Research grants administration capacity strengthening in South America

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The main objective of this proposal is to improve administrative and financial oversight of NIAID grants and to enhance compliance with regulations that govern awards from NIH and other Federal sponsors at the Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria (IECS), and other research institutions in South America. This will strengthen

IECS grant management capacity and provide a supportive environment for investigators by relieving them of administrative burdens and giving them the freedom to increase productivity in their research endeavors. Aim 1: to strengthen IECS capacity to manage NIAID/NIH grants in accordance with their high standards and

regulations: new or revised grants management processes will be generated resulting from the best practices learned by two IECS senior grants administrators who will attend two training sessions at the US host institution -Tulane University of Louisiana-, a NIH regional workshop on program funding and grants

administration, or a NIAID post-award grants policy and management training event, and five days of in-house training with the Grants Management Program (GMP) at NIAID. IECS grant administrators trained under this award will increase their own capacity for administrative and financial oversight of NIH grants, they will train

other IECS support personnel, and they will implement changes or improvements to grants management activities at IECS. Aim 2: to share knowledge on NIAID/NIH grant management at the institutional, national, and regional levels: IECS will create a repository of grant management tools that can be easily accessed by investigators and

support personnel. To make these tools available to a larger community of colleagues, we will also lay the groundwork for building a Grant Administrators Community of Practice (GACoP) in South America.