The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Undergraduate Scholarship Program (UGSP) offers competitive scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are committed to careers in biomedical, behavioral, and social science health-related research. The program offers:

• Scholarship support
• Paid research training at the NIH during the summer
• Paid employment and training at the NIH after graduation

SCHOLARSHIP REQUIREMENTS
The NIH Undergraduate Scholarships are awarded on a competitive basis to students who show a commitment to pursuing careers in biomedical, behavioral, and social science health-related research. The following are the basic requirements:

• U.S. citizen, national, or qualified non-citizen.
• Enrolled or accepted for enrollment as a full-time student for the 2012-2013 academic year at an accredited, 4-year undergraduate institution.
• High school seniors are not eligible to apply.
• 3.5 GPA or higher (on a 4.0 scale) or within the top 5 percent of your class.
• From a disadvantaged background. Disadvantaged background means that your financial aid office has certified you as having "exceptional financial need." (Federal Register, Vol. 76, No. 51)

Scholarship Support

The NIH UGSP will pay up to $20,000 per academic year in tuition, educational expenses, and reasonable living expenses to scholarship recipients. Scholarships are awarded for 1 year, and can be renewed up to 4 years.

The scope of the quality improvement program is organization wide and includes activities that monitor and evaluate all phases of the health care delivery system through objective, criteria-based audits, outcome audits, tracking tools, and reporting systems.

“Quality Improvement” (QI) refers to the betterment or enhancement of programs or services. QI develops solutions to the problems noted in the quality reviews and progress reports. Tools used to improve quality include referencing clinical standards, tracking defined programs and measuring outcomes and key indicators, and benchmarking against programs with high levels of performance.

Setting goals with patients is an important step in helping them self-manage their own health-related behaviors. Experienced healthcare teams find that following the two basic principles described below helps patients have more early success, and small successes one after the other builds confidence and effective self-management.

High quality goals are patient-centered and behaviorally specific. Developing high quality goals increases the likelihood of early and sustained self-management success. Modeled after one team’s efforts, the rating scale below represents a simple way to assess if the goals we set are behaviorally specific.

Health Centers can reduce their liability for lawsuits by ensuring they are eligible for coverage by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which offers protection akin to medical malpractice insurance to federally-funded Migrant and Community Health Centers. Since Health Centers are required to refer patients to medically-necessary specialty care services that are not within their capacity to provide, it is important to be consider the Health Center’s coverage and potential exposure in the event that problems arise connected to the referral.