and the proposed duration for which support is requested must not exceed 9 months.

See the "Guidelines and Application Form" for more details and information.

For more information, please contact:

Research Promotion and Development programme
Department of Information, Evidence and Research
Email: emrgorpd@who.int