2013-03-27
Support to research in the area of Ageing and health –
Programme Grants
The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Science (FAS) initiates and supports research with high relevance for societal challenges related to health, working life and welfare which may include a multidisciplinary perspective. Under condition that the Swedish Parliament accepts the Government Bill 2012/13:30 Forskning och Innovation, FAS is launching a call in 2013 in the area of Ageing and health amounting to 25 million Swedish crowns. The point of departure of this call, which covers a number of different perspectives on Ageing and health, is the following phrase from the Government Bill: Research about the elderly and ageing relates to medicine as well as technical and social sciences and praxis oriented research into health and social care. Multidisciplinary
collaboration could contribute to increased scientific quality, increased usage of research results as well as increased relevance to meet the challenges facing society today. (Prop.
2012/13:30, page 165)
The purpose of the additional funding is to meet challenges related to
demographic change, with an increasingly older population. Increased costs are to be expected in the areas of health and social care of the elderly. It also means a challenge to working life as an increasing number of people will need to be active at higher ages. For these reasons, research with a broad approach to the living conditions and everyday life of older people is needed. This need concerns those with medical as well as care needs, the most sick, those with physical impairments, and those who stay well at a very high age.
The Bill mentions a large number of areas for which research is considered important:
1. A healthy working life and the role occupational safety and health and working conditions play for the participation of women and men in working life and the use of social insurance.
2. The importance of the living environment, diet and preventive health measures for the elderly, including those with considerable physical impairments and therefore large needs for health and social care. 3. Physical as well as psychological impairments and what combination of
preventive and rehabilitation measures could contribute to improving the preconditions for the individual to stay active and participatory at work and in everyday life.
4. Innovative use of information technology and other new technologies, both in direct medical care and social care as a working tool for safer and more efficient communication in health care and social care organizations.
5. Forms of steering, organisation and ownership in the sectors of elderly care and health care and research about life quality, care processes, costs, quality and equal treatment in these contexts.
6. Research focusing on care and the living conditions of the elderly and what could promote or make active and healthy ageing more difficult. In line with the expressed objectives of the Bill, it is important to stimulate research collaboration between different scientific disciplines and to depart from the perspective of users and their family members when this is relevant. It is a clear ambition that research findings should be implemented and used, that they need to be combined in new manners and brought to the relevant target groups so that they can inform practice. A multidisciplinary approach and collaboration with the private and public sector may be positive for the attainment of a complete picture of the challenges caused by an ageing population.
Research on ageing and health can focus on Sweden or international comparisons that include Sweden.
The call includes two different funding instruments:
• 1-2 centre grants for a period of maximum 10 years, amounting to maximum 5 million Swedish crowns per year.
• 5-7 programme grants for a period of three plus three years, amounting to maximum 3 million Swedish crowns per year.
The balance between the final number of awarded centre- and programme grants will be decided by the quality of the proposals. An international expert panel will assess the proposals.
What is a programme grant?
The purpose of programme grants is to support and expand research
environments in a longer perspective. It is a basic financial support that should enable research groups to tackle new research questions and work with them during longer periods of time.
Programme grants will only be given established research groups. Single researchers or not fully organized research groups are therefore discouraged from applying. Since one purpose of the programme grants is to strengthen the long term development of the area, the inclusion of junior researchers in the group is considered positive.
The applicants must have a solid programme idea and show affinity with literature and theories in the field as well as good methodological competence. Close contacts with excellent researchers, in Sweden and abroad, is valuable. Application
Programme grants amount to 3 million Swedish crowns per year including indirect costs and are applied for periods of three plus three years. The entire application should be written in Englishsince it will be reviewed by international experts.
Assessment
The assessment will be made by an international group of experts. Applications will also be sent for additional assessments by other experts. Scientific quality as well as relevance to society is important in the assessment process.
Grant decisions will be made in November 2013. The programmes will be evaluated during the grant period as well as when the grant has terminated. Instructions for applicants
Since the application will be assessed by an international expert panel, it must be written in English.
Application forms are available in FAS electronic system eKlara
(http://eklara.fas.se). To be able to submit an outline via eKlara you need a user account. A person who has previously submitted an application to FAS has a user account. To create a user account, go to För att skaffa användarkonto (To create a user account) on the eKlara starting page.
