Key Dates

Related Announcements

PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

Issued by

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

Purpose

The purpose of this supplement is to provide support to address the health and safety training needs of worker populations to include communities, volunteers, day laborers, and other vulnerable worker populations following major disasters in 2022 declared pursuant to the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 3 5121 et seq.) https://www.fema.gov/disaster/declarations?field_dv2_state_territory_tribal_value=All&field_year_value%5B%5D=2022&field_dv2_declaration_type_value=DR&field_dv2_incident_type_target_id_selective=All  .  The NIEHS Worker Training Program (WTP) has over 30 years of experience providing workers health and safety training related to potential exposures to biological hazards as they perform their job duties. Many of the training courses provided by WTP recipients are based on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) Hazardous waste operations and emergency response (29 CFR 1910.120), OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogens standard (29 CFR 1910.1030), OSHA’s Respiratory Protection standard (29 CFR 1910.134), OSHA’s Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) standard (29 CFR 1910.132), Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act of 1970) - often referred to as the General Duty Clause. WTP grantees have and are currently involved in providing biosafety health and safety training, mold remediation from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and Ebola. Their audiences spanned worker populations from healthcare workers to volunteers.

Using our hazmat trainers’ understanding of worker safety and health protection issues, knowledge of personal protective equipment (PPE) usage, and experience in training disaster workers, WTP provided awardees with material to develop evidence-based curriculum that addresses the science of reducing exposure, illness, and injury while working in hazardous environments.

The COVID-19 and other infectious diseases have significant psychosocial, sociocultural, behavioral, socioeconomic, and health impacts, which are exacerbated in populations that experience health disparities, leading to disproportionately adverse consequences. In addition, disadvantaged communities have little resources to fall back on following disasters.  Through partnerships with worker communities the WTP hopes to establish relationships and resources to assist with health and safety education and training.

This initiative would support partnerships between WTP grantees, worker populations, local community organizations, and other federal partners with the goal of reducing morbidity and mortality related to responding to and recovering from activities associated with disaster.  The work aims to augment prevention preparedness efforts in a wide variety of high-risk settings, and to ensure responders are aware of site-specific hazards and mitigation techniques prior to and during response activities.  This initiative is intended to foster the development of disaster specific training programs as an extension to the HWWTP for the purpose of preparing a cadre of experienced workers for prevention, response, and recovery to disasters in a wide variety of facilities and high-risk operations. 

NIEHS WTP believes that pre-incident training is critical for workers who may find themselves responding to a disaster. Skilled and other support personnel (such as construction, utility, and transportation workers) along with federal, state, and local government workers and others may find themselves working on a disaster site, be it during the response, cleanup or recovery stage. These populations need to understand the unique hazards that are present on a disaster site before they are deployed there.  The Disaster Site Worker courses (OSHA 7600 and OSHA 5600) arose from a clearly identified need at World Trade Center (WTC) Ground Zero and can save lives during disaster responses by providing workers who respond to disasters the critical knowledge they need to protect themselves. Other resources of interest for grantees would include the Awardee Instructor Deployment Guide.

Training developed under this program should complement the National Incident Management System (NIMS) standardized incident management processes, protocols, and procedures that all responders including federal, state, tribal, and local will use to coordinate and conduct response actions. 

Details related to key areas of focus for community and other responders to disasters can be found within other NIEHS WTP initiatives reports, with goals that support this NOSI: Environmental Justice and Natural Disasters/COVID-19 Virtual Town Hall Meetings and Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment. This supplement supports the activities that are described under the parent grant: RFA-ES-19-003. 

Assuring cultural sensitivity, multilingual communications and an appreciation for inclusion and diversity are all essential hallmarks of this program and need to be embedded in every responsive application.  Executive Order 12898 Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations focuses Federal attention on the environmental and human health conditions in minority communities and low-income communities with the goal of achieving environmental justice. That order is also intended to promote non-discrimination in Federal programs substantially affecting human health and the environment, and to provide minority communities and low-income communities access to public information on, and an opportunity for public participation in, matters relating to human health or the environment.  Executive Order 14008 expands on this theme and includes reference to environmental justice, racial equity and climate change using a government wide approach.  Training to target areas in this executive order is critical to address the needs of disadvantaged populations to move quickly to build resilience, both at home and abroad, against the impacts of climate change that are already manifest and will continue to intensify according to current trajectories.  It is recommended that applicants use the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) and/or CDC Environmental Justice Index to help identify these disadvantaged populations.   In particular training to empower workers through rebuilding our infrastructure for a sustainable economic is also a focus as it states “this Nation needs millions of construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades workers to build a new American infrastructure and clean energy economy.  These jobs will create opportunities for young people and for older workers shifting to new professions, and for people from all backgrounds and communities.  Such jobs will bring opportunity to communities too often left behind — places that have suffered because of economic shifts and places that have suffered the most from persistent pollution, including low-income rural and urban communities, communities of color, and Native communities. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s, Frameworks for protecting workers and the public from inhalation hazards (2022) reinforces the needs of workers, including members of the most vulnerable and underserved populations, facing inhalation hazards. 

This Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) solicits administrative supplement or competitive revision applications for FY 2023 to support applicants in assisting workers and their communities to respond and recover while reducing their exposure to hazardous materials and working conditions through health and safety training. 

This NOSI is open to current WTP awardees that can show through their application their capability and established partnerships to reach and successfully provide needed health and safety training to populations impacted and recovering from declared Stafford act disasters in 2022. Partnerships with other NIEHS recipients are encouraged if the collaboration will meet the aims of the application. For the purposes of this NOSI the following approaches are considered responsive.

General Administrative Supplements are requests for additional funds to meet emergency or other unanticipated situations that were not included in the previous competitive or non-competitive application and must be within scope of your current funded program. Requests for additional funds may also be used to follow up on unanticipated results of your training, and/or to enhance components of your existing worker training program that have been productive. For purposes of this general administrative supplement (and within the parent application) the following approaches and priority areas of training are considered responsive, and you can apply for supplements to support each of the WTP program components – Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program (HWWTP), Hazmat Disaster Preparedness Training Program (HDPTP) and the Environmental Career Worker Training Program (ECWTP):

Training should support disaster preparedness, recovery, and response to include addressing recent flood, hurricane, and wildfire disasters, related infectious diseases, and training that improves worker resilience.

Program elements

Applicants should include all of the following highly recommended components: 

• Local health and safety education and training delivery (classroom and online) using adult learning methods to include literacy and English as a second language, population education techniques, as well as multi-lingual training to increase the reach of education and awareness of health risks and protective measures to populations in need.
• Integration of existing NIEHS WTP tools and curricula into training especially training under the (HDPTP).
• Take into consideration and utilize state and local policies, regulations, mandates that are applicable to appropriate training populations.?
• Coordination with local disaster preparedness, response, and recovery resources to assist vulnerable communities in connecting with the emergency response and recovery process
• Appropriate partnership for the proposed project, such as with local public health agencies, disaster preparedness, and area employers, to facilitate connectedness to resources that will facilitate, and support provided health and safety training.
• Training activity will be conducted in states with declared disasters in 2022 pursuant to the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act.

Description of circumstances for which administrative supplements are available.

Application and Submission Information

Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.

PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH recipients and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional). All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed, with the following additions:

• Applications may be submitted beginning on 03/17/2023 for the Application Due Date on 04/24/2023 (5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization). Applications received after this time will not be considered. 
• For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-ES-23-007” (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.
• Only existing awardees of NIEHS WTP program are eligible to apply 
• Requests must be for the conduct of activities that can be completed by the end of the current project period.
• Budget requests for applications as an Administrative Supplement can exceed the total cost of the parent award. No request can exceed $400,000 total cost.[GJ([1] 
• F&A will be provided at 8%
• All applications must be submitted electronically. Supplement requests for complex applications must be submitted electronically as single project applications.
• The Research Strategy section of the application is limited to 6 pages.
• Applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the program contact at NIEHS [GJ([2] that a request has been submitted in response to this NOSI in order to facilitate efficient processing of the requests
• The parent award must be active when the supplement application is submitted (e.g., within the originally reviewed and approved project period), regardless of the time remaining on the current project.
• Funds will be awarded using appropriations provided by the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023,” and all activities conducted under this appropriation must be reported in detail in Section B.3 of the annual Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR). 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Sharon D. Beard, MS
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Telephone: 984-287-3237
Email: beard1@niehs.nih.gov

James Remington, RN
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Telephone: 919-491-7803
Email: remingtonj@niehs.nih.gov

Gary Johnson, Jr., MPA
Industrial Hygienist
NIEHS Worker Training Program
Telephone: (919) 768-2794
Email: Gary.Johnson@nih.gov   

Peer Review Contact(s)
Not Applicable

Financial/Grants Management Contact(s)
James Williams
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Telephone: 984-287-3338
Email: williamsjr@niehs.nih.gov