On Why I Started Writing Grants|Andrew Oberle
My grant writing why, the reasons I’m interested in writing grants, is intimately connected to my personal journey of surviving to thriving. After being viciously mauled by chimpanzees and nearly losing my life in 2012, and during the following several years of recovery, I asked myself ‘why?’ countless times. Why did this happen to me? Why did I survive? These questions repeated in my head as I fought through excruciating surgeries and dressing changes and the struggle of learning to walk again. However, in 2015, the answer to ‘why?’ started coming into greater focus. That summer, I was invited to join the Saint Louis Universality School of Medicine to lead the development of a new institute for helping trauma survivors thrive during recovery and beyond.
I started sharing my story throughout the SLU community and others who heard of what happened to me and wanted to help. Although it wasn’t an official grant application submission, creating a proposal around my ‘why’ and successfully presenting it to a generous family foundation was instrumental in being able to begin my work of helping other trauma survivors. The head of this family, Mr. Red McCombs, calls my story “the Miracle that Keeps Moving” and that he wanted to help keep it moving. He told me he’s been inspired by my strength and desire to help others like me. Without him, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.
That first $150,000 donation allowed me to become an official SLU employee and begin the next phase of my journey leading the Oberle Institute. Following that success, I met with experts around campus to develop our first trauma care-related program and research project. We created a pilot complementary therapy program aimed at fostering resilience and empowerment in trauma survivors during acute care, which included me serving as the PI and peer patient support specialist. Through sharing my mission and vision to help others, I’ve successfully raised over $300,000 in 5 years, plus a $500,000 gift as part of the will of another generous supporter.
All of the money I’ve raised through charitable giving, however, goes to supporting the work I personally do at SLU, leaving the need for other sources of revenue to fund other aspects of the Institute’s current and future programs and the research to prove their value for trauma survivors. For example, one of my goals is to identify new patients who may have more difficulty coping with their trauma than others as early as possible during acute care. These individuals are ideal candidates for the Oberle Institute’s patient empowerment program. But how do we identify them early? Resilience, a word I heard often during my own recovery, is a key construct responsible for helping one thrive in the face of adversity. If we can identify patients who report low resilience, we can potentially provide immediate crucial support to those who need it most. Unfortunately, screening every trauma patient for resilience or acute stress is resource intensive and not currently part of standard care.
Besides implementing a pilot screening program, we also need to figure out the most effective method for collecting these data in a busy Level I trauma department. This way, if we can prove the importance of screening patients for resilience upon being admitted to the hospital, we can make it standard practice and ensure it’s the most efficient way to do so. This issue is where I had my first experience with grant writing. To successfully implement this pilot project, we needed funding to support the nurses who would help us with data collection and purchase the devices to conduct the resilience surveys. Under the guidance of Dr. Vicki Moran, a faculty member and trauma expert in the School of Nursing, I wrote a grant proposal for this project and we submitted it to the Society of Trauma Nurses. Dr. Moran was instrumental in helping me concisely and systematically describe our study design and the processes we would need to successfully complete this project. She also helped me tailor the grant application for this specific funder; being a funding opportunity for projects that use nurses in research, she helped me best convey why this project is important to nursing. A few weeks after submitting our application, we were elated to learn that we had been awarded close to $11,000 to conduct our study.
After spending several months in the hospital visiting other trauma survivors, I realized a major gap in supporting these individuals occurred once they left the hospital and were, more or less, own their own. Understanding first-hand how scary and confusing this period can be, I wanted to do something to help address this need. As you may be able to tell, sharing my story is something I’m comfortable doing. I’ve done it basically non-stop for the last several years. Not only has it led to my new role in life helping others, it’s also helped me on a personal level tremendously. After looking through the literature, I also learned that story sharing is a powerful tool that helps people the cope with their trauma better understand and find meaning in their experience. Narrative medicine has been shown to reduce the symptoms and severity of PTSD and other negative effects of trauma. From my experience, this is absolutely true. This knowledge and my personal experience with the healing power of storytelling has led to Oberle Institute’s second program, a narrative exposure therapy program for trauma survivors. Under the guidance of Dr. Terri Weaver, a faculty member and trauma-related mental health expert in the Psychology Department, our team developed a research study to use this modality to help support gun violence survivors, a population in dire need of additional support after hospitalization.
Narrative exposure therapy is an intensive, time consuming treatment for both the trauma survivor and the therapist. It’s important that each patient have at least 8 sessions that can last up to 60 minutes each, plus pre, post, and follow-up screening for PTSD and other measures. We understood immediately that we needed additional financial support to conduct this project and first applied for funding through the SLU Applied Health Sciences Grant Program. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in our request for support. It was a disheartening experience but I didn’t want to give up on this idea. I knew that this was an important project that could help so many people suffering from horrendous trauma. So, I sought out the help of a professional grant writer and reviewer to help me refine our proposal to a submission that would be successful in the next Applied Health Sciences grant cycle. In line with the theme of these class reflections, he suggested an answer to the ‘why?’ question was missing from our first attempt and something that could drastically improve how we convey the importance of our project. Taking his advice, I revised our application, discussed the new structure with our research team, and resubmitted the following year. At the beginning of 2020, I received the congratulatory email from the grant program stating that we had been awarded $9,000 to get our program rolling.
I truly admire the approach to grant writing this course is taking because my grant writing ‘why’ and my life purpose ‘why’ are interconnected. As I continue my career and journey helping others, I’ll continue to focus on my ‘why’ because the answer to that Is the reason I’m still alive today and the guiding light in all the work I will do as I keep the miracle moving.
