Apply Today: Applications for the 2023-2024 GEMSTONES program are OPEN.
The Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM) is committed to partnering with the broader San Diego community to help develop approaches that address unmet health-related needs, particularly for those communities that are marginalized or underserved. The GEMSTONES Community Engagement Award is intended to provide funding support for faculty co-investigators from engineering, health or social sciences to mentor and supervise teams of undergraduate or graduate students in developing projects aiming to generate solutions to community-defined needs or planning new research projects that better address community-identified needs. We understand that community-based participatory research requires considerable time and effort to engage the community and define relevant and research questions or publishable research solutions.
Annual awards of up to $10,000 will support the community outreach, networking, engagement research, mentoring and outreach activities of faculty co-investigators working with undergraduate or graduate students on defining, establishing and advancing research projects that address unmet health-related needs in cooperation with diverse communities. This program particularly encourages applications for projects that will connect students to community members and organizations. Examples of possible proposals include, but are not limited to:
- Creating a tool that tracks data of interest to a community organization that would better define unmet community-specific healthcare needs or risks.
- Support and mentorship for a student team to work with a community organization to design effective strategies to track health goals such as increased physical activity in school-aged children.
- Working with communities to help them map exposure to environmental hazards in a neighborhood.
- Developing plans with community members for strategies that help prevent adverse healthcare outcomes such as improving nutrition, mental health or access to primary care in a neighborhood.