By Amellia Fowler

UW–Madison’s Kate Somerville, a postdoctoral research fellow in the School Mental Health Collaborative within the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, has received a Pediatric Research Loan Repayment Program (LRP) award.

The award, presented by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), recognizes Somerville for her commitment to engage in National Institutes of Health (NIH) mission-relevant research. 

Somerville’s LRP project focuses on developing a Youth Participatory Action Research intervention to help school leaders engage youth in improving school-based mental health systems. Somerville said she is excited to be on the forefront of what appears to be a newly emerging funding priority for the NIH.

The NIH Loan Repayment Programs are a set of programs established by Congress to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals in biomedical or biobehavioral research careers. 

These LRPs help ease the financial pressure that leads some scientists to abandon their research careers by repaying up to $50,000 annually of a researcher’s qualified educational debt. In return, recipients commit to conducting research that aligns with the NIH mission.

According to the NIH, its mission is to “seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”