Notice Number: NOT-HD-19-019

Key Dates
Release Date: September 4, 2019
First Available Due Date: October 5, 2019
Expiration Date: September 8, 2022

PA-19-056: Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
PA-18-481: NICHD Small Grant Program (R03 - Clinical Trial Optional)
PA-18-482: NICHD Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant (R21 - Clinical Trial Optional)

Issued by
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Purpose

Purpose

The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to encourage research on the processes that facilitate or hinder the achievement of healthy interbirth intervals and promote healthy birth outcomes. Reducing the proportion of pregnancies conceived within 18 months of a previous pregnancy is a Healthy People 2020 objective because short interbirth intervals are associated with a range of risk factors and poor maternal and child health outcomes, including a lack of preconception health care, delayed prenatal care, preeclampsia, prematurity, low birth weight, infant mortality, and maternal morbidity and mortality. Short interbirth intervals may also reduce the duration of breastfeeding; conversely, the continuation of breastfeeding can contribute to the lengthening of interbirth intervals. This NOSI is intended to encourage collaboration among researchers across the social, behavioral, biomedical, and public health sciences to elucidate understanding of the modifiable factors behind barriers to enhancing birth intervals.

Research Objectives

This NOSI invites research applications that assess the causal social and behavioral processes that facilitate or hinder the achievement of healthy interbirth intervals and to identify mechanisms that can be modified by public health interventions at the levels of the dyad, family, community, or other population aggregates. The failure to achieve a healthy birth interval is defined as the behavioral health outcome wherein sexually active, reproductively capable individuals or couples who do not desire a pregnancy fail to consistently and effectively use available prevention techniques. This NOSI encourages cross-disciplinary and multi-level studies, domestic and international study sites, and research focused on understudied and vulnerable populations. Studies of how social and economic norms influence the achievement of healthy birth intervals are of particular interest. Applications that propose secondary analyses of existing data from randomized control trials, natural experiments, or public health interventions are welcomed, as are proposals that would help improve or assess future clinical trials. Proposals responding to this NOSI should be theoretically grounded and use highly-specified conceptual models. The following are not within the scope of this Notice: clinical trials or intervention research and descriptive analyses of the epidemiology of unintended pregnancy. Potential applicants are encouraged to contact program staff named in this NOSI to discuss the relevance of their proposals.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Systems and contextual factors that hinder or facilitate the achievement of healthy birth intervals:

• Studies of social, cultural, or institutional norms that affect the length of interbirth intervals.
• Research on how structural factors other than social norms affect the length of interbirth intervals, such as access to and participation in formal education and training programs, legal restrictions on age at marriage, access to comprehensive reproductive health services, and insurance policies and regulations.
• Studies of how physical geography and contexts, such as neighborhood-level features of residential areas of predominantly low-income, rural, or racial/ethnic minority populations, affect preconception care impacting the length of interbirth intervals.
• Research on how the provision of medical services, including the physical and administrative structuring of health facilities and access to preconception and reproductive health care, affect the length of interbirth intervals.
• Research on how the provision of sexually transmitted infection (STI) information and services in communities and clinics, which may or may not address pregnancy risk, influences the use of methods to achieve healthy interbirth intervals.
• Research on how workforce policies and practices, such as provision of family leave, dedicated spaces for nursing and pumping, and flexible hours, affect the length of interbirth intervals.

Individual, dyadic, or familial aspects of the achievement of healthy birth intervals:

• Studies that assess how household decision-making about the allocation of resources affects factors related to the length of birth intervals, such as use of preconception care, infant feeding practices, and/or the purchase and use of pregnancy prevention methods.
• Research that examines how couple-level factors affect preferences about pregnancy prevention methods. Factors may include partners’ desire for children and preferences about the timing of pregnancy within the relationship.
• Research on how the length of interbirth intervals is affected by women’s (or couples’) understanding of the impact of breastfeeding on fertility and/or the use of digital tools, such as “Glow” or “Fertility Friend,” to monitor fertility.
• Studies that examine how perceived side effects of different pregnancy prevention methods and concerns about interactions between them and other medications facilitate or hinder the achievement of healthy birth intervals.

Measurement Issues:

• Methodological research to develop or refine standardized measures of pregnancy prevention method effectiveness, preferences, interactions with other medications, and side effects, including impacts on behavior and affect, that are relevant to the achievement of healthy birth intervals.
• Methodological research to develop or improve standardized measurement of the elements of the definition of the achievement of a healthy interbirth interval, including “reproductively capable,” “sexually active,” “desire a pregnancy,” “pregnancy ambivalence,” “unintended pregnancy,” or “unmet need."

Application and Submission Information

This Notice applies to due dates on or after October 5, 2019 and subsequent receipt dates through September 8, 2022.

Submit applications for this initiative using one of the following FOAs or any reissues of these announcements through the expiration date of this Notice.

• PA-19-056 - Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
• PA-18-481 - NICHD Small Grant Program (R03 - Clinical Trial Optional)
• PA-18-482 - NICHD Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant (R21 - 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-HD-19-019" (without quotation marks) in the Agency Routing Identifier field (box 4B) of the SF424 R&R form. Applications without this information in box 4B, or non-responsive to the terms of this NOSI will not be considered for this NOSI initiative.
• Applicants planning to submit an application in response to this NOSI are strongly encouraged to contact the NICHD scientific/programmatic contact(s) listed on this NOSI in advance of the application due date.

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

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Rosalind B. King, PhD
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Telephone: 301-435-6986
Email: [email protected]