OREF Highlights 
In another effort to encourage and enhance the research abilities of young orthopaedic surgeons, OREF, with the ORS and AAOS, organized its first Grant Writing Workshop in 2000. The event provides recipients of the Clinical Research Awards, OREF Career Development Awards, Prospective Clinical Research Awards, and Research Grants with the opportunity to have their sample grant applications reviewed by experienced NIH-quality researchers. These reviewers offer advice on ways to improve the applications to increase their chances for NIH acceptance. Responses to Grant Writing Workshop surveys have included statements such as: "I appreciated the honest feedback and the time and energy commitment from the prestigious faculty."
"The Grant Writing Workshop was a great course, well organized and extremely helpful."
"The discussion of the opportunities available to submit grants, though difficult, is the best of the whole experience."
| Applying the techniques learned at the program increases the probability that an OREF grant recipient will secure highly competitive NIH funding. Since Richard A. Brand, M.D., a former ORS president and program chair of OREF's Grant Writing Workshop, developed the concept in 2000, 37 people have attended. Out of those attendees, nearly 30% have received NIH funding. RETURN TO OREF HIGHLIGHTS |
"The need for this workshop arose when we learned how remarkably few orthopaedic surgeons obtained NIH grants, and that the amount of NIH funding for orthopaedic surgeons had decreased despite increases in available money. We would hope that eventually as many as 50-100 orthopaedic surgeons would be principal investigators on such grants."