Strategic Research Grant: AASM Strategic Plan Goals

The AASM Foundation's Strategic Research Grant aims to enhance patient-centered care for sleep disorders through innovative research. It focuses on advancing the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's goals in sleep medicine awareness, practice success, and technology implementation. Priority is given to projects that utilize AASM resources and address significant gaps in knowledge. Eligible applicants include sleep scientists with advanced degrees, and funding is available for projects of varying scopes, with grants up to $250,000.

NOTE: If resubmitting the applicant may bypass the LOI submission stage, however, must notify the AASM Foundation of their intent to resubmit an unfunded application by the LOI deadline.
The AASM Foundation is committed to improving patient-centered diagnosis and care for all people with sleep disorders. To ensure that there is a continued advancement in effective diagnosis and care of people with sleep disorders, the AASM Foundation provides research funding through the Strategic Research Grant. This grant is investigator-initiated and supports high-impact research projects aimed at addressing gaps in knowledge that impact the ability to provide optimal, patient-centered, cost-effective diagnosis and care for people with sleep disorders.
This AASM Foundation research grant is supported by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Open to projects that directly advance the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) Strategic Plan Goals: Sleep Medicine Awareness, Practice Success, and Technology Implementation.
Projects that use, study, or expand AASM sleep education resources, AASM Sleep is Good Medicine campaign, AASM quality measures, #sleeptechnology, AASM guidance documents, or results from AASM Foundation-funded projects will be given priority.
Proposals that fit into one of the goals are considered responsive. The bulleted lists under each goal are listed as examples.
Sleep Medicine Awareness  – Advance the understanding of the value of sleep medicine. Examples of projects that fall under this strategic goal include, but are not limited to:Developing strategies that build awareness about how sleep disturbances and sleep disorders cause or are associated with other health conditions.Understanding the impact of screening for sleep disorders by non-sleep clinicians.Evaluating the economic impact of treating sleep disorders on long-term healthcare utilization.Practice Success – Enhance knowledge about how to deliver quality, innovate care to achieve better outcomes for patients with sleep disorders. Examples of projects that fall under this strategic goal include, but are not limited to:Developing and testing comprehensive and innovative models of care that use a team-based approach for long-term care and management of people with sleep disorders.
Evaluating the value of services provided by sleep physicians and the sleep team (e.g., economic modeling, retrospective analysis of claims or electronic health record data) and/or assessing how their roles in patient care may evolve in the future.Studies that improve patient-centeredness of care by improving the understanding of:Patient preferences and satisfaction with different treatment options for sleep disorders.
Predictors of treatment adherence.Comparative effectiveness research, especially in special populations (e.g., pediatrics, women, older adults, people with comorbidities), of:Diagnosis of sleep disorders (e.g., new diagnostic devices, delivery methods, alternate metrics for diagnosis or characterization of disease severity, endotyping)
Interventions and delivery methods to treat sleep disorders.
Interventions (e.g., technology, behavioral, psychological, pharmacologic) to improve sleep disorder treatment adherence.Technology Implementation – Increase knowledge of new and emerging technologies, as well as artificial intelligence, in clinical care. Examples of projects that fall under this strategic goal include, but are not limited to:valuating current and new technology for expanding delivery of sleep care to improve patient outcomes, quality of care, and cost-effectiveness.
Leveraging consumer wearables for promoting and improving sleep in patients, increasing engagement with the sleep team, monitoring and improving patient care and treatment adherence.
Harnessing large datasets and computing power to yield greater clinical sleep insights, augment clinical expert opinion of sleep data, enhance diagnostic abilities, patient care, and/or treatment, increase efficiency, or decrease administrative burden.
Clinical research on heterogeneous populations comparing artificial intelligence to traditional approaches.
Terms
Period of Performance: Category I: 1-3 yearsCategory II: 1-2 yearsCategory III: Up to 1 yearAmount of Grant: Category I: Up to $250,000Category II: Up to $100,000Category III: Up to $50,000
There are no restrictions on the distribution of expenses, however, indirect costs are capped at 8%. The grant is executed as a contract between the AASM Foundation and the grantee’s institution. A sample contract is available here.

Eligibility

The following individuals are eligible to apply:Sleep scientists with a master’s level degree (MA, MS, MSN, MPH, or equivalent) or higher (MD, DO, DDS, DMD, DNP, DNSc, PharmD, PhD, or equivalent) are eligible to apply.International applicants, who meet all the eligibility criteria and whose sponsoring organization can accept the payment of grant funds in U.S. dollars, are eligible to apply.Individuals may apply for multiple AASM Foundation grants, however, the same proposal (i.e., projects with budgetary and scientific overlap) may not be submitted for multiple requests for applications in a given cycle. Additionally, if an individual submits more than one application in a given Career Development Grant cycle, the AASM Foundation will only approve funding one grant should multiple proposals submitted by the applicant receive a competitive score. Individuals who are the Principal Investigator on an open AASM Foundation research grant at the time of the application deadline are eligible to apply if they can demonstrate that there is no budgetary or scientific overlap between their open grant and the new project they are applying for funding. If there is budgetary and/or scientific overlap between projects, the applicant must indicate their plan to close their open grant in the event their new application is selected for funding (e.g., relinquish the current grant or complete the current grant to start the new grant).Past applicants of the Strategic Research Grant who were not funded are allowed a single resubmission within 12 months of receipt of the original application notification if the project is still relevant to the topics of interest in the current RFP.

Ineligibility

Resubmission of an original application for one grant program across another grant program is not permitted.The following individuals are not eligible to apply:Individuals who have a financial conflict of interest or have the potential to incur significant financial benefit from the proposed work and beyond the work itself are not eligible to apply. Individuals who are seeking funding from AASM Foundation research grants to support ongoing projects that are currently funded by another granting body or supplement ongoing work (e.g., enrolling addiitonal subjects into an ongoing trial) are not eligible to apply.Current AASM and AASM Foundation Board of Directors members are not eligible to apply and cannot be listed as a PI, co-PI, key personnel, mentor (paid or unpaid) or paid consultant for one year after their term ends.