Key Dates

Related Announcements

• November 18, 2024 - Pragmatic Trials across the Cancer Control Continuum (UG3/UH3 Clinical Trial Required). See  PAR-25-072.
• November 12, 2024 - Cancer Prevention and Control Clinical Trials Grant Program (R01 Clinical Trial Required). See  PAR-25-167.
• November 08, 2024 - Exploratory Grants in Cancer Control (R21 Clinical Trial Optional). See  PA-25-253.
• November 07, 2024 - Modular R01s in Cancer Control and Population Sciences (R01 Clinical Trial Optional). See  PA-25-172.
• October 31, 2024 - Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R21 Clinical Trial Optional). See  PAR-25-143.
• October 30, 2024 - Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R03 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). See  PAR-25-233.
• October 30, 2024 - Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R01 Clinical Trial Optional). See  PAR-25-144.
• October 18, 2024 - NCI Small Grants Program for Cancer Research (NCI Omnibus) (R03 Clinical Trial Optional). See  PAR-25-078.
• August 27, 2024 - Advancing Healthcare for Older Adults from Populations that Experience Health Disparities (R01 - Clinical Trial Optional). See  PAR-24-273.
• December 20, 2023 - Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant (clinical trial not allowed). See  PAR-24-075.
• December 14, 2022 - National Cancer Institute Program Project Applications for the Years 2023, 2024, and 2025 (P01 Clinical Trial Optional). See PAR-23-059.

Issued by

National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Purpose

This Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) highlights the NCI Healthcare Delivery Research Program's interest in receiving applications focused on understanding and improving interprofessional teamwork and coordination during cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Background

Care coordination challenges are growing as expanding treatment options, multi-modality treatment regimens, and an aging population with comorbidities intensify demands for interprofessional team-based cancer care. Improving interprofessional, team-based cancer care was also identified as a priority in workshops focused on cancer care quality and the cancer care workforce convened by the National Cancer Policy Forum of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Planning and delivering comprehensive care during diagnosis and cancer treatment increasingly involves large, distributed teams often including patients, formal and informal caregivers, oncology specialists and advanced practice professionals, nursing, pathology, imaging, genetic specialists and counselors, primary care, mental health, pharmacists, rehabilitation professionals, palliative and supportive care, patient navigators, home health, social workers, and others. For many patients, these interprofessional teams must coordinate care decisions and tasks across inpatient, outpatient, home, community, and tertiary academic settings. Given interprofessional team members are not co-located, teamwork must often occur virtually, using health information technology or other tools (e.g., virtual tumor boards). The effectiveness of interprofessional teamwork and coordination across care settings impacts patient’s clinical outcomes and experience.

Research Objectives

This purpose of this NOSI is to stimulate research that identifies effective strategies for improving interprofessional teamwork and addresses care coordination challenges within care settings and between care settings (e.g., between tertiary care and community settings or home-based care) or during care transitions (e.g., inpatient to outpatient care or home-based care). Research in this area should advance actionable knowledge about how to design and carry out effective, efficient interprofessional team-based cancer care that improves quality and patient outcomes. Research focused on NIH-designated Populations Experiencing Health Disparities and/or populations receiving care in community settings (including, but not limited to, community-based cancer centers or clinics) is strongly encouraged. NIH-designated Populations Experiencing Health Disparities include racial and ethnic minority populations, socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, underserved rural populations, sexual and gender minority groups, and people living with disabilities in the U.S.

R03s and R21s may support formative work to identify modifiable features of care team structure or teamwork processes associated with cancer-related care, outcomes, or related disparities; develop and test measures of related teamwork constructs; or develop and pilot test interventions. R01s may support larger observational studies or studies that evaluate interventions designed to improve care quality and patient outcomes by cultivating interprofessional teamwork and coordination during cancer diagnosis and treatment. Applicants are encouraged to identify the specific aspects of teamwork that are being tested to isolate their effects on variability in specified patient outcomes.

Examples of Responsive Proposals Include:

Research encouraged through this Notice includes, but is not limited to, studies that:

• Identify modifiable features of the following associated with differences in cancer care quality and patient outcomes:
  • Care team structure (e.g., care team composition or organization)
  • Care team functioning (e.g., decision-making, communication, coordination behaviors, collaboration, leadership)
• Examine or address implications of the following topics on aspects of interprofessional care team structure and functioning associated with differences in cancer care quality and outcomes:
  • Organizational characteristics of the healthcare delivery system;
  • Telehealth, digital health, or other technology tools;
  • Integrated diagnostics, diagnostic pathways for symptomatic or non-screenable cancers, or diagnostic pathways following multi-cancer detection tests;
  • Multiple chronic conditions;
  • Monitoring of patient reported outcomes;
  • Multilevel approaches examining factors at two or more levels, including: patient/caregiver, care professional, team, delivery organization, health system, community, payer, or policy factors
• Advance measurement of constructs relevant to cancer care delivery research on interprofessional teamwork and care coordination during diagnostic evaluation or cancer treatment
• Develop and test interventions to improve cancer care quality and outcomes by:
  • Modifying the structure and/or functioning of interprofessional teams;
  • Engaging patients and caregivers as members of their cancer care team
• Test interprofessional approaches to:
  • Reduce disparities in cancer diagnosis and treatment;
  • Improve accrual and retention of individuals from NIH-designated Populations Experiencing Health Disparities in cancer clinical trials;
  • Address financial hardship or other social risks (e.g., food, transportation, housing instability) associated with differences in cancer care access, quality, and outcomes
  • Improve access and delivery of supportive care or rehabilitation services
  • Care for long term cancer survivors, including survivors of childhood cancers

Applicants are encouraged to review any non-responsive criteria listed in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) through which they plan to apply to this NOSI.

Application and Submission Information

This notice applies to due dates on or after January 25, 2025 and subsequent receipt dates through January 7, 2028.

Submit applications for this initiative using one of the following Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) or any reissues of these announcements through the expiration date of this notice.

All instructions in the How to Apply - Application Guide and the notice of funding opportunity used for submission must be followed, with the following additions:

• For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-CA-25-007” (without quotation marks) in the Agency Routing Identifier field (box 4B) of the SF424 R&R form. Applications without this information in box 4B will not be considered for this initiative.

Applications nonresponsive to terms of this NOSI will not be considered for the NOSI initiative.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to the contacts in Section VII of the listed notice of funding opportunity with the following additions/substitutions:

Scientific/Research Contact(s)

Sallie J. Weaver, PhD, MHS
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Telephone: (240) 276-6254
Email: [email protected]

Veronica Chollette, RN, MS
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Telephone: (240) 276-6969
Email: [email protected]

Peer Review Contact(s)

Examine your eRA Commons account for review assignment and contact information (information appears two weeks after the submission due date).

Financial/Grants Management Contact(s)

Crystal Wolfrey
National Cancer Institute
Telephone: 240-276-6277
Email: [email protected]