Key Dates

NOT-MH-21-186 - Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Systems-Level Risk Detection and Interventions to Reduce Suicide Ideation and Behaviors in Black Children and Adolescents (R34 Clinical Trial Optional)

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) intends to promote a new initiative by publishing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications for research to test the effectiveness of combined interventions to both detect and intervene to reduce risk of suicide, suicide ideation and behavior (SIB), and non-suicide self-injury (NSSI) specifically among Black children and adolescents.

This Notice of Intent to Publish (NOITP) is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects. 

The FOA is expected to be published in Spring 2021 with an expected application due date in Summer 2021.

This FOA will utilize the R01 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

Consistent with the goals of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, NIMH seeks to support research on strategies to reduce the suicide rate in the U.S. by 20% by the year 2025. The recently documented increase in SIB among Black children and adolescents underscores a critical need for early risk detection and effective prevention strategies focused specifically on these youth. The ultimate goal of this initiative is to encourage services research on the effectiveness-implementation continuum aimed at testing easily implemented systems-level interventions and strategies that improve systematic risk identification, coordinated referral to, or engagement and retention in quality care for prevention of SIB and/or NSSI specifically among Black youth and Black LGBTQ+SGL (Same Gender Loving) youth. The FOA will solicit research projects that: 1) optimize a service system intervention that coordinates systematic risk identification, evaluation, and linkage to quality treatment and services for Black youth; 2) test the feasibility and effectiveness of the intervention in detecting and responding to vulnerable youth within and across relevant community settings; and 3) demonstrate the intervention's implementation and potential for future uptake in diverse settings across the U.S.

Given the importance of cultural, social, and contextual factors, the systems-level interventions and strategies that this initiative encourage should account for individual-, family-, community-, provider-, and organizational-level factors to optimize the effectiveness, feasibility, and rapid uptake, implementation, and sustained delivery, thereby accelerating the benefit to Black youth. This research should also improve connections to treatment and services with proven effectiveness in reducing SIB and/or NSSI with the goal of making these interventions more available, accessible, and more effectively delivered to Black youth, in a sustained and coordinated way. The research encouraged by this initiative is expected to focus on systems-level interventions and strategies to improve outcomes for Black youth and is not intended to support the development of new screening tools, assessment instruments, or individual-level preventive or therapeutic interventions.

This FOA will utilize the R01 mechanism to support studies with well-justified hypotheses supported by pilot data, that are adequately powered to definitively answer the primary research question(s) and yield results with potential to inform practice. Investigators focused on exploratory pilot studies should reference NOT-MH-21-186.

Applications are not being solicited at this time. 

Please direct all inquiries to:

Denise Juliano-Bult, MSW

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

301-443-1638

[email protected]

Crystal Barksdale, Ph.D., MPH
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Telephone: 301-443-7034
Email: [email protected]