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Mission Statement

The Health, Institutions and Policy Initiative (HIPI) aims to bring together scholars from multiple disciplines to promote and facilitate research on the interactions among health, behavior, public policy and social institutions.

Research Themes

A better understanding of the interactions among health, behavior, and social institutions can inform public policy and lead to marked improvements in population health. Substantial research shows that:

• Behavior (e.g., smoking, diet, use of medical care, labor market decisions) can have profound influences on health.
• Social institutions and public policy (e.g., laws, public programs, health insurance schemes, labor market opportunities) create constraints and incentives that influence behavior.
• The constraints and incentives that families and individuals face vary over the life course. Current opportunities are often influenced by behavior and health earlier in life (e.g., schooling decisions affect labor market opportunities, labor market opportunities affect public program eligibility).

To better understand these linkages, HIPI aims to promote and facilitate research based on the following four premises.

• Advancing our understanding requires high quality empirical research.
• High quality empirical research is generally grounded in theory.
• High quality empirical research often requires advanced statistical methods.
• International comparisons often provide a useful setting to test our theories and elucidate empirical findings.

Goals and Activities

HIPI will pursue four main goals.

• To serve as a multidisciplinary link within the University

Currently, research in these areas occurs in several Colleges and Departments at MSU. HIPI will serve as a central location for researchers with common interests to meet and communicate.

An informal brown bag seminar series will allow HIPI associates to present their research to each other, to stimulate and facilitate collaboration. HIPI will also sponsor visits by scholars from outside the University to share their research.

• To support grant writing activities

Successfully obtaining grants and completing the proposed research projects require several steps:

1. developing and maintaining an active research agenda
2. identifying appropriate granting agencies and mechanisms,
3. writing the technical portion of a grant that is appealing to the granting agency,
4. developing an appropriate budget,
5. navigating the various University administrative departments (Contracts and Grants; UCHRIS; the Colleges), and
6. administering grant budgets and meeting grant reporting requirements.

HIPI will undertake activities to support each of these steps. While step (1) is primarily the responsibility of the faculty, HIPI aims to provide a rich and fertile ground for faculty members to develop and maintain their research agendas. One example activity is the identification of granting agencies and mechanisms that are relevant to HIPI associates.

Available funding has increased dramatically in recent years, as has the diversity of funding sources. In addition to targeting major federal agencies such as NIH and NSF, it is important to consider smaller and lesser known funding sources. Lesser-known grant opportunities might be announced at irregular intervals and be smaller in size, but they are often easier to obtain and can be a step toward more prestigious and larger grants.

HIPI will serve as a clearing house for faculty members to share grant information and will provide administrative support to monitor candidate agencies. In addition, HIPI will provide support for grant writing and grant administration.

• To provide research infrastructure

Since HIPI members share similar research interests there are often opportunities to share resources to make research dollars more effective. HIPI will provide the infrastructure to facilitate such resource sharing. One example is the acquisition of commonly used datasets.

• To support graduate students

A common reason for writing grants is to fund graduate students for research assistantships (RA). Such RA positions require a host of administrative and informational activities. HIPI will help with such budgeting activities.

Some granting agencies have programs to fund pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students. Such programs can greatly enhance the research environment for students and faculty. As a long-range goal, HIPI hopes to provide the necessary infrastructure for applying and administering such a program.

In addition to providing a multi-disciplinary link for researchers, HIPI will provide this same link for graduate students. Another long-range goal is to expand opportunities for graduate students to develop the cross-disciplinary skills to analyze issues related to health, behavior and social institutions.

Funding

Current finding for HIPI comes from MSU's NIH Initiative, sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. During this first year, we hope to make substantial progress in identifying and obtaining a long-term funding stream.

Last Modified: 12/19/2006 9:28 AM