Requests for Proposals

The Request for Proposals web portal, or RFP, can be found here.

To access this resource, you need a valid UCLA login which you can create at https://accounts.iam.ucla.edu. Instructions for making a login are available on that site, but for additional guidance please reference the document below.

Upon registering an account, you will be directed to the RFP project proposal landing page. Project submissions are rolling and segmented into yearly chunks.

*You will need to submit a letter of intent (LOI) along with your request for review.

Example:

"This study investigates the benefits of a yoga-based intervention for the physical health and wellbeing of autistic individuals. Specifically, the study investigates whether participation in a yoga program with autistic peers can lessen feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression. In addition, we investigate any changes related to gross motor skills following participation in the course. We hypothesize that participants will see improvements in these areas. As such, the implementation of this study within the ICR will provide additional resources for autistic adolescents, and the results may be relevant in advocating for more similar programs. We hope to use the ICR’s study material distribution methodology more readily reach participants as well as expand of the project to other sites within the AIR-P network."

Example:

"This study is designed as a longitudinal waitlist control trial in which participants are randomly assigned to active and control groups. All research was approved by the UCLA Institutional Review Board (IRB#XX-XXXXXX). Participants and their parents completed two rounds of electronically-delivered surveys before and after participating in either a 15-week yoga class or a 15-week waiting period. Among the included surveys are the social responsiveness scale (SRS) and Motor Assessment Battery for Children Checklist (MABC-C). Classes are structured as group sessions led by an instructor. In addition, participants are paired one-to-one with a buddy for the course."

Example:

"Surveys and outreach emails are delivered at appropriate reading levels based on our different sub-groupings. Recruitment into the study was conducted as broadly as possible to allow for as diverse of a participant pool as possible. This includes outreach to our network clinics, community advocacy groups, and local schools. Many of the surveys used in this study require participants to answer questions, all participants are screened based on the expressive language subsection of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. In cases where the surveys may not be appropriate for an individual’s communication style, the yoga class has been made available without the requirement to participate in the research study."

Example:

"Study materials have been reviewed and approved by members of our community board, many of whom belong to the autistic community. With their input, our recruitment flyers were made to be considerably more neutral in color to create a calmer reading experience. Autistic community members are invited to join the yoga course – whether or not they participate in data collection. Finally, all instructors and volunteers for the yoga classes have received training on neurodiversity and adaptive teaching styles from members of the autism community."

Your application(s) can be seen in the RFP, along with it's status which denotes how far along into the process our reviewers have gotten. For more details, please reference our Review Process sub-page.

If a project is accepted into the ICR, a private workspace is automatically generated for all members of that study group. This feature is designed to promote collaborate by providing an easy method to share updates and progress. This may include, but is not limited to changes to an IRB, modified consent documents, and posting rights to a forum where one can ask project specific questions. All materials are easily downloaded, either alone or in batch through an intuitive website design. 

Next steps after acceptance

1.  Amend your IRB with ICR-provided terminology to allow for data collection. Link Here

*If the IRB requests further information about the repository, please use this language to provide context.  The ICR is approved by the UCLA IRB#21-002116

Statement of data to include in the Infrastructure for Collaborative Research (ICR):

"Data collected during this study will be included in the Infrastructure for Collaborative Research (ICR) data repository at UCLA. The purpose of this study is to create a data repository that promotes collaborative research related to Autism. UCLA does not maintain control over any study-specific activities, and the UCLA IRB is not set up for a reliance structure. With regards to this study, UCLA will host and manage a REDCap database for data collection and serve as a data repository for data collected [insert name of institution]. UCLA collaborates with a number of academic institutions. Identified data will be uploaded to a secure database managed by UCLA that can be accessed for data analysis efforts regarding Autism."

**If the IRB requires further context beyond the lay summary, please contact ICR Staff at ICR@mednet.ucla.edu or your fellow collaborators on the project workspace.