Shriners Children's Grants Program

Shriners Children’s follows the National Institutes of Health (NIH) definition of clinical research, based on the NIH Director’s Panel on Clinical Research Report (12/97) that defines clinical research in the following three parts:

1. Patient-oriented research: Research conducted with human subjects (or on material of human origin such as tissues, specimens and cognitive phenomena) for which an investigator (or colleague) directly interacts with human subjects.
   
   Patient-oriented research includes:
   1. Studies of mechanisms of human disease
   2. Studies of therapies or interventions for disease
   3. Clinical trials
   4. Studies to develop new technologies related to disease
   5. Analysis of data obtained from clinical research studies/protocols
2. Epidemiological and behavioral studies: These types of studies examine the distribution of disease, the factors that affect health, and how people make health-related decisions.
3. Outcomes and health services research: These studies seek to identify the most effective and most efficient interventions, treatments and services.

Basic (bench) research grants support projects carried out in a laboratory environment that are innovative, of high scientific caliber, and highly significant and relevant to the Shriners Children's mission areas. These include: burns, orthopedics, scoliosis, cleft lip and palate, cerebral palsy, neurological disorders and spinal cord injury.

Grants also help support research in the areas of regenerative medicine, genomics/precision medicine and motion analysis.

Developmental grants are designed to support novel research projects which will yield seminal data and which are of a limited scope that can be successfully conducted in a relatively short period with a limited budget and resources.

The RFP grants seek to promote the application of contemporary, innovative approaches and technologies to advance the care and treatment of our Shriners Children’s patients in areas of strategic importance.