• NIEHS challenge grants aim to improve public health through a better understanding of environmental interactions.medical research image by Albert Lozano from Fotolia.com
  
  The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is one of the many research institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIEHS is tasked with researching how the environment affects human disease to ultimately reduce human illness and disability as a result of environmental factors. One way that organizations such as NIEHS encourage cutting-edge research on current health topics is through competitive grant programs, such as the challenge programs, which focus on funding challenging topics in health research.
  
  

The Transition from Acute to Chronic Neuropathic Pain

• This grant program, in collaboration with several other NIH institutes, provides funding to advance the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to support research that will accelerate discoveries related to nervous system disorders. This particular challenge grant will fund proposals to encourage research collaboration among pain scientists and neuroscientists to better understand how acute pain becomes chronic pain. A wide variety of organizations are eligible applicants, including intuitions of higher education, nonprofits, small businesses, state governments and other organizations. The partner institutes are committing approximately $5,000,000 to this program as of August, 2010.
  
  

Developing Novel Drugs for Disorders of the Nervous System

• Several agencies of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including NIEHS, are offering research grants to develop drugs to treat nervous system disorders. The grant program aims to develop at least one new drug that effectively treats a nervous system disorder. In addition to $125,000 (as of August, 2010) of funding per year for approximately, 10 grant recipients also receive access free of charge to drug development services. Some specific disorders eligible for research include dementia of aging, drug and alcohol dependence, and psychiatric and developmental disorders. Eligible applicants include institutions of higher education, nonprofits, small businesses, for-profit organizations and other agencies of the federal government.
  
  

Health and Science Research

• As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the National Institutes of Health, including NIEHS, set aside approximately $200 million in funding to support research proposals to address specific research topics that have the potential to impact public health, as well as biomedical and behavioral science. Specific to NIEHS, selected research areas included in the Challenge program include methods to evaluate the health and safety of nanomaterials, measuring the burden of emerging contaminants on the human body, and 3-D or virtual models to reduce use of animals in research.