Grant Proposal Resources
Grant Proposal Resources
Often research sponsors require a description of the facilities and resources that an applicant has available at their institution to support their proposed projects. More specifically, the National Institutes of Health has a section in their grant application package (the SF 424) called “Facilities and Other Resources.” To assist HHRI and HCMC investigators in developing this section of their grant proposals, below are templates for descriptions of several of the HHRI’s and HCMC’s facilities where research is being conducted. Please note that these templates are intended to be the starting point for this section of a proposal. In order for grant proposals to be compelling to reviewers, all sections should be tailored to address the aims of the specific project seeking funding.
The Berman Center is a program of the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) and is located on the 4th floor of the Parkside Professional Center on the eastern edge of downtown in Minneapolis, MN. The Berman Center employs approximately 20 people, including Investigators, Project Managers, and Research Coordinators.
The 6,500 square foot clinical office space includes medical offices, two ECG rooms, five fully equipped procedure/examination rooms, laboratory phlebotomy stations, a reception area for central patient coordination and computerized scheduling, a secure medical records room, data entry stations, recruitment station, patient education wing, secretarial facilities, and a conference room. The medical records room provides a secure area for on-site files. Data entry terminals are positioned throughout the clinics. The laboratory is equipped for drawing, processing, storing and shipping specimens for multiple study protocols.
The patient education rooms include two conference/classrooms equipped for demonstrations, audio/visual presentations, and large or small group teaching. The networked computing system currently serving the Berman Center has been developed specifically for the Berman Center and is used by clinical staff serving studies, the analytic services staff, postdoctoral Fellows, the public relations coordinator, and research assistants. The Berman Center has office space for all clinical and support staff. The spaces are equipped with state-of-the-art telephone equipment and wired for high-speed Internet access.
The Chronic Disease Research Group (CDRG) is a program of the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) which employs approximately fifty individuals, including biostatisticians, epidemiologists, programmers, IT staff, project managers and administrative staff.
CDRG is an interdisciplinary, clinician-guided biostatistical research group committed to the investigation of chronic illnesses to improve public health. Clinical areas of expertise include: Nephrology, Cardiology, Health Services, Transplant, Oncology, Surveillance/Monitoring, and Health Policy. CDRG occupies over 6,000 square feet of secure space, including a large board room with video conferencing capability and a training room with the capacity to host large seminars. The core of the analytical infrastructure at CDRG is an advanced computer system, built on scalable HP VMS technology, integrated and networked, and protected by effective security structures. The system is constructed to accept and manage large quantities of data and complex database systems, support sophisticated analyses, and provide for the efficient and secure sharing and distribution of information.
The Department of Emergency Medicine is comprised of the physicians, physician-assistants and nursing staff dedicated to the delivery of emergency medical services for HCMC, the acute care research and teaching hospital of the Hennepin Healthcare system. The HCMC Emergency Department (ED) is located on the far west corner of the HCMC campus. Emergency Medicine Faculty physicians provide emergency medical care, teach students of many types, and conduct research leading to innovation of emergency care. The program in the Emergency Department employs approximately 15 people, including Investigators, Project Managers, and Research Coordinators.
Emergency Medicine cares for 85,000 patients per year in the busiest emergency department in the state of Minnesota. Its physicians are Medical Directors of component services including the HCMC Ambulance service (70,000 annual ambulance runs), EMS education, Urgent Care Services, Hyperbaric Medicine, Occupational Medicine and the Hennepin Poison Center. Educational activities are wide-ranging, including education of resident physicians in Emergency Medicine and other specialties, medical students from the University of Minnesota and other schools throughout the nation who travel to HCMC for the experience. HCMC Emergency Medicine faculty teach paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), as well as practicing physicians and nurses.
Clinical: HCMC, the acute care research and teaching hospital of the Hennepin Healthcare system, is a 484 bed public teaching hospital, a Level 1Trauma Center, and an active kidney transplant center located in downtown Minneapolis, MN. HCMC employs approximately 6,000 people and is Minnesota’s largest safety net hospital and ambulatory clinic system. HCMC conducts approximately 600,000 clinic visits annually and is the state’s premier Level 1 Trauma Center (conducting over 100,000 Emergency Department and Urgent Care visits annually). HCMC also maintains community based primary care clinics in Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Golden Valley, Richfield, St. Anthony Village and in the Whittier and East Lake street neighborhoods of the larger metropolitan area.
Teaching: HCMC is an academic medical center that maintains many nationally recognized programs and specialties and provides training for physicians and other health care providers who go on to practice throughout the state.
Computer: HCMC maintains a large IT team to provide hardware and computing resources including analytics to answer strategic enterprise questions in support of clinical and operational business needs. HCMC also supports an extensive Electronic Health Records management system.
Office and Conference Facilities: Research teams at HCMC have access to library services, office support, and other administrative services associated with large academic health centers. HCMC has many conference rooms located within internal facilities. These are frequently used for research team meetings, seminars, training sessions, conferences, focus groups and conference calls. Each conference room is equipped with both telecommunications support, and in many cases video conferencing capabilities to facilitate internal and external multidisciplinary collaborations. All offices are linked with the hospital telecommunications and network system.
