Day 1

My first experience working with the Ryan White foundation was an interesting one. After several attempts to meet with Gary Race, my supervisor, I finally just decided to go by his office in IIHHS. Walking into his office was a bit awkward, since we had never met before but I introduced myself anyways and asked about the proposals. He pointed to a stack of binders and papers and said "have at it", printed me off a bunch of evaluation sheets, and explained that he wanted me to read the proposals and evaluate them based on the RFP guidelines. I decided to tackle this pile one proposal at a time (since they were about 100 pages in length) and took the stack with me to my car and left. My next post will talk about my first experience reviewing and reading a medical related proposal.

Ryan White Foundation

This blog will be the place where I will discuss and reflect upon my experiences working with the Ryan White Foundation. The Ryan White Foundation provides HIV-related services in the United States for those who do not have sufficient health care coverage or financial resources for coping with HIV disease. The program fills gaps in care not met by other payers. It is named after a young boy who suffered from HIV and was expelled from school because of the public's' misunderstanding of the disease. He became the poster child for AIDS/HIV because of the discrimination he faced at such a young age.

My contribution to the foundation will be that of a grant editor. Several grants have been submitted for approval and the review process begins around March 15th. My role will be to read through the grants and make sure they fall in line with the RFP guidelines set forth by the foundation. I will begin reviewing these grants tomorrow and will be writing another post soon after.