Tayla von Ash Sc.D. is the newest recipient of the CHPHE Research Seed Award. CHPHE Seed Funds are specifically designed to catalyze competitive research proposals by supporting essential foundational work and fostering institutional collaborations. This strategic funding will pave the way for a major external grant application within a year of the project's completion.
The Stepping Stone to an NIH R01 Grant
The primary objective of this seed-funded project is to generate the preliminary data required for a highly competitive National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 proposal.
von Ash will collaborate with Diana Grigsby-Toussaint Ph.D. to examine the multilevel predictors of children’s sleep and physical activity behaviors in childcare settings. This collaboration bridges several distinct areas of expertise:
- Merging Health Behaviors: Because sleep and physical activity share a bidirectional relationship, expanding the study's scope is a natural next step. It also allows von Ash to merge her established expertise in sleep promotion with her physical activity research (developed through her other study, Moms on the Move).
- The Power of Greenspace: While greenspace has been linked to improved sleep and physical activity in home and school settings, it remains virtually unexamined in childcare environments.
Filling the Data Gap
A competitive NIH R01 proposal demands proof of feasibility. While the team already possesses strong preliminary data regarding sleep environments (from von Ash's project) and the buffering effects of greenspace on school-age children (from Grigsby-Toussaint’s ongoing R01), a critical gap remains.
Currently, there is no preliminary data exploring:
- The feasibility and variability of assessing childcare outdoor play environments and greenspaces.
- How these outdoor factors interact with sleep environments to impact a child's health behaviors.
The activities funded by this CHPHE award will bridge this exact gap—providing the crucial missing link and potentially contributing policy-relevant data to support healthy sleep and physical activity habits for young children.
Congratulations to Tayla and Diana! We look forward to seeing how this foundational work shapes the future of childcare health policy.