Templates for the appendices – Ekonomi (Budget), Personal (Personnel), Projektbeskrivning (project description) and Meritförteckningar (CV) - are available in the application form. Templates should be downloaded and saved in your own computer before you start writing. Since the application form cannot be saved as a draft and submitted later, it should not be completed until you are ready to submit the application.
The process of completing and submitting an outline in eKlara is described in Handledning för eKlara (eKlara guidelines in Swedish) on eKlara's starting page. Instructions can also be found under the blue icons in the application form. Log into eKlara, go to Söka medel (Apply for grants). After having read the instructions on the page Söka medel (Apply for grants), go to the form Programstöd (Programme grant).
Ansökningsformuläret (the on-line application form) PROGRAMANSVARIG (PROGRAMME RESPONSIBLE)
The application should be written using the eKlara user account of the person responsible for the programme.
The researcher in charge of the programme has the scientific responsibility for the programme and will be representing the programme in all contacts with FAS. This person should have a relevant background and at least the qualifications required for appointment as an associate professor (docent). Only one person can be the programme responsible.
PROGRAMTITEL PÅ SVENSKA (PROGRAMME TITLE IN SWEDISH)
The empty field contains the word ‘Programstöd’; leave this text intact and add ‘Åldrande och hälsa’. The result should read Programstöd Åldrande och hälsa: After this fill in the programme title in Swedish, maximum 200 characters altogether including spaces.
PROGRAMTITEL PÅ ENGELSKA (PROGRAMME TITLE IN ENGLISH) The blank box contains the words "Programme grant"; leave this text intact and add ‘Ageing and health’: and a translation of the Swedish title into English, maximum 200 characters including spaces.
PROGRAMMETS HEMVIST (HOME INSTITUTION OF THE PROGRAMME)
Indicate the name of the institution where the programme will be carried out or, if it is collaboration between institutions, where most of the programme
The applicant’s home institution will appear automatically in the electronic form. If the programme takes place somewhere else, please mark the box Annan institution (Other institution) and fill in the university/college, institution or equivalent in the appearing empty field.
SÖKS HOS FAS (AMOUNT APPLIED FOR FROM FAS)
Fill in 3,000,000 Swedish crowns (SEK) for each of the six years of the programme grant without any spaces or signs between the numbers. SAMMANFATTNING (ABSTRACT)
The abstract should be written with the purpose of giving FAS’ evaluators and decision-makers complete information about the content of the proposed programme.
The abstract should be able to stand on its own, which is why you should make no references to other parts of the outline. It is important that laymen will also be able to understand the abstract.
The abstract must not exceed 2,000 characters including spaces. Ekonomi (Budget)
Use the eKlara appendix template Ekonomi (available in English at the bottom of the application form). Please follow the instructions available in Handledning för eKlara (eKlara guidelines) regarding how to handle the appendix templates etc.
SPECIFICATION OF FUNDS
Give a broad overview of how you plan to spend the programme grant over the first three years. Fill in the personnel costs, including social security contributions, of the persons that will draw salary from the programme grant as well as other programme costs to be covered by the grant. Also, please add your university’s indirect costs for administration and premises (if applicable) in per cent.
It should be noted that the indicated distribution between personnel and other costs is not binding; grant recipients are allowed to change the financial distribution.
INDIRECT COSTS
As of January 1, 2010 there is no agreement between FAS and SUHF (The Association of Swedish Higher Education) concerning indirect costs for external research grants. This means that in the current application procedure there are no pre-set percentages for indirect costs. Under this heading the percentage calculated for the project should be entered. The model used for calculating the indirect costs should be described in the Projektbeskrivning (Project description).
FUNDING SOURCES
Fill in all other funding received by the programme group. Please indicate the name of the funding organisation (contributor), the project leader (principal investigator), project title, project period and funding amount (grant). OTHER INFORMATION
Indicate here if the programme application has any relation to ongoing programmes or project grants funded by FAS. Please fill in the FAS reference numbers of such grants and attach abstracts of these in the programme description.
