Notice Number: NOT-DA-19-022

Key Dates
Release Date : February 08, 2019

Issued by
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Purpose

The purpose of this notice is to solicit competitive revisions to existing NIDA R01 grants in order to establish an opioid treatment research platform. This effort is in response to the public health emergency to address the national opioid crisis, declared by the Health and Human Services Secretary Acting Secretary on October 26, 2017. Revision applications should be submitted to the PA-19-055, Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Required) and should include emergency award in the abstract.

The United States currently faces an opioid epidemic, an unprecedented public health crisis. In 2016, more than 2.1 million Americans were estimated to have an opioid use disorder (OUD) and there were over 40,000 opioid overdose deaths, exceeding the number of deaths from car crashes. Opioid injection is associated with the spread of HIV and hepatitis infections and OUD is associated with depression and suicide. There has been a near doubling of opioid-related emergency department visits from 2004 to 2014 and an over 60% increase in length of opioid-related hospital stays. The economic cost to our nation is staggering as is the impact on people with OUD and their loved ones.

Expanding access to and improving patient outcomes with pharmacotherapy for OUD is an important pillar of our nation’s response to the epidemic. While mechanisms are in place to collect data on services and patient outcomes in publicly-funded substance abuse treatment programs, very little is known about the services and patient outcomes in the many physician office practices. Thus, there remain important gaps in knowledge about patients, treatments, and outcomes in these practices; further, the potential wealth of research data in these practices has not been harnessed.

The intractable nature of the opioid epidemic to date contributes to the urgency of this notice. There is a pressing need for foundational research that will, ultimately, facilitate practice-based and academic research to address the opioid epidemic. Establishing an addiction medicine network will expedite epidemiologic, intervention and services research to address opioid use disorder and prevent future overdose deaths.

This notice solicits revision applications that are expected leverage the power of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) clinical data registry (PsychPRO) and the over 40,000 members of the APA and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) to create a practice based research network. Applications submitted in response to this notice must:

• establish an Addiction Medicine Practice Based Research Network (AMNet)
• develop an electronic registry to collect data for research in AMNet; and
• provide AMNet as an opioid treatment research platform.

Responsive applications must demonstrate partnership with both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

NIDA intends to fund one award through this mechanism. The award project period is three years. Total costs (direct plus F&A) for the three-year period cannot exceed $3,000,000.

For R01 competitive revision supplements submitted in response to this notice, please submit all applications by March 11, 2019, not the standard due date referenced in the FOA.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Amy B. Goldstein, PhD
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Telephone: 301-827-4124
Email: amy.goldstein@nih.gov