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Advancing Evidence-Based Dissemination and Implementation Science to Optimize Health Outcomes in Low-Resource Clinical and Community Settings
When beginning your next investigator-initiated application, consider the following NIH highlighted topic. The area of science described below is of interest to the listed NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs). This is not a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO).
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Topic Description
Post Date: September 23, 2026
Expiration Date: September 23, 2028
Background: Low-resource clinical settings play a vital role in delivering low- or no-cost primary, dental, and behavioral health care to rural and urban communities. These settings operate within broader community, social, behavioral, and health system contexts that influence access to care, implementation of evidence-based interventions, and health outcomes across the life course from childhood to older age. By expanding access to care, these settings create opportunities to improve clinical and behavioral health outcomes, particularly among populations experiencing health disparities. Strengthening funding, staffing, infrastructure, equipment, workforce capacity, care coordination, and partnerships with community organizations in these settings could further enhance chronic disease control, prevention, and help patients benefit more fully from evidence-based interventions. Adapting these interventions to fit different clinical and community contexts within low-resource environments can increase their practicality, sustainability, and overall impact.
Research can accelerate health gains in low-resource clinical and community settings by:
- Identifying modifiable mechanisms to determine actionable, context-specific interventions to improve health outcomes through both health care system and community-based approaches.
- Identifying, adapting, and rigorously evaluating dissemination and implementation strategies that increase the reach, adoption, fidelity, and sustainment of evidence-based interventions in these settings, with emphasis on objective, quantitative implementation outcomes such as uptake rates, fidelity scores, time to adoption, penetration across clinics or providers, and maintenance over time.
- Evaluating whether improved implementation leads to measurable gains in patient and service outcomes using objective, quantitative indicators and validated measures.
Purpose: This topic encourages dissemination and implementation (D&I) science designed to improve the adoption, integration, scalability, and sustainability of evidence-based interventions within low-resource clinical settings and the broader communities they serve, with the goal of optimizing health outcomes, reducing health disparities, and strengthening health care delivery across the life course. This topic also encourages research that identifies risks, and protective social and environmental factors that can inform intervention targets in these settings.
It aligns with:
- NIH MAHA Chronic Disease Initiative : The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will launch an Initiative on Chronic Disease to leverage and align existing NIH research projects, improve NIH coordination on chronic disease research, and generate actionable results for diseases arising in childhood and adulthood.
Participating ICOs
NIMH encourages studies that address disparities in accessing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) and/or mental health outcomes in low-resource settings, e.g., underserved rural areas.
Areas of interest include studies that:
- Intervene on mechanisms driving mental health outcomes, including suicide
- Develop and test interventions promoting help-seeking, shared decision-making, and sustained engagement in mental health services
- Develop and test interventions expanding detection and engagement via existing workforces, including non-specialty and peer providers
- Test implementation strategies to adapt, scale, and sustain interventions with fidelity, particularly vs. services as usual
- Test digital technologies, collaborative or integrated care, and measurement-based care to expand access and improve outcomes
- Implement EBIs to improve HIV prevention, treatment, and outcomes for people with HIV
- Evaluate financing models incentivizing providers to practice in low-resource settings
Division of Clinical and Health Services Research
[email protected]
NCCIH supports solution-oriented research to improve health across the life course in rural and low-resource settings using a Whole Person Health approach. Example areas of interest include:
- Studies that identify modifiable biological, behavioral, and psychosocial mechanisms underlying rural health disparities;
- Trials of scalable complementary and integrative health (CIH) interventions to increase resilience, promote health, enhance prevention, chronic disease management, and behavioral health, including pain management, substance use and mental health.
- Pragmatic and hybrid effectiveness-implementation trials that integrate evidence-based CIH approaches into care delivery in rural and/or low-resource settings and evaluate implementation, sustainability, and real-world effectiveness.
Projects should generate actionable evidence to strengthen low-resource health systems’ ability to improve access and engagement with evidence-based CIH approaches and reduce barriers.
ICO Scientific Contact:Beda Jean-Francois, PhD
[email protected]
NCI is interested in research with populations living in low-resource communities or receiving care in low-resource clinical settings across the cancer continuum. Examples include:
- Developing, testing, or studying implementation of multilevel interventions addressing cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship or end of life, and their mechanisms of action.
- Investigating social, behavioral, and environmental drivers of outcomes to inform interventions (e.g. care access, workforce, transportation, broadband, financial hardship, risk behaviors).
- Effectiveness or implementation of novel or underused care delivery interventions or approaches (e.g. digital health, home-based care, lay health workers, cross-sector partnerships).
- Understanding community or setting heterogeneity to design tailored approaches.
- Enhancing access to specialty care (e.g. oncology, survivorship, palliative), clinical trials, and care coordination.
Sallie Weaver, PhD, MHS
[email protected]
NEI encourages research on visual impairment in rural and low-resource settings. Activities should use evidence-informed approaches with potential for scale and sustainability.
