Written by Meldra Hall, MPH
The Research Resources and Outreach Core developed a virtual community, The Health Equity Learning
Collaboratory (EQ-Collaboratory) to facilitate online learning during the 4-6 month grant writing
coaching groups. Because we were interested in understanding the impact of a virtual space on early
state investigators (ESIs) pursing grant funding, we placed 57 (50%) of the 113 trained ESIs in the EQ-
Collaboratory to explore research productivity as defined by grant submissions. The EQ-Collaboratory
provided various resources including office hours with the coaching director, a grant submission
webinar, and resources (i.e. links to NIH funding opportunity announcements [FOAs], notifications for
NRMN webinars, NRMN career development videos, and NIH mp3 recordings). Four cohorts were
trained with the grant writing coaching groups- two cohorts without the EQ-Collaboratory and two with
it, and consequently, we saw that ESIs within the EQ-Collaboratory were almost 5 times more likely to
submit their grant proposal than ESIs who were trained without the EQ-Collaboratory. Therefore, this
online platform could potentially address and overcome resource and geography barriers for ESI faculty
career development. To take a deeper look at our publication, click here.
