Pursuant to the settlement of two connected Chancery Court cases in Davidson County, Tennessee, approximately $36 million in funding has been granted to six different organizations in the State for the purposes of implementing statewide initiatives designed to make lives better for older Tennesseans. The grants are in the following four different areas (as designated by the Court):
- Senior Affordable Housing—Funding is being granted to two distinct entities to provide home modifications to 1,778 Tennessee senior homeowners.
- Senior Legal Services—through a first-of-its-kind alliance, entities from across the State are to provide direct legal assistance (accessing benefits, avoiding elder abuse, core housing issues, and estate planning) to approximately 8,500 older Tennesseans.
- Senior Transportation—the creation and implementation of thirty new volunteer senior transportation projects across the State estimated to serve approximately 7,500 older Tennesseans.
- Senior Dental—through education, transportation, and care, the “Smile On” program will utilize a statewide network to provide services to an estimated 65,000 older Tennesseans.
The Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability has provided administrative support to help make the Court’s Orders happen. The agency worked with five different entities (known as “the Consortium”), chosen by the Court, to help direct and evaluate the proposal process. As the grant selection ended, the Commission and the Consortium discussed and confirmed with the Court the appropriateness of contracting with an entity or entities to evaluate the effectiveness of the overall effort in each of the four respective categories. The Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability is, therefore, soliciting projects from researchers across Tennessee for the purposes of evaluating the four key areas of interest as specifically designated by the Court. The objective is to select research projects across the state from public, not for profit research universities in order to evaluate the effectiveness of statewide efforts to improve health and health outcomes of older adults ages 60 and older. These research projects should seek to measure longitudinal change in oral health, housing, transportation, legal assistance, and/or overall quality of life of target populations and communities between 2018 and 2020. We hereby invite your institution to submit up to one research proposal in each of the following categories:
- Senior Dental Care
- Senior Affordable Housing
- Senior Transportation
- Senior Legal Assistance
Institutions are asked to submit no more than one proposal per category, and not more four proposals total. Throughout the process, the Court has made it clear, through its Orders, that the proceeds from the settlement were to go to directly impact older Tennesseans. Grant recipients were cautioned about over-utilizing the funds for administrative and indirect costs. With this in mind, research proposals of up to $100,000 per category will be considered. Any use of the funds that came out of the settlement (including this evaluation piece) must be approved, in advance, by the Court. If you would like to submit a proposal, please submit an electronic proposal by email on or before April 30, 2018. For each proposed project, please include a concise single-spaced proposal of no more than four pages that contains:
- Research Project title
- Research objectives
- Detailed methodology and brief literature review
- A description of principal data sets and availability, including a plan for procuring third-party data in a timely manner, if necessary. The availability of the data required for conducting the research should be verified prior to submitting a proposal.
- Budget showing the total cost of the project, detailing specific costs
- Curriculum vitae (CV) or bio-sketch of principal investigator
Should you have any questions about this request, please contact Emily Long at 615-741-1428. Ms. Long can also be reached by email at Emily.long@tn.gov. Interested faculty should submit an NOI to limitsub@utk.edu by March 28, 2018.