Personal (Personnel appendix)
The personnel appendix should be written using the eKlara template
Personalbilaga (available in English only). Mall 1 (Template 1) is for personnel teams of 1-7 persons, while mall 2 (Template 2) is for programmes with 1-14 persons. Please follow the instructions available in Handledning för eKlara (eKlara guidelines) regarding how to handle the appendix templates etc.
The appendix should include the current composition of the research group and qualifications of its members. Please fill in the names, academic titles, institutions, gender (write male or female), year of birth, year of obtaining the Ph.D., as well as the academic research area/discipline of Ph.D. thesis (e.g. sociology).
Please remember to use English also when filling in titles, institution and research area.
Programbeskrivning (Programme description)
The appendix should be written using the eKlara appendix template
Projektbeskrivning (Project description). Please follow the instructions available in Handledning för eKlara (eKlara guidelines) about how to handle the
The project description should be written in English and be maximum 10 A4 pages plus a list of references of maximum one A4 page and a list of
publications. All separate pages should be merged into one document. The programme description should:
• Define the programme area and present the problems the group will work on.
• Develop the fundamental idea of the research programme and the research tasks contained.
• Present the relation between the proposed research activities with earlier research and describe what methods will be used.
• Account for how the research group was formed, previous activities carried out by the group, as well as the current composition and seniority of the group. The programme grants are forward-looking, which is why it is important that the group contains senior as well as younger researchers.
• The Swedish and international research contacts of the group should be well developed. Name any collaboration partners, nationally or internationally, with whom cooperation is planned or already has been established.
• Account for any existing plans at this stage of scientific publication and how information about the programme and its results will be
disseminated outside the scientific community.
• Comment on the budget overview that was submitted in the appendix Ekonomi.
The programme description should furthermore contain a list of publications in which the members of the research group collectively present publications from the past five years in the research area for which it is applying.
In the list of publications, please mark the publications that are attached to the application (maximum five of the internationally most important
publications, five copies of each). Meritförteckningar (CVs)
The appendix should be written using the eKlara appendix template Meritförteckningar. Please follow the instructions available in Handledning för eKlara (eKlara guidelines) about how to handle the appendix templates etc.
Attach CVs that are maximum two A4 pages per person for each of the persons working in the programme. The CVs should be compiled into one document.
The CVs should be written in English and contain information about
education, employment and earlier larger research grants (project title, funding agency, amount, and year). The programme responsible should also account for which other research projects he or she will be leading during the time of the programme.
Submission of the application
The application should be submitted electronically via FAS’ web service eKlara (http://eklara.fas.se) and in a signed hard copy version to FAS together with five photocopied versions of the application and the submitted publications . The programme leader has the scientific responsibility of the activities. Once the E-klara form has been filled in and all templates are in place, click Skicka in. To confirm the submission to FAS you will receive a page with the registration number of the application and instructions on how to print, sign and send the application to FAS, Box 894, 111 60 Stockholm, Sweden.
Deadline for sending in the electronic application is Tuesday 16 April 2013, 5 pm CET. The printed and signed hard copy version of the application must similarly be submitted by post to FAS by 16 April 2013. The hard copy of the application must be signed by the programme leader and the Head of
department of the higher education institution or equivalent.
Note that the entire outline, i.e. the first page as well as all the appendices, should be submitted on single-sided paper. The copies may be printed on double sided paper.
All information submitted in the application must be in English in order for the international reviewers to be able to read it.
More information
Questions concerning the administration of the applications can be directed to the Secretary General of FAS, Erland Hjelmquist, tel: +46 8 775 40 71, e-mail
erland.hjelmquist@fas.se , the Programme Director of FAS, Lars Wärngård, tel: +46 8 775 40 91, e-mail lars.warngard@fas.se or Research Secretary Carin Håkansta, tel: +46 8 775 4072, e-mail carin.hakansta@fas.se.
Please contact Ms. Susanne Gabrielsson, Programme administrator, tel: +46 8 775 40 84, e-mail sg@fas.se, or Ninnie McCabe, Programme administrator, tel: +46 8 775 40 98, e-mail ninnie.mccabe@fas.se.