Interests include:
- Examining factors influencing access, use, and quality of vision health services and preventive care
- Developing strategies to address infrastructure limitations, e.g., equipment/personnel in low-resource clinical and community settings, limited broadband for teleophthalmology/mobile health
- Improving vision health for people working in high-risk occupational settings, e.g., eye injury, UV exposure
- Testing approaches to support routine eye exams and timely management of refractive errors and cataracts in rural and low-resource communities
- Leveraging implementation of science and community partnerships to promote healthy vision behaviors and education
- Expanding access to low vision rehabilitation and assistive technologies to improve quality of life in rural and low-resource settings
Cheri Wiggs, PhD
[email protected]
NIA is particularly interested in research focused on rural and low-resource populations in midlife and older age. Areas of interest include:
- Strategies to improve access to preventive care, chronic disease management, palliative care, and end-of-life care for midlife and older adults.
- Research examining modifiable life-course behavioral, social, and contextual factors that shape healthy aging and health trajectories
- Community-based interventions and dissemination and implementation research that adapts, evaluates, and sustains evidence-based models to improve health and health care for older adults
- Research advancing the early detection, diagnosis, monitoring, and management of Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's disease-related dementias (AD/ADRD), including scalable approaches to improve care coordination, access to specialty services, continuity of care, and equitable delivery of evidence-based care.
Frank Bandiera, PhD, MPH
[email protected]
NIAAA interests include, but are not limited to:
- Strategies to adapt, scale, integrate, and sustain evidence-based alcohol prevention, screening, brief intervention, treatment referral, and recovery support in low-resource settings.
- Multilevel interventions to improve prevention, identification, diagnosis, and treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and related problems.
- Integration of alcohol care with primary care, other mental health and substance use services, and care for alcohol-related chronic conditions.
- Implementation studies linking reach, adoption, fidelity and sustainability to objective and measurable patient, health, and service outcomes.
- Cross-sector partnerships that expand access, engagement, care continuity, and recovery services.
- Telehealth, digital tools, clinical decision support, data systems, and workforce strategies that strengthen capacity, reduce disparities and the AUD treatment gap, and sustain high-quality care.
I-Jen Castle, Ph.D.
[email protected]
Miya Whitaker, Psy.D.
[email protected]
NIDA is particularly interested in scalable and sustainable community-engaged research in substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery in low resource communities, including rural settings. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Effective models of substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery services delivery in low resource settings, considering geographical barriers and resource limitations
- Studies on the needs of individuals across the lifespan
- End user-informed strategies to improve implementation of evidence-based services in low resource communities
- Development, testing, and evaluation of integrated approaches to address substance use and co-occurring needs (e.g., mental health, HIV, homelessness) in low resource communities
- Applied epidemiology research to inform responses to overdose, polysubstance use, and changes in the drug supply in low resource communities
Sean Lynch, PhD, LCSW
[email protected]
NIMH invites both pilot and full-scale studies that utilize Dissemination and Implementation (D&I) Science to improve the delivery of evidence-based mental health interventions (EBIs) in low-resource clinical settings.
Special areas of interest include:
- Studies that test implementation strategies compared with standard of care to support the routine use, adaptation, and sustainment of interventions that address mental disorders, mental health symptoms, suicidal behavior, and related functional outcomes including strategies to overcome implementation barriers and inform D&I Science.
- Research on digital technologies, integrated or collaborative care, and measurement-based care to expand access to EBIs and improve health outcomes.
- Research that implements EBIs in low-resource settings to improve HIV treatment and mental health outcomes for people living with HIV and to improve HIV prevention.
Mary Acri, Ph.D. LCSW
[email protected]
NINR seeks applications that focus on interventions and implementation science in rural settings, aiming to scale nurse-led, multi-level models integrating primary care, specialty care, and community services.
Projects may include development, adaptation, testing, and implementation of sustainable interventions, including pragmatic and hybrid effectiveness-implementation designs.
Priority areas include:
- prevention and care of chronic conditions across the life course.
- implementation and care delivery strategies such as telehealth, mobile, and team-based care.
- multi-level partnerships across healthcare, public health, and social services to improve access, coordination, and sustainability.
Maureen K. Akubu-Odero, DrPH MPH MBA MSc
[email protected]
Sydney O'Connor
[email protected]
ODP is particularly interested in projects testing multi-level preventive interventions, including multi-site or cluster randomized clinical trials, in rural and other low-resource clinical or community settings.
Elizabeth Neilson, PhD
[email protected]
THRO supports evidence-based dissemination and implementation interventions in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) low-resource clinical and community settings. Areas of interest include:
- AI/AN- and Tribe-specific barriers to uptake and adherence.
- AI/AN- and Tribe-specific health/service/access disparities (e.g., syphilis and opioid epidemics, culturally competent care).
- AI/AN community protective and risk factors affecting adoption and integration.
- Improving funding, staffing, infrastructure, workforce capacity, and care coordination strategies.
- Partnerships between low-resource clinical settings and AI/AN organizations, Tribal governments, and urban Indian organizations.
- Adapting interventions to AI/AN clinical and community contexts.
- Tapping into existing AI/AN community strengths and resources
THRO encourages culturally grounded research and inclusion of AI/AN participants, practices, and ways of knowledge whenever possible.
Sheila Caldwell, PhD
[email protected]
Christopher Barnhart, PhD
[email protected]
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