The NIH OBSSR supports a variety of training programs through the R25 mechanism to encourage the use of innovative methods and enhance the research capabilities of investigators conducting health-relevant behavioral and social sciences research.
Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials
The Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials provides an advanced course in planning, designing, and conducting high-impact randomized controlled trials of health-related behavioral interventions. The course emphasizes programmatic research and prepares fellows to lead or collaborate on systematic efforts to develop and improve health-related behavioral interventions and conduct rigorous, high-impact behavioral trials.
Institute for Implementation Science Scholars
Debra Haire-Joshu, Ross C. Brownson
The Institute for Implementation Science Scholars is a mentored training program for postdoctoral scholars interested in applying dissemination and implementation research to proven behavioral and social science research to eliminate chronic disease disparities. This Institute is hosted by Washington University and is held in St. Louis each summer.
ORBIT Institute: Developing Behavioral Treatments to Improve Health
The ORBIT Institute: Developing Behavioral Treatments to Improve Health short course trains fellows in behavioral intervention development for cancer prevention and treatment as well as related health behaviors. The course consists of an in-person workshop, activities, and assigned readings, followed by a series of biweekly webinars, an individual consultation with one ORBIT Core Faculty member, and program evaluation surveys.
mHealth Training Institute (mHTI)
The mHTI is a national connector/incubator/facilitator for advancing mHealth researchers with the transdisciplinary expertise and networks for co-creating practical health care solutions with societal impact. Through a blended learning approach combining virtual coursework and an in-person institute, the mHTI helps the selected scholars develop a shared vocabulary and conceptual framework, acquire core domain expertise in latest mHealth technologies and methodologies, and get practical experience in cross-disciplinary mHealth innovation.
Michigan Integrative Well-Being and Inequality Summer (MIWI) Training Program
The MIWI Training Program is a state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary methods training program that prepares participating scholars to investigate the intersection of mental and physical health, with an emphasis on how this intersection relates to health disparities. The training encompasses the conceptual frameworks, study designs, data collection needs, and analytic approaches necessary to conduct this innovative research. The program includes an intensive 3-day summer institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, followed by ongoing collaboration with a mentorship team.
Modelers and Storytellers: Transdisciplinary Training to Advance Community Health Intervention Research
May C. Wang, Michael Prelip, Hua Zhou
The Modelers and Storytellers Transdisciplinary Training is a 2-week virtual summer research education program that prepares predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees, as well as early career researchers, to apply systems and data science methods to community-engaged health disparities research. The goal is to accelerate the translation of research into practice to address real-world, complex health issues, especially as they relate to health disparities.
Introduction to the Multiphase Optimization STrategy (MOST)
The MOST training course is aimed at intervention scientists working in any area—public health, education, criminal justice, and others—who are interested in learning about an innovative framework for conducting intervention research. The course shows participants how to use MOST to streamline interventions by eliminating inactive components, identify the combination of components that offers the greatest effectiveness without exceeding a defined implementation budget, develop interventions for immediate scalability, look inside the “black box” to understand which intervention components work and which do not, and improve interventions programmatically over time.
Short Trainings on Methods for Recruiting, Sampling, and Counting Hard-to-Reach Populations: The H2R Training Program
Ali Mirzazadeh, Sean Arayasirikul, David Glidden, Willi McFarland
The H2R Training Program provides students and mentors with state-of-the-art methods for sampling, estimating population size, analyzing bias, and engaging hard-to-reach populations in behavioral, social sciences, and clinical research.
Short Course on the Application of Machine Learning for Automated Quantification of Behavior
Vivek Kumar, Ishmail Abdus-Saboor
The Short Course on the Application of Machine Learning for Automated Quantification of Behavior covers the fundamentals of quantitative behavior analysis, machine learning, and data science. Through a combination of scientific lectures and hands-on trainings, participants learn how to implement machine learning methods for behavior quantification and modeling, gaining insights and skills that help to advance their research.
