Notice Number: NOT-MD-16-006

Key Dates
Release Date: April 18, 2016

Estimated Publication Date of Announcement: May 2016
First Estimated Application Due Date: September 2016
Earliest Estimated Award Date: February 2017
Earliest Estimated Start Date: February 2017

Related Announcements
NOT-MD-16-005

Issued by
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)

Purpose

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, intends promote a new initiative by publishing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications for exploratory and developmental research on surgical disparities in care and outcomes. Although breakthrough surgical methods, technologies and instrumentation have advanced the field, the delivery of safe, and quality surgical care and outcomes have not benefited all patient groups. Access to clinically-indicated surgical care and optimal outcomes is affected by a number of factors including socioeconomic status, age, sex/gender, level of education, race, ethnicity, health care availability, and region. While insurance status or co-morbidity might be thought of as the most reliable surrogate for prediction of surgical outcome differences, the delay of surgery, referral patterns, facility or provider volume and resources and unconscious biases are but a few additional mechanisms that can lead to disparities in care delivery, management and optimal outcomes across the continuum.
This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects. 

The FOA is expected to be published in May 2016 with an expected application due date in September 2016.

This FOA will utilize the R21 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

Research Initiative Details

This Notice encourages investigators with expertise and insights into this area of surgical disparities across the care continuum and related outcomes to begin to consider applying for this new FOA.

For the purpose of this initiative, 'surgical disparities' include trauma and critical care, emergency care, anesthesia and general surgical care, obstetric, orthopedic, cardiac and vascular, gastrointestinal tract, bariatric, pulmonary, organ transplantation, and cancer/surgical oncology. The scope of the field extends beyond clinical care and rehabilitation, and include a consideration of patient-level, provider-level and institutional level factors.

Overarching priority research questions for the initiative include analysis of clinical outcomes data on surgical pre-op management through post-op and rehabilitation, testing of various hypothesis that originates from the use of published or evidence-based surgical methods that identifies new indications or approaches to enhancing access, improving outcomes, safety and quality of surgical care for health disparity populations. While the goals of the projects will be to explore effectiveness of potential intervention approaches for addressing surgical disparities, this initiative will also seek to identify effective strategies at the patient, family, clinic, community and institutional level.

In addition, collaborative investigations combining expertise in qualitative and outcomes research including health services research are encouraged. Patient-centered care, comparative effectiveness, safety and quality improvement initiatives, and the promotion of enhanced surgical technologies in low-resource and medically underserved settings - are also of interest and these investigators should also begin considering applying for this application.

Among the areas of research encouraged in this initiative are robust investigative methodology and outcomes research examining the mechanisms that underlie the contributing factors, effects of suboptimal surgical care, as well as research designed to improve the translation of existing knowledge of strategies for addressing surgical care across the continuum.

APPLICATIONS ARE NOT BEING SOLICITED AT THIS TIME.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Regina James, MD
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
Telephone: 301-496-3462
Email: rjames@mail.nih.gov