AHA Career Development Award Grant

The AHA Career Development Award supports early-career healthcare professionals to explore innovative research questions and pilot studies. With a budget of $77,000 per year, this award aims to enhance research skills, provide mentorship, and prepare awardees for successful scientific careers. Eligible applicants must hold a doctoral degree and commit at least 10% effort to the award. The program emphasizes mentorship from experienced investigators, ensuring a structured path towards independence in research.

The Career Development Award supports highly promising healthcare and academic professionals, in the early years of one’s first professional appointment, to explore innovative questions or pilot studies that will provide preliminary data and training necessary to assure the applicant’s future success as a research scientist.
The award will develop the research skills to support and greatly enhance the awardee’s chances to obtain and retain a high-quality career position.
Mentoring Team
The award requires, at a minimum, a primary mentor and a secondary mentor who will provide counsel and direction and scholarship oversight. Up to two additional mentors may be named to the mentoring team. A mentoring team approach with a committed lead mentor is an essential piece. Applicants should clearly define each person’s role as part of the mentoring team.
The primary and secondary mentors should have, most importantly, prior history of successfully mentoring early career investigators to independence, track records of high-quality investigation, academic accomplishment, and should be invested in the career progress of the early career scientist. The mentors’ primary function is to work with the applicant to develop the application and training plan, make necessary arrangements with the institution to conduct the proposed research work, enforce the appropriate timelines for accomplishing the work, and guide the awardee toward a productive career in his/her chosen field.One individual must be identified as the primary mentor who will assist in the coordination of the candidate’s research. The primary mentor should be an active investigator in the area of the proposed research and be committed both to the applicant’s career development and the applicant’s research. The mentors must document the availability of dedicated sufficient research support (e.g., time and effort) and facilities for high-quality research.At least one mentor must be from outside of the applicant’s department, division or institution.One mentor should be committed to guiding the applicant’s future grant writing endeavors (such as, how to write an R01 or equivalent).
$77,000 per year, including 10% institutional indirect costs.The award may be used for salary and fringe benefits of the principal investigator, collaborating investigator(s), mentoring team members, and other participants with faculty appointments, consistent with percent effort, and for project-related expenses, such as salaries of technical personnel essential to the conduct of the project, supplies, equipment, computers/electronics, travel (including international travel), volunteer subject costs, data management, and publication costs, etc.AHA does not require use of the NIH salary cap.Award Duration: Three years. non-renewableTotal Award Amount: $231,000

Eligibility

At the time of application, the applicant must hold an MD, PhD, DO, DVM, DDS, or equivalent post-baccalaureate doctoral degree.Postdoctoral fellows are eligible to apply but must have attained faculty appointment by the time of award activation.Investigators who have been awarded NIH K99/R00 or R01 grants are not eligible to apply.The AHA will permit a Career Development Awardee to concurrently hold an NIH K award (other than K99/R00) if there is no budgetary overlap.The awardee must devote at least 10% effort to the Career Development Award.At the time of award activation:An awardee must hold a faculty/staff position up to and including the rank of assistant professor (or equivalent).No more than six years may have elapsed since the first faculty/staff appointment (after receipt of doctoral degree) at the assistant professor level or equivalent (including, but not limited to, instructor, research assistant professor, research scientist, staff scientist, etc.). If the candidate held the title of instructor during postdoctoral fellowship or residency years due to clinical or teaching responsibilities, that period of time does not count against the eligibility period for applying for the Career Development Award. The AHA will consider interruptions of work experience due to extenuating circumstances and clinical training.The applicant must demonstrate that adequate time will be devoted to ensuring the successful completion of the project.
You must be a member of this organization to apply for this award - become a member. Join or begin the membership process well before the deadline. The AHA expects all mentors associated with training/mentored research awards to maintain active AHA membership, as well.

Ineligibility

The applicant may submit only one Career Development Award application per deadline.The applicant may not be a current or prior recipient of an AHA Career Development Award or AHA Scientist Development Grant (affiliate or association-wide).The applicant may submit the same or similar application three times (the original plus two resubmissions). The same or similar application submitted the fourth time will be administratively withdrawn.A Career Development Award applicant holding a J-1 Visa (exchange visitor) at the time of application must obtain an H-1B or equivalent by the award activation date.Strategically Focused Research Network personnel may hold individual AHA awards.In limited cases, a delay of the award start date may be allowable up to six months.A Career Development awardee may also hold an AHA Collaborative Sciences Award, Innovative Project Award, Transformational Project Award, and may be the program director or sponsor on an AHA Institutional Award for Undergraduate Training.The American Heart Association permits the use of a large language model (LLM – e.g. ChatGPT) or an artificial intelligence tool to generate and/or edit content in research proposals submitted for funding. This information must be disclosed at the time of submission. Disclosure of this information does not impact peer review. Should this information not be disclosed accurately, and use of these tools is identified, the proposal may be administratively withdrawn.Applicants are not required to reside in the United States for any period before applying for AHA funding. However, AHA research awards are limited to U.S.-based non-profit institutions, including medical, osteopathic, and dental schools, veterinary schools, schools of public health, pharmacy schools, nursing schools, universities and colleges, public and voluntary hospitals and others that can demonstrate the ability to conduct the proposed research.