The Sanford Center for Biobehavioral Research recently received a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence Grant (CoBRE) from the National Institutes of Health focused on eating disorders and obesity. North Dakota State University (NDSU) and the University of North Dakota (UND) are partners in this program. 

As part of this award, the CoBRE is sponsoring a Pilot Projects Program. This program is open to staff and faculty from Sanford, NDSU, and UND. The goal is to provide scientists and clinicians with the opportunity to conduct pilot studies which can ultimately lead to broader scientific investigations in the areas of eating disorders and obesity. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• risk factors or predictors of eating disorder behavior;
• illness-related mechanisms for onset and maintenance of eating disorders; 
• intervention-related mechanisms regarding treatment or prevention of eating disorders;
• factors that moderate the influence of risk factors or mechanism of eating disorder behavior;
• the prevalence of eating disordered behaviors in different populations; and
• the association between eating disordered behaviors and other health-related behaviors.

Two $50,000 awards will be made this year. Letters of Intent are due by October 15, 2021.

If you have any questions about the pilot project program, please reach out to Kathryn Bentley, RN, the Research Project Manager for Pilot Projects at Kathryn.Bentley@SanfordHealth.org or 701-365-4916.

All publications and presentations related to funded projects must be submitted to Sanford thirty (30) calendar days prior to the first submission of such proposed publication or presentation to a journal, editor, or third party.  Sanford will have twenty (20) calendar days after the receipt of the publication or presentation to review it and proved comments, including any claim that the proposed publication contains Sanford Confidential Information. This is not a publication restriction but a standard review for confidential/proprietary data and review for intellectual property that may need protection prior to publication.

All publications and presentations must make the following acknowledgement in an appropriate location: “Support for this project was provided by the Sanford Health – North Dakota State University Collaborative Research Seed Grant program.” If a grant number is required, this can be provided by the Sanford Research Grants Office.