June 21, 2022
NOT-NS-23-020 - Notice of Correction to Award Conditions for NOT-NS-23-001: "Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): COVID-19 Related Revisions to NINDS ADRD Human Subjects Cooperative Agreement Programs"
PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)
This NINDS Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) invites applications for administrative supplements to address staffing shortages that are significantly impacting the recruitment of participants for NINDS administered Alzheimer's Disease / Alzheimer's Disease and RelaTed Dementias (AD/ADRD) clinical research studies.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the AD/ADRD clinical research community in numerous ways, resulting in significant slowdowns in study start-up and trial accrual. Based on reports received from clinical trial PIs, clinical trial coordinating centers, and participating hospitals and universities, recruitment has been affected by staffing shortages brought about by furloughs, reassignments to COVID-19 related duties, and staff leaving for different opportunities. NINDS believes it is critical to be proactive in addressing these shortages, and there are many potential sites throughout NINDS clinical networks that can be leveraged to enhance recruitment into ADRD clinical research programs under cooperative agreement awards administered by the NINDS.
Research Objectives
The immediate goal of this initiative, in which applicants can request more than one year of funding, but not beyond the timeframe of the parent award, is to supplement ADRD cooperative agreement awards to enhance recruitment efforts as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This initiative aims to address this goal by promoting the hiring and/or training of critical clinical research staff, such as clinical research coordinators, project managers, and home-visit staff at participating sites and centers. The long-term goal is to enable stable, long-term employment of these clinical research staff, thereby strengthening the workforce that has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Doing so will help in rebuilding recruitment mechanisms for current and future clinical research projects as well as developing approaches to potentially avoid similar staffing shortages if confronted with another negative turn in the pandemic. All supplement applications must be within scope of the parent award
Applications for this administrative supplement should, at a minimum, include the following:
- Rationale indicating how the supplement would help support and improve ADRD recruitment efforts at NINDS-funded clinical research centers.
- Details regarding the type of staff that would be supplemented, hired, and/or trained, as well as specifics regarding their roles, expectations, and work environments.
- Timelines for the hiring or training of staff.
- A detailed plan describing how staff hired and/or trained using funds from the administrative supplement would be retained after the funds are used.
The following types of applications are considered out of scope:
- Applications for supplements to awards that are not cooperative agreement awards administrated by the NINDS.
- Applications that are not porposing to address staffing for AD/ADRD research.
- Applications to supplement parent awards that do no propose AD/ADRD research.
- Applications that are not specifically designed to address by COVID-19 related circumstances.
- Applications with a timeframe that extends the timeframe of the parent award.
- Applications whose budgets exceed $250K in direct costs in any year..
Application and Submission Information
Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.
- PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)
All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide must be followed, with the following additions
- Applications can only be submitted for existing NINDS awards.
- Application Due Date(s) August 19th, 2022, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.
- For funding consideration, applicants must include NOT-NS-23-001 (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 up to four years of support and cannot extend beyond the period of the parent award.
- Application budgets must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project. Supplement budget requests are limited to 100% of the direct costs of the current year of the parent award (exclusive of Facilities and Administrative costs on sub-contracts) and may not exceed $250,000 in direct costs per year. Applicants that want to propose higher budgets must receive permission from the project officer and IC Contact prior to submission.
- Applicants must be able to perform the research work without critically impacting other high-priority, on-going NINDS research programs.
- The process for Streamlined Submissions using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.
- The Research Strategy section of the application is limited to 6 pages.
- The application Abstract section should describe the proposed supplement and the Research Strategy section should include a summary or abstract of the funded parent award or project. The Research Strategy should state the relevance to the parent award and AD/ADRD, and articulate the component(s) and any IC-specific priorities that the supplement is addressing.
- Applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the program contact at NINDS that a request has been submitted in response to this FOA in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.
Carlos C. Faraco, Ph.D.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Telephone: 301-496-9135
Email: [email protected]
and Human Services (HHS)
