Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH ECHO Cooperative Agreements (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed) for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) related Research
Notice Number:
NOT-OD-20-107

Key Dates

Release Date:
May 27, 2020
First Available Due Date:

New Date June 29, 2020

Expiration Date:

New Date June 30, 2020 per issuance of NOT-OD-20-117. (Original Expiration Date: June 23, 2020)

Related Announcements

NOT-OD-20-117 Notice of Change in Application Due Date for NOT-OD-20-107 "Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH ECHO Cooperative Agreements (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed) for COVID-19 related Research"

PA-18-591 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

NOT-OD-20-118 Guide Notice of Information Highlighting Harmonization and Data Sharing Expectations for Supplement and Revision Projects Addressing Social, Behavioral, Economic and Health Impacts of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

Issued by

Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health (OD)

Purpose

The purpose of this NOSI is to encourage eligible ECHO cohort grantees to apply for this administrative supplement aimed at fostering time-sensitive ECHO-wide Cohort science related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ECHO Program’s mission is to enhance the health of children for generations to come. Understanding the effects of a broad array of early environmental exposures on child health and development, including issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, is a priority for the NIH.

Research Objectives: Applications must be within the scope of the parent award, including 1) address the mission of ECHO, 2) contribute to at least one of the ECHO Program’s five key pediatric outcomes: pre-, peri-, and postnatal, upper and lower airway, obesity, neurodevelopment, and positive health, and 3) contribute to ECHO-wide Cohort science; and they must 4) use REDCap Central for data collection, so that populating the ECHO-wide Cohort data platform is timely and automatic.

Applications should consider COVID-19-related scientific questions that require time-sensitive support, including but not limited to

    1. Repeat administration of questionnaire items over a relatively short time period, or
    2. Time-sensitive collection of samples or of existing results of laboratory assays, or
    3. Time-sensitive conduct of laboratory assays

The ECHO Program Office encourages applicants to consider research in three broad areas and encourages addressing health disparities:

  1. Impact on ECHO health outcomes of having probable or definite COVID-19 infection, including interactions with other early exposures of interest in ECHO. ECHO Program Office encourages addressing pre-/peri-/postnatal outcomes.
  2. Impact on psychosocial, behavioral, economic, health services, or health outcomes of living during the time of the COVID-19.
  3. Impact on best practices for implementing the ECHO-wide Cohort data collection protocol during or after the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples of research topics include but are not limited to
  • Impact on research staff, participants, operations, data completeness, or data quality of pausing cohort operations, and ways to mitigate those impacts.
  • Introducing new approaches to informed consent, data or specimen collection, return of results, or other research-related activities.

    Considerations
  • Applicants may request a budget period for one year which aligns with the existing parent award.
  • To be responsive, applicants must propose ECHO-wide cohort research. Applicants may include activities of multiple ECHO awards in a single application, which would require subawards, or each collaborating applicant may submit their own administrative supplement and reference their collaborator(s) in the application. In either case, applicants must describe how they will work with collaborators to achieve the aims.
  • Each application budget is limited to no more than $200,000 Direct Costs for one year, and must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project. If applicants are considering an administrative supplement that requires more than $200,000 Direct Costs, the applicant should discuss this issue with their program official well before submission.

Eligibility: Existing ECHO Cohorts, Coordinating Center, Data Analysis Center, and PRO Core awardees are eligible to apply. Existing subawardees are not eligible to apply. This opportunity is limited to one application per existing ECHO award.

Review Criteria: The ECHO Program Office will determine the merit of applications based on evaluation of the following components:

  • Relevance to time-sensitive COVID-19 research
  • Contribution to ECHO-wide Cohort science, including but not limited to:
    • Extent of, and justification for ECHO-wide cohort collaboration.
    • Potential impact on maternal-child health, solution orientation
  • Explanation of how proposed activities will not interfere with achieving core ECHO-wide Cohort goals for data, biospecimens, and productivity.
  • Programmatic priorities

Application and Submission Information

Application Due Date: June 29, 2020.

Please submit all applications electronically using the following funding opportunity announcement (FOA) or subsequent reissued equivalent.

  • PA-18-591 Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

All instructions for the FOA must be followed.

For funding consideration, applicants must include NOT-OD-20-107 in the Agency Routing Identifier field (Box 4.b) of the SF 424 (R&R) Form. Applications without this information in Box 4b will not be considered for this initiative. Applicants must follow all instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and in the target funding opportunity announcement (PA-18-591 ).

Administrative supplement applications to PA-18-591 must use the application form package with the Competition ID that contains FORMS-F-ADMINSUPP .

The process for Streamlined Submissions using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.

The ECHO Program Office will not consider applications that fail to meet the terms of this NOSI.

To facilitate efficient processing of the request, the ECHO Program Office strongly encourages applicants to contact their Program Officer before they submit a response to this NOSI

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

S. Sonia Arteaga, PhD
Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO), NIH Office of the Director
Email: sonia.arteaga@nih.gov


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