NIMHD is soliciting supplements to existing NIMHD U54 center awards (see "Application and Submission Information" for eligibility) to establish resource hubs to promote multi-sectoral rural health disparities research.

Underserved rural populations are an NIH-designated health disparity population. Rural residents, who comprise 20% of the US population, experience a range of poorer health outcomes compared to the general population. They have higher mortality from the five leading causes of death in the US, heart disease, cancer, accidental injuries, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke. A range of social determinants contribute to rural health disparities, such as greater socioeconomic disadvantage, limited educational, economic and occupational opportunities, toxic environmental exposures, and lack of access to healthcare and social services to promote better health. Consequently, multi-sectoral research that involves collaboration across different human service sectors is needed to understand and address rural health disparities.

There are many challenges to conducting heath and health disparities research in rural areas. Researchers are usually concentrated in large urban and suburban rather than rural areas. Service providers, government agencies, and community-based organizations in rural areas are often under-resourced and, like rural residents themselves, widely dispersed across rural catchment areas, adding logistical barriers of distance. Further, low population density results in small sample sizes which may limit researchers’ ability to conduct adequately statistically powered research within a single rural area or setting. These factors all pose logistical barriers to the conduct of multi-sectoral, place-based rural health research.

To address these challenges, NIMHD intends to pilot the implementation of “resource hubs” attached to existing NIMHD center grants. These hubs will involve coalitions of researchers and community partners to build research capacity in an identified rural catchment area and offer opportunities to share resources and data across collaborators.

At a minimum, supplement activities are expected to include the following:

• Establishment of a multi-sectoral research coalition of partners interested in engaging in rural health disparities research. Collaborators may include but are not limited to partners from healthcare, public health, education, transportation, agriculture, housing, or criminal justice sectors. Coalitions may be new or reflect an expansion of the scope of existing coalitions that did not originally have a rural health disparities research focus.
• The identification of local research priorities and associated research capacity needs within the identified rural catchment area using one or more systematic information gathering processes, such as stakeholder surveys/interviews, focus groups, Delphi panels, engagement workshops, or town hall meetings. Potential research capacity needs may be related to personnel training and mentorship; data storage, curation, or linkage; research assessment and measurement tools, research administration resources; or other areas.
• Support of one or more pilot projects focused on multi-sectoral rural health disparities research that include collaborations from the coalition. The application should describe how these pilot projects will be incorporated into the center’s existing pilot project program regarding solicitation, selection, and management. The application should not include a description of specific pilot projects.
  

Supplement applications are expected to describe how the proposed activities fit within the scope of the existing center award and to provide a justification for the selected rural catchment area. Applications should specify which Federal definition of ‘rural’ is being used. (see https://www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/about-us/definition/index.html for more information).

Application and Submission Information
Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.

• 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 PA-18-591 must be followed, with the following additions:

• Application Due Date June 15, 2020 by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.
• For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-MD-20-010” (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.
• Requests may be for one year of support only. The active term of the center grant must be sufficient to receive funds at the time of award.
• Budgets are limited to $125,000 direct costs. Pilot projects should use the same budget limits as those in the center’s Investigator Development Core.
• The Research Strategy section of the application is limited to 6 pages.
• Only existing awardees of NIMHD Research Centers in Minority Institutions (U54) and NIMHD Specialized Centers of Excellence for Research on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54) programs are eligible to apply. Specifically, applicable center grants were funded in response to one of the following funding opportunity announcements:
  • RFA-MD-17-003, Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) (U54)
  • RFA-MD-17-006, Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) (U54)
  • RFA-MD-18-012, Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) (U54)
  • RFA-MD-17-005, NIMHD Specialized Centers of Excellence on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54)
• Only one supplement application per center grant may be submitted
• The process for Streamlined Submissions using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.
• Applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the NIMHD program contact that a request has been submitted in response to this FOA in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.

Applications that do not comply with these instructions may be delayed or not accepted for review.

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