The OfRI Services & Support Unit constitutes three activities:
- The Meharry Research Concierge Service (MeRCury); A first-stop shop for research administration help. MeRCury maintains ResearchPoint, Meharry’s internal research administration information site.
- The Meharry Office of Scientific Editing & Publications (MOSEP); Editing services for grants, manuscripts, and everything else. In that order.
- Community-Engaged Research Administration (CERA); Helping community partners navigate the acronym-laden halls of academia and advocating for their needs.
MeRCury: Meharry Research Concierge Services
MeRCury is a first-stop research administration help desk. If you don’t even know what to ask, let alone whom, contact us. If we can’t resolve the issue, we’ll find someone who can. Reach us through Yammer, Zendesk, or email MeRCuryhelp@mmc.edu. If you think you know what you need, but have lost track of the process, check out our Quick Answers page in ResearchPoint for links and guidance. Log in with your MMC credentials.
We can’t do it for you, but we can make it much easier.
Meharry Office for Scientific Editing & Publications
Scientific editing goes beyond simple proofreading and delves into the syntax and effectiveness of what’s being communicated while assessing the consistency of technical details. The well-crafted dissemination of a scientific discovery is the fuel of knowledge. MOSEP can help you get there.
Understand and be understood.
Review our guidelines and SOPs, and glean insight in the Editor’s Corner.
CERA: Community-Engaged Research Administration
Community engaged researchers regularly identify academic infrastructures as barriers to successful community based organization (CBO)/academic research partnerships.
Community Based Organizations often…
- do not have Federal-wide assurances
- do not have established Facilities & Administration rates
- are not human-subjects research trained
- do not know what an IRB is, or what they want
- need the tools and methods of research for program evaluation
- do not trust academic partners
Academic institutions often…
- do not know how to apply federal accounting regs to non-research orgs
- do not grant CBOs access to research resources
- do not consider program evaluation as research
- have not earned the trust of community organizations
CERA is a function of the Research Concierge Services that advocates for the needs of our community partners and supports the work of our community engaged researchers. Read about our rationale here.
Because this is Home.
CERA in Action
In 2018, Meharry’s Office for Research & Innovation was selected as one of three “backbone” organizations to the collective impact initiative All Children Excel Nashville. The other backbone partners are the Metro Nashville Public Health Department and Nurture the Next. A.C.E. Nashville is working upstream of health equity issues by addressing adverse childhood experiences in Davidson County through Policy, Trauma Informed Care, Parent & Community Education, Pediatrics, and Data Sharing. Involvement in the collective, centered in the CERA activity, has led to a subcontract from Yale University to Meharry to test a police-domestic violence assessment protocol, two State of Tennessee ‘Building Strong Brains’ awards, funding from The Frist Foundation for Meharry to support data integration between A.C.E. Nashville members, and Meharry’s inclusion on the State’s Child Sex Abuse Prevention Committee Data and Analysis team and the TN Young Child Wellness Council Data Action Team.
By being a good-faith partner to A.C.E. Nashville since 2015, the Office for Research & Innovation has elevated Meharry’s profile in the ACEs movement across the U.S. and earned the trust of the dozens of non-profit and government agencies working to prevent and mitigate adverse childhood experiences in Nashville; a major source of health inequity and primary driver of health disparities.
Learn more about A.C.E. Nashville.
