The Shipley Academic Innovation Fund supports a broad range of innovative initiatives across the university that foster creativity, collaboration, and meaningful impact in teaching and learning.

Health Education Innovation Grants

This call for proposals is focused on advancing innovation in health education through interdisciplinary collaboration and convergent approaches to complex health and healthcare challenges.

We invite proposals that bring together expertise across disciplines and professional programs — including medicine, biology, data science, rehabilitation sciences, public health, occupational therapy, engineering, and related fields — to explore new models of teaching, learning, partnership, and knowledge exchange. Projects should demonstrate creativity, collaboration, and the potential to generate transformative impact within and across health-related educational contexts.

We seek proposals that advance bold, interdisciplinary approaches to health innovation and education.

Projects should demonstrate potential impact in one or more of the following areas:

  • Interdisciplinary Health Innovation. Advancing collaboration across disciplines, faculties, and professional programs to address complex health and healthcare challenges in novel ways.
  • Transformative Teaching and Learning Models. Designing, piloting, or scaling innovative educational approaches that rethink how learners engage with health, science, technology, data, and human-centered care.
  • Cross-Sector and Convergent Collaboration. Creating meaningful connections among fields such as medicine, biology, data science, engineering, rehabilitation sciences, public health, social work, occupational therapy, and related disciplines to generate new forms of inquiry and learning.
  • Innovation Capacity and Scholarly Experimentation. Supporting faculty and learner capacity to test emerging ideas, pedagogies, technologies, and partnership models in health education and innovation.
  • Inclusive and Future-Ready Health Education. Advancing learning environments and educational practices that foster inclusion, belonging, accessibility, and responsiveness to evolving societal and healthcare needs.
  • Strategic and Institutional Impact. Aligning with university strategic priorities while contributing scalable models, sustainable partnerships, or broader cultural change across programs and units.

Awardees will be designated Shipley Health Education Innovation Fellows, featured in internal communications, and invited to present their projects at an end-of-year Innovation Showcase.

Information Session

Interested in learning more?
Attend our information session and learn more about opportunities for collaboration across disciplines and units.

May 28, 2026 | 8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.
Co-hosted at McCahan Medical Education Day
BU Medical Campus
72 East Concord, St., Room L213

Learn More

Grant Types

Seed Grants ($10K)

Early-stage or pilot initiatives, course/module redesigns, proof-of-concept projects

Innovation Grants ($25K)

Larger-scale or program-level projects with measurable outcomes and clear potential for broader adoption

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Eligibility

Health Education Faculty, Leaders, Program Directors

Faculty across schools and colleges with an emphasis on health education are encouraged to collaborate and apply.

School/Department Individuals or Teams

Interdisciplinary collaboration is encouraged and interprofessional teams are especially welcome where appropriate.

Project Timeline

Projects would commence in fall of 2026 and move through spring of 2027.

Priority Areas

Proposals should address a significant educational challenge or opportunity in health education and incorporate digital innovation.

Projects that focus solely on established teaching best practices without a meaningful digital component and opportunity for greater impact at scale will not be competitive.

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Expected Outputs

Each funded project should incorporate at least a few of the following:

Transferability

A reusable teaching model, module, or toolkit.

Replicability

Documented case study that allows for impact at broader scale including in interprofessional education contexts where applicable.

Demonstration

Faculty workshop or demonstration.

Dissemination

Conference presentation or publication.

Application Requirements

  1. Description of the teaching and learning challenge/opportunity
  2. Proposed academic innovation
  3. Target learners
  4. Anticipated impacts
  5. Implementation plan and timeline
  6. Assessment/evaluation plan
  7. Potential for scaling/dissemination
  8. Letter of support from department chair(s)/dean(s)/BU leadership

DEADLINE: July 15, 2026

Please check back soon for application submission link!