October 12, 2023
None
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Background
The NHLBI provides global leadership for research and training to promote the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders and to enhance the health of all individuals so that they can live longer and more fulfilling lives. The NHLBI stimulates basic discoveries about the causes of disease, enables the translation of basic discoveries into clinical practice, leverages implementation science to take innovations toward application, and communicates research advances to the public.
By design, the NHLBI Strategic Vision is dynamic, reflecting input from partners who are at the leading edge of scientific exploration and from communities with a vested interest. As part of updating the Strategic Vision, the NHLBI wants to harness community-level participation. While the NHLBI Strategic Vision goals and objectives set in 2016 remain timely, the refresh aims to ensure such by keeping up with scientific needs and advances.
NHLBI Strategic Vision
The NHLBI’s Strategic Vision has four goals and eight objectives that were identified in 2016.
Strategic goals:
- Understand Human Biology
- Reduce Human Disease
- Develop Workforce and Resources
- Advance Translational Research
Strategic objectives:
- Understand normal biological function and resilience
- Investigate newly discovered pathobiological mechanisms important to the onset and progression of heart, lung, blood diseases, and sleep disorders
- Investigate factors that account for differences in health among populations
- Identify factors that account for individual differences in pathobiology and in response to treatments
- Develop and optimize novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to prevent, treat, and cure heart, lung, blood diseases, and sleep disorders
- Optimize clinical and implementation research to improve health and reduce disease
- Leverage emerging opportunities in data science to open new frontiers in heart, lung, blood diseases, and sleep disorders research
- Further develop, diversify, and sustain a scientific workforce capable of accomplishing the NHLBI’s mission
Information Requested
For the refresh of the NHLBI Strategic Vision, this RFI invites input on the current relevance of the NHLBI strategic objectives and considering whether additional Compelling Questions (CQs) and Critical Challenges (CCs) are needed to address topics that have surfaced as priorities over the past five years to drive important scientific and health advances.
Compelling Questions are unanswered questions or poorly understood areas of research requiring NHLBI facilitation because their complexity exceeds the capacity of any single investigator-initiated program.
Critical Challenges are barriers or impediments to scientific progress, and overcoming these obstacles will result in significant impact.
The NHLBI Strategic Vision is inclusive of a broad portfolio of scientific ideas spanning basic through implementation sciences. This refresh will adhere to our commitment to scientific stewardship and accountability. This RFI has a particular interest in seeking input on novel research needs and approaches in the following focus areas:
- Harnessing data science and new technologies to drive scientific discovery and precision health
- Using novel approaches for addressing health disparities and tackling their biological underpinnings for heart, lung, blood diseases, and sleep disorders
- Leveraging the power of community and patient engagement
- Furthering the science on the importance of lifestyle behaviors
- Supporting women’s health through the lifespan
- Addressing and reducing the impact of “place” (geography, climate, rural/urban, neighborhood) on heart, lung, blood, and sleep health
Input sought includes the following:
Perspective on critical research needs or compelling research questions for any of the refresh focus areas
Perspective on challenges or barriers that need to be addressed to support progress in any of the refresh focus areas
The relevance of the 8 objectives for the NHLBI Strategic Vision and any critical questions or challenges that are not already incorporated into the NHLBI Strategic Vision
How to Respond
Comments must be submitted electronically on the submission website: https://rfi.grants.nih.gov/?s=65119386df04aef8db066042. Responses will be accepted through 11:59:59 pm (ET) on December 15, 2023.
Responses to this RFI are voluntary. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information shared or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. This RFI is for information and planning purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Federal Government in general, the NIH, or the NHLBI specifically.
Other than your name and contact information, the Government reserves the right to use any submitted information on public websites, in reports, in summaries of the state of the science, in any possible resultant solicitation(s), grant(s), or cooperative agreement(s), or in the development of future funding opportunity announcements. Please note that the Government will not pay for the preparation of any information submitted or for use of that information.
We appreciate your input and invite you to share this RFI opportunity with your colleagues and others in your community.
Lenora Johnson, DrPH, MPH
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Telephone: 301-480-2145
Email: lenora.johnson@nih.gov
and Human Services (HHS)
