CNN: $5 Billion in New Fed ARRA Grants

According to a news item today on the CNN Web site:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama, in an effort to stimulate the economy and support critical research, will announce $5 billion in grants when he visits the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, according to an administration official.

President Obama and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will announce research grants Wednesday.

The money, which comes from Recovery Act funds, is aimed at supporting “12,000 critical research projects — and tens of thousands of jobs associated with them, ranging from teachers and lab technicians to database managers and scientists,” the official wrote in an e-mail.

Chronicle: Elsevier Unveils New Grant-Finding Service

Reported  in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The scientific publisher Elsevier today started SciVal Funding, a Web-based search service to help American institutions locate grants, particularly collaborative and multidisciplinary ones. The service joins the company’s SciVal Spotlight, a strategy tool aimed at revealing university-research strengths and weaknesses — at a price, The Chronicle reported in June, that could climb to six figures, based on an institution’s size.

CFS: Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health

The Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health welcomes submissions. While the journal does not issue specific calls for manuscripts, it is soliciting manuscripts for the upcoming special continuing education theme issues. The journal welcomes all types of manuscripts. Instructions for authors and descriptions of the criteria for feature articles, original research, brief reports, and columns can be found at www.jmwh.org . All manuscripts for continuing education theme issues undergo the usual JMWH peer review process and are not guaranteed publication. Please send your proposed topic, type of article, and contact information to jmwh@acnm.org .

Nov/Dec 2010 Nutrition (Deadline: November 1, 2009)

May/June 2011 Pharmacology (Deadline: May 1, 2010)

Queries to: Frances E. Likis, DrPH, NP, CNM, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health

E-mail flikis@acnm.org

CFS: The Teacher’s Voice

 The Teacher’s Voice, an online publication, is currently seeking submissions for upcoming theme issues as well as the following: corporate/profit/non-profit privatization of public education in poor and working class communities; public schools turning into factory-modeled dumbed-down test-prep mills; parent, student, teacher disempowerment; apathy (especially of the secure and privileged). Please visit The Teacher’s Voice at: http://www.the-teachers-voice.org 

 

Personal Narratives & Healthcare Education

An interesting article posted on the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine Web site, Inviting in the Life World: Illness Narratives and Personal and Creative Writing in Medical Education, by Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCosta. The abstract reads:

This paper shares a historical framework for understanding the inclusion of literature and creative writing courses in medical schools around the world. Furthermore, it examines how these two instructional approaches teach significantly different perspectives about the role of doctors in relation to their patients. More specifically, the recent use of patient and doctor narratives and personal and creative writing in medical courses represents an important pedagogical shift in medical training to include more of the life world of patients and doctors.

Replace the words “doctor” and “medicine” with “nurse” and “nursing” and the point still pertains.

CFS: Ars Medica

ARS MEDICA: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts and Humanities is an international literary magazine exploring illness, the body, healing, and the culture of medicine. Fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and artwork are preferred. For submission/subscription info, see www.ars-medica.ca

CFS: Global Health (Social Science & Medicine)

CALL FOR PAPERS: SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE

SPECIAL ISSUE: Global Health Assistance: Qualitative Evidence on What Works and Why (Guest Editors: Devi Sridhar and David Craig)

For the above Special Issue, Social Science & Medicine invites submissions that address the critical question of whether global health assistance works. A paradox of our time is that despite all the activity and resources concentrated in this area, health is not improving as dramatically as it should in emerging and developing countries. Explanations for this paradox may lie in the institutionalised nature of health assistance, or more broadly, in the efforts of global health institutions to address these disparities. The field is made up of a patchwork of donors, UN agencies, governments, philanthropic organisations, civil society organisations, private companies, and various partnerships among these actors. It is the codes and regularised practices of these organisations that this Special Issue seeks to shed some light on, both in terms of description, and in terms of what a critical, institutional ethnographic engagement might offer. Contributions should examine not only how policies have been developed at the global level, but also the impact of these policies on the communities at which they are aimed. Particular attention should be paid to the structures, discourses and agencies through which policy operates. Areas of consideration might include:

• the massive monies being disbursed and the benefits – or lack thereof –produced,

• how global health institutions create policy, and the models and political considerations that enter into the policy-process,

• the effects of different policies/approaches on developing countries, and

• lessons that emerge for what works and what doesn’t in global health assistance.

The articles in the Special Issue will combine various analyses within the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, political science, public health and development studies. They will include located analysis, comparative or complementary multi-site analysis, and critical review papers. Priority will be given to field data obtained through ethnography and qualitative enquiries, within a comprehensive theoretical frame for analysis.

Authors who feel their work addresses the above aims should submit their full manuscripts for consideration to Social Science & Medicine at http://ees.elsevier.com/ssm/ by 31 October 2009. When asked to choose article type, authors should stipulate “Special Issue Article”, and in the “Enter Comments” box the title of the Special Issue should be inserted, plus any further acknowledgements. All submissions should meet Social Science & Medicine author guidelines, also available at http://ees.elsevier.com/ssm/