The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest is to highlight the list of widely appreciated systematic barriers or translational science problems included in PAR-19-099 and PAR-19-100 to add the topics of interest described below.

The NCATS CTSA Program collaborative innovation suite of awards support team-based research to develop, demonstrate and disseminate innovations that can improve the translational science process to turn observations from the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that benefit public health. The suite of opportunities aims to provide support to investigators to tackle translational science problems no one hub can solve alone, to disseminate validated solutions developed at one hub to other hubs and to test innovations in different hub settings and adapt such innovations for further dissemination within and outside the CTSA Program consortium, if appropriate.

Topics of Interest

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is issuing this Notice to highlight interest in receiving grant applications focused on the following area(s):

• Rural Health: We encourage clinical and translational science research to address the significant burden of conditions that disproportionately affect rural underserved populations and contribute to the health disparities found in rural compared to urban or suburban communities.
• Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Maternal Mortality: Pregnancy-related deaths disproportionally affect women of African, American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) descent. Collaborative, innovative and multidisciplinary translational science research projects that leverage the resources of the CTSA program to address this unmet need are needed. Examples include but are not limited to shared informatics tools, linked clinical databases and EHRs, existing collaborations with minority-serving healthcare delivery organizations, and well-developed partnerships with URM communities.
• Applications for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Translational Science: Applicants are encouraged to collaboratively develop, demonstrate, and disseminate algorithms within the CTSA Program cloud infrastructure that ensure trustworthiness, explainability, usability, transparency, and reproducibility. Use cases in this area should focus on the development ofGood Algorithm Practices (GAPs) which includes model validation, data integrity, and generalizability. Please see Machine Intelligence in Healthcare for more information.
• Veterans Health: Clinical and translational science research in collaboration with the Veterans Health Administration is needed to address the health burdens of veterans and to more effectively engage and enable veterans who reside in rural areas to participate in clinical and translational science research related to pain and/or OUD.