Annual Program Selection Conference

The Annual Program Selection Conference is held in early March on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Washington, D.C. All finalist applicants will be required to attend; the program will cover travel costs for finalists from their home institutions.

At this conference, finalists have the opportunity to briefly meet with representatives from domestic and international FICRS training programs. After these meetings, both the finalists and representatives submit their preferences for individual assignments to a steering committee charged with making the final award decisions.

New Trainee Orientation Program

New Trainee participants will be brought together for a three-week orientation program in July in Washington, D.C., on the NIH campus, during which discussion and instruction of the following issues, among others, will take place:

• Clinical research: methods, statistics, epidemiology and critical thinking (via literature review, journal clubs, etc.)
• The design of clinical studies
• Bioethics: basics of bioethics, the peer review process, IRB/IEC, FWA, privacy, special populations, and legal issues
• Economics and Research
• Publications: scientific paper writing, authorship, ethics
• International health: organizations (WHO, World Bank, NGO, BILAT and Multilateral Governmental structures, Ministries of Health), issues, and diseases
• Student safety and student health
• Cultural competency: foreign languages, medical anthropology, cultural anthropology
• Collaboration among fellow students and foreign researchers
• Scientific writing
• Computer skills
• Responsibilities of a FICRS Scholar