The institute advances the health of the Hispanic community, ensuring the needs of the population are addressed when developing new drugs and life-saving therapies. It is closely tied to the Texas A&M Healthy South Texas initiative to improve the health of rural populations throughout the state.

The Clinical Research Seed Grant program, sponsored by the Global Institute for Hispanic Health (GIHH), seeks to foster and promote collaboration between Driscoll Children’s Hospital (DCH), the Driscoll Health Plan, and Texas A&M University Health Science Center to advance clinical research aimed at eliminating health care disparities in the Hispanic community. This program provides seed funding for clinical research projects with teams comprised of clinicians and scientists. Each grant of up to $25,000 maximum (no overhead allowed) will be awarded in July 2018.

Grant awards are based upon scientific merit and the project’s relevance to GIHH program goals of clinical, translational, and health services research projects in priority areas of diabetes and obesity, asthma, infectious diseases, neurological disorders, cancer, and the opioid epidemic. Proposals that leverage the Healthy South Texas platform or Driscoll health plan data are encouraged. The goal of the program is to support pilot research projects that will address the health needs of the South Texas population and that will lead to future extramural funding.