AMERICAN HIPPOTHERAPY ASSOCIATION RESEARCH GRANT UP TO $1,000.00 AWARD

Tim Shurtleff, AHA Grant Recipient

Research grant money is available from the American Hippotherapy Association, Inc. for PT/OT/SLP students, instructors or clinicians to complete empirical research measuring outcomes related to hippotherapy.

General Application Criteria:

  • Research studies which demonstrate empirical evidence of the efficacy of hippotherapy with the potential for publication
  • Application for granted funds should be sent prior to the recruitment of subjects and prior to data collection.
  • The primary researcher or faculty advisor must be a current member of the AHA Inc.

Purpose: The AHA research grant award has been established to provide a means of funding research projects that investigate the effect of hippotherapy in order to promote scientific, publishable hippotherapy research. This research can be related to the effectiveness of hippotherapy for children or adults. The funding priorities include but are not exclusively limited to:

  • Studies measuring functional outcomes from hippotherapy
  • Studies contrasting hippotherapy with other treatment approaches on specific functional outcomes
  • Studies developing appropriate assessment strategies for the measurement of treatment outcomes
  • Studies contributing to the theoretical basis of hippotherapy
  • Pilot studies which are a precursor to a larger scale research study. Pilot studies must address one of the priorities stated above and include a plan for submitting a proposal to another funding source that will support the subsequent study.

Budget: The grant review committee will determine the amount of awarded funds based on the projected budget. Grants may not exceed $1000 per research study. Note: It is understandable that the actual research study budget to exceed available funds from AHA. The max allocation of this grant may possibly cover a specific portion of the research budget. The applicant is expected to justify their need for support.

Funding Criteria: Expenses that may be covered by this grant include but are not limited to outcome measures, data collection, treatment phase, statistical analysis, treatment cost for subjects. The itemized budget submitted in the application should specifically address the anticipated costs in detail. Researchers should specify exactly how they intend to use granted funds from AHA. The committee reserves the right to allocate funds based on the justification of need and may request more information from the researcher to make any final determination before granting financial support. Funding will not be granted for travel, housing or living expenses.

Dissemination: Grant recipients are encouraged to submit the results of their study to a peer-reviewed journal. Recipients should report the results of the study in one of the following formats: 1) abstract or summary in the AHA newsletter: 2) poster presentation at a national meeting; or 3) platform presentation at a national meeting. National meetings include AHA annual conference or the researcher’s professional association. If submission of the study results is made to the researcher’s professional association a copy of acceptance of the project for presentation must be submitted to AHA. This information may be included in AHA publications to membership.

Review process: Applications are reviewed by the AHA Research Committee Chair for completeness. An independent review process will be conducted by the AHA Research Committee. All studies involving human subjects must be approved by a Human Subjects Review Committee.

Submission of proposal: Application forms may be downloaded from the AHA website or by request from the AHA research committee chair. The grant applicant should send the completed application to the AHA research chairperson electronically. The research chairperson will delete any identification of the investigators before the application documents are forwarded to the research committee members for review and scoring. An applicant can expect the review process to take approximately eight weeks.

Click here for Grant Application / under revision as of 11/15/2012

Research