Human Subjects Protection Institutional Review Board (IRB): The HCMC IRB meets twice monthly to review research applications that are proposed by institutional researchers. The HCMC IRB is accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP).
Founded in 1952, the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) is the third largest nonprofit medical research institution in the State of Minnesota. The HHRI administers approximately $30,000,000 annually in research and education funding, and consistently ranks annually in the top 10% of institutions receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health. HHRI occupies approximately 70,000 square feet on the HCMC campus. HCMC is the acute care research and teaching hospital of the Hennepin Healthcare system in downtown Minneapolis, covering approximately six square blocks in downtown Minneapolis, MN. HCMC also maintains community based primary care clinics in Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Golden Valley, Richfield, St. Anthony Village and in the Whittier and East Lake street neighborhoods of the larger metropolitan area.
HHRI facilities include clinical research space, pre-clinical/basic science laboratories, AAALAC-accredited facilities and an AAHRPP-accredited human subjects protection program. HHRI facilities also include space for research administration, human resources, and accounting services. The HHRI administers all sponsored medical research taking place on the HCMC campus, and its mission is to improve patient care through research and education.
The Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute’s (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) Cardiac Biomarkers Laboratory (CBL) occupies approximately 3,000 square feet on the 2nd floor of the Shapiro Building on the HCMC’s downtown Minneapolis campus and employs approximately 12 people including Investigators, Medical Technologists, Research Coordinators, Research Assistants, and Post-doctoral Fellows.
Services available through the CBL include cardiac and vascular biomarkers for diagnostics and risk outcomes assessment in acute coronary syndrome, supply-demand pathophysiology, heart failure and exercise biochemistry.
Automated Platforms include:
- Abbott Architect i1000 SR and i2000 SR
- Siemens ADVIA Centaur XP and XPT, Dimension RxL, Immulite 2000
- Beckman Coulter Access2
- Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Vitros ECi
- Roche Cobas e411
- bioMérieux Vidas, Mini-Vidas
- Brahms Kryptor Plus
- TECAN EVO 150
Other Instrumentation includes:
- Artel PCS2—Pipette Calibration System
- Beckman-Coulter Allegra 6 Centrifuge, Vortex, Orbital Shaker and Balances
- Molecular Devices Micro-Plate Reader and Scanner
- Tecan EVO 150 Automated Microtiter Plate System
- ThermoScientific Heraus Megafuge 16
- Eppendorf 5430 Microcentrifuge
- Denville Scientific 300D Microcentrifuge
- Stat Spin Express 3
- Water Bath Precision 183
- Millipore AFs-16D Water Filtration System
- Isensix Temperature Monitoring System
The Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) partners with the HCMC HIV Clinic (“Positive Care Center”; PCC) to provide comprehensive primary care, pharmacy services, mental health, case management and other social services to over 2,000 HIV-infected persons; approximately 75% are men; 40% are Caucasian; 40% are African American, and approximately 10% are African born. The clinic staff includes 6 Medical Doctors and 3 Nurse Practitioners who specialize in HIV medicine. The clinic receives additional clinical care support through the federally funded Ryan White Care Act, and is a national leader in achieving excellent outcomes, with low hospitalization rates, among a low socioeconomic and diverse clinic population.
The HHRI/HCMC HIV Research program is embedded in the HCMC clinic on the downtown Minneapolis campus, where it has an exam room (dedicated for research visits and not used for clinical care) and phlebotomy and specimen processing equipment (e.g., centrifuges) within the clinic. The research staff includes 3 full-time nurses, 2 part-time nurses, a research manager, 1 full-time administrator and 1 part-time data management staff.
The Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute’s (HHRI, formerly Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation) pre-clinical research programs in the Division of Toxicology employ approximately 15 people, including investigators, research technicians, and post-doctoral fellows. The programs share laboratory space (5 rooms, 2700 sq. ft.) on the HCMC campus located in downtown Minneapolis, MN. (HCMC is the acute care research and teaching hospital of the Hennepin Healthcare system.) The laboratory includes equipment for synthetic chemistry, analytical procedures (tissue processing and drug level measurements), and immunologic procedures for vaccine processing and antibody characterization.
Other shared laboratory space within the Division of Toxicology is used for conjugation of haptens to fluorescent proteins, for preparing B and T cell samples for flow cytometry analysis and conducting ELISAs. Common laboratory space is available for tissue analysis, pharmacokinetic studies, intravenous adoptive transfer of B cells, and adoptive transfer protocols. Additional space is available for cell culture (BSL 2), and houses a laminar flow cabinet, an incubator and standard cell culture instruments and supplies.
The laboratories in the Division of Toxicology also include a flow cytometry core facility consisting of a BD Biosciences LSRII Fortessa equipped with Blue, Red, Violet and Yellow/Green Lasers.