Key Dates

NOT-MH-21-188 - Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Systems-Level Risk Detection and Interventions to Reduce Suicide Ideation and Behaviors in Youth from Underserved Populations (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 the risk of suicide, suicide ideation and behavior (SIB), and non-suicide self-injury (NSSI) among youth from populations that are often underserved by the mental health system.

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 R01activity 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 designed to reduce the rate of suicide in the U.S. by 20% by the year 2025. A number of sub-populations have been identified as having rates of suicide higher than the national average, and many youth from underserved populations are included in that group. For the purposes of this FOA, NIMH uses the following definition of “underserved”:

• Underserved youth include members of minority groups or other individuals experiencing disparities in mental health outcomes, including Latinx populations, American Indian and Alaska Native populations, refugees, individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), individuals with disabilities, persons from sexual and gender minority groups. Also included are: people living in a geographic area with a shortage of health care services (e.g., rural or frontier areas); groups that face economic barriers to health care; individuals who are homeless or unstably housed; incarcerated, detained, under community supervision, or recently released from detention or incarceration, and youth with serious mental illness (SMI). NOTE: Investigators focused on studies exclusively examining African American/Black youth populations are directed to NOT-MH-21-185 .

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 suicide, specifically among underserved children and adolescents. This 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 underserved 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 encourages should account for individual-, family-, community-, provider-, and organizational-level factors as appropriate to optimize the effectiveness, feasibility, and rapid uptake, implementation, and sustained delivery. This research should also improve connections to treatment and services with proven effectiveness in reducing SIB and/or NSSI, with attention to factors that impact availability, accessibility, and fidelity of delivery to underserved youth in a sustained and coordinated way. The research encouraged by this upcoming FOA should emphasize systems-level interventions and strategies to improve outcomes for 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-21-188.

Applications are not being solicited at this time. 

Please direct all inquiries to:

Denise Juliano-Bult, M.S.W.

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

301-443-1638

[email protected]