The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) announce the availability of Administrative Supplements to expand currently funded research that addresses substance use and/or mental health among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. The proposed supplements must focus on opioid use and social network characteristics and should augment or add assessments of other drug use, mental health, and suicide risk if they are not already sufficiently measured. The administrative supplements selected for funding will be paid with funds from the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) program.

Background:

A number of AI/AN communities have been significantly impacted by the opioid crisis, and AI/AN are also at the highest risk for suicide and other behavioral health disorders. Research supports the interrelatedness of these outcomes with substance misuse generally and potentially with opioid use disorder specifically.

Across a broad range of populations there is growing evidence that social networks can be a protective factor, as well as a vehicle for increased risk, for substance use, mental disorders and suicide. As such, social network research holds particular promise for both understanding processes of risk and resilience and for understanding how to implement social network interventions for both the opioid crisis and behavioral health disorders, including suicide. Social network factors may be particularly salient for AI/AN communities that have experienced high opioid use rates and ongoing, multiple suicide attempts and deaths annually as well as high rates of other trauma and substance misuse. Despite this, little research with AI/AN communities has incorporated social network factors.

Research Objectives

This administrative supplement program focuses on opioid use and behavioral health outcomes and facilitates the inclusion of social network characteristics as potential mechanisms into existing AI/AN studies that address substance use and/or mental health, where opioid use, suicide risk, and social networks assessments are already included or can be added, in order to more fully understand the role of social networks and their potential for use in interventions.

Examples of potential research areas include, but are not are not limited to:

• Research to expand knowledge of social network characteristics that increase risk or confer protection for opioid use and related behavioral health and drug use outcomes, including suicide.
• Research that informs enhancing social networks as a tool for intervention for opioid use and related behavioral health outcomes, including suicide.

Each project funded under this supplement program must be able to address social network characteristics, opioid use and both drug and behavioral health outcomes (including risk for suicide) using data either from the supplement or from the supplement in combination with data from the parent grant.

As administrative supplements, the work proposed must be within the scope of the research that is already supported. Progress on the parent award must also be satisfactory.

Budget

• Requests may be for one or two years of support.
• Requests per year can be for no more than $200,000 in direct costs exclusive of Facilities and Administrative costs
• Earliest start date August 1, 2020
• NIDA and NIMH intend to commit $1,280,000 in FY20 to award up to 4 administrative supplements.
• All PIs are expected to attend one NIH meeting (date to be determined) to discuss approaches to assessing and analyzing social networks and opioid use in AI/AN communities and should include funds to attend this meeting in the budget. We anticipate this meeting will be in the Washington DC area.

Data Sharing

As projects submitted through this initiative will be subject to NIH HEAL data sharing requirements, PIs are encouraged to develop a full understanding of the tribal and community requirements and needs with regard to data sharing and data ownership and provide a strong justification for the stated approach to data sharing and ownership.

The HEAL data sharing policy can be found here: https://www.nih.gov/research-training/medical-research-initiatives/heal-initiative/research/heal-public-access-data-sharing-policy.

Application and Submission Information

Submit applications for this initiative using the following funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) or any reissues of this announcement through the expiration date of this notice. Applications are due no later than 5/1/2020 by 5pm local time. No late applications will be accepted.

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

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and the funding opportunity announcement used for submission must be followed, with the following additions.

For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-DA-20-033” (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 electronic submissions will be accepted for this funding opportunity. Use one of the methods described in PA-18-591. The process for Streamlined Submissions using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.
• The Research Strategy section of the application is limited to 6 pages
• Social network factors, opioid use, and mental health factors must be included.
• Only PDs/PIs of an active award from NIDA or NIMH are eligible to apply.
• Active awards with project end dates of 9/30/2021 or later are eligible. Projects in a no-cost extension status at the time of submission are not eligible to apply.
• The project and budget periods must be within the currently approved project period for the existing parent award .

As part of the application, investigators should submit an abstract of the proposed research. Place the abstract in the Project Summary/Abstract section of the SF424 (R&R) form.

• Eligible grantees should email Kathy Etz ([email protected]) with their intention to apply in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.

Applications nonresponsive to terms of this NOSI will be not be considered for the NOSI initiative.

Please direct all inquiries to the Scientific/Research, Peer Review, and Financial/Grants Management contacts in Section VII of the listed funding opportunity announcements.

Scientific/Research Contact(s)

Kathy Etz, Ph.D.
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research
Telephone: 301.402.1749
Email: [email protected]

Dawn Morales, Ph.D.
National Institute of Mental Health, Office of Rural Health Research
Telephone: 301.827.9668
Email: [email protected]