# Designing and Implementing an Equity Planning Tool for International Research Partnerships

> **NIH NIH K01** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $187,677

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
The Fogarty International Center is at the forefront of advancing National Institutes of Health (NIH) support for
international research to promote health and reduce disease burden globally. A large part of this mission is
linked to the successful creation and maintenance of international partnerships between institutions and
research groups in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs). Equity
between LMIC and HIC research partners - defined as the prioritization of mutually beneficial inputs,
processes, outputs, outcomes, and impact - is an ethical and practical imperative needed to achieve
meaningful scientific aims and outputs within these partnerships that function in an inherently inequitable world.
Despite the importance of establishing formal equitable practices and several recommendations and guidelines
available to do so, tools for systematically acknowledging existing partnership inequities and methods to
overcome them are not well-described.
The goal of this proposal is to develop and pilot a pragmatic equity planning tool using experienced HIV-
focused research partnerships between Uganda, an LMIC, and the United States (US), a HIC, as a case series
given the dominance of the HIV epidemic on global health research paradigms over the past 40 years and the
continued focus as a priority for many research partnerships in Uganda and the US. This will be accomplished
through an explanatory quantitative to qualitative evaluation of these partnerships that generates a holistic
understanding of best practices and barriers to equitable research practices (Aim 1). These results will inform
the creation of an equity planning tool that consists of structured survey and focus group materials to
systematically evaluate an international research partnership and create a summative report that highlights
exemplar practices, identifies feasible areas for improvement, generates attainable program-level equity goals,
and creates an action plan to achieve those goals (Aim 2). The equity planning tool will then be prospectively
piloted and assessed for efficacy, feasibility, and acceptability within a research partnership (Aim 3).
Collectively, this proposal seeks to elucidate a tool to recognize and, importantly, rectify equity-related issues
and instigate change at a program level within international research partnerships. This K01 will provide Dr.
Chelsea Modlin with the training she requires in advanced qualitative and ethnographic methods including
reflexivity, empiric and applied methods in international research ethics, and developing global health program
assessment tools. This award will also support preliminary research findings needed to pursue R01 funding to
scale up the equity planning tool to other geographic areas and fields of global health research. This tool has
the potential to assist with ensuring that the ongoing research practices, outputs, and legacies of international
research collaborations ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10929500
- **Project number:** 5K01TW012694-02
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Chelsea Modlin
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $187,677
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-16 → 2028-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10929500

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10929500, Designing and Implementing an Equity Planning Tool for International Research Partnerships (5K01TW012694-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10929500. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*