The DoD is offering this Melanoma Survivorship Research Award to improve the health and well-being of melanoma survivors.

The key aspects of this award are:

·        Impact: The SRA is intended to support research designed to have a major impact on the health and well-being of melanoma survivors, their families, and/or caregivers. Impactful research will accelerate the movement of promising ideas into clinical applications or other real-world applications and advance the field of melanoma-specific quality of life and survivorship.

·        Study Design: Applications should clearly articulate and justify the chosen study design. Studies proposing retrospective analyses or prospective enrollment should clearly describe the architecture of the study (e.g., descriptive, correlational, field experimental, meta-analyses) and the study population(s).  The study population(s) should be representative of the people who are anticipated to benefit from the research.  If applicable, questionnaires should be described in sufficient detail to justify interpretation of potential results. 

·        Melanoma Consumer Collaboration:  For the purposes of the SRA, a “melanoma consumer” is defined as a melanoma survivor, family member, and/or caregiver who can provide lived experience expertise to the research project team.  Applicants to the SRA are required to establish a collaborative research approach with the melanoma consumer community to maximize the impact and translatability of the research for the benefit of the intended melanoma community(ies).  The research team must include at least one melanoma consumer or a melanoma-community supporting organization who will be integral to the planning, execution, and implementation of the proposed research. The role of the melanoma consumer collaborator(s) should include providing objective input on the research question being addressed; the study design, execution, and evaluation; and the potential impact of the research outcomes on the health and well-being of melanoma survivors, their families, and/or their caregivers.  The melanoma consumer collaborator(s) should be active participants and integrated into the research team; their participation should not be limited only to passive activities (e.g., attending seminars or quarterly team meetings).  Additional information and resources for establishing a collaborative research approach with the melanoma consumer community is provided below.

Other Important Considerations:

Collaborative Research Approaches:  Collaborative research approaches create partnerships between scientific researchers and, for the purposes of the SRA, melanoma consumers to create knowledge useable by both sets of stakeholders. Recognizing the strengths of each partner, scientific researchers and melanoma consumers collaborate and contribute equitably on all aspects of the project, which may include needs assessment, planning, research intervention design, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination. Collaborative research approaches feature shared responsibility and ownership for the research project to ensure non-tokenistic involvement of the melanoma consumers within the research team. Research results are jointly interpreted, disseminated, and fed back to affected communities and in some instances may be translated into interventions or policy.

Collaborative relationships with the melanoma consumer community may be established through integrating melanoma consumers and/or melanoma-community supporting organizations into research teams as co-researchers, advisors, and/or consultants.  Examples for implementing collaborative research approaches are listed below, but each research team may pursue other options as appropriate for the proposed research:

·        The research team includes at least one melanoma consumer who will provide advice and consultation throughout the planning and implementation of the research project.  The consumer(s) should be able to speak to the needs of the melanoma consumer community, not just speak to their own personal experiences.   

·        The research team establishes partnerships with at least one community-supporting organization that provides advice and consultation throughout the planning and implementation of the research project. Community-supporting organizations may include advocacy groups or other formal organizational stakeholders that can speak to the needs of the melanoma consumer community.

·        The research team assembles a melanoma consumer community advisory board. The advisory board may include melanoma consumers, a coalition of community-supporting organizations, or any combination thereof that provides advice and consultation throughout the planning and implementation of the overall program and/or individual research projects.