Important Updates

Activity 1 Immunization Education Campaign 

With thanks to the NIFA staff for their persistence to work through processes, the Extension Foundation has received the EXCITE RFA on  Monday afternoon of this week.  Extension Foundation has returned the response within 48 hours for a NIFA expedited review.   We still do not have a date for funding, but we are getting closer to being able to announce that. Watch for that announcement in an upcoming newsletter.

The RFA is an important step and we are now able to provide the contract information for the pre-decisional application for Activity 1.  It is now available in the application for download. We will not have the CFDA and Opportunity numbers to provide to you until we have a signed RFA with NIFA. We will provide that as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

Due to the delay in getting the contract information, we have extended the deadline for Activity 1 to May 7, 2021.  This provides more time to work with the timeframe needed for most grant and contract offices.

If you have any questions about the application process, please participate in our Tuesday 4-5 Eastern application consultations.  All are welcome.  You may also contact Tira Adelman (  @extension.org) about any specific contract questions.

May 6, 2021 EXCITE Huddle

This will be the first of monthly organizational and professional development experiences for those involved in Activity 1 and Activity 2.  EXCITE huddles will be held the first Thursday of each month from 3-4 Eastern throughout the coming year so please hold the dates on your calendar.

The May meeting will include two foci:  1) introduction by CDC to  potential partner organizations  including Association of Immunization Managers (AIM)  and 2) Your success stories selected from the national registry.

Please Report Existing Immunization Education Efforts

Please place existing immunization education efforts in the National Registry now so that we can have some system sharing of resources, ideas and tools for this work.

From USDA-NIFA: National Center for Farmworker Health Grants

We are now accepting applications for projects to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on farmworker families. Nonprofit organizations, agricultural employers, and others are encouraged to apply to support programming around COVID-19 vaccination, testing, treatment and prevention.

Proposals that focus on harder-to-reach populations, such as communities of indigenous farmworkers, H-2A guest workers, and farmworkers living in congregate housing and/or working in extremely remote rural areas will be prioritized for funding.

Awards go up to $100,000 with the majority of recipients receiving $50,000 or less.

Grants will be awarded on a rolling basis with an expected project period beginning as early April 16, 2021 through September 29, 2021.

Please see the Request for Proposals for more detailed eligibility information and reporting requirements.

Programmatic Leadership for EXCITE 

Please join me in welcoming 3 of our own Extension specialists to important leadership roles in this project.  Katherine (Katie) Stofer from University of Florida will serve as the Assistant Director.  In our search for assistant director, we also found expertise for our contract for market research and evaluation.  Instead of hiring an outside consultant we are contracting with Lindsey Hanes-Maslow , North Carolina State  to provide leadership for market research and Laura Downey, Mississippi State as Evaluation lead for EXCITE.

We are currently working on contacts with their institutions and will be officially on board we hope by mid-April.  This is a dynamite group of professionals and I am very EXCITED to work with them on programmatic efforts of this project.  It is thrilling to be able to have this expertise within the Extension System who bring organizational knowledge along with their expertise area.  Here’s a bit more about each of our team members.  You will have an opportunity to work with each of them in the coming weeks.

Dr. Lindsey Haynes-Maslow is an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University.  Dr. Haynes-Maslow is a mixed methods researcher who examines practices and policies that lead to healthy behaviors. She has over 15 years of experience working with non-profit, private, and public organizations that focus addressing health disparities in low-resource communities.  Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of NC State’s SNAP-Education program, Steps to Health, where she helps to develop and oversee social marketing campaigns and message testing.  She has a Ph.D. in Health Policy and Management and a Masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Katie Stofer is a research assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. She focuses her research on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, especially in free-choice or informal education and outreach settings, with an emphasis on making STEM evident in agricultural education. Stofer’s primary interests center on how the public gathers, makes meaning from and uses current scientific research findings, and how that use relates to their science identities. Stofer collaborates with scientists doing basic research to help them design innovative outreach projects around their work. She turns her research into practice by helping scientists and formal and informal educators improve their public engagement. Stofer holds a bachelors’ of science in biology from the California Institute of Technology, master’s degree from Boston University in science journalism, and Ph.D. from Oregon State University, studying science education in informal science learning settings. She has also worked for 10 years in public engagement at various science museums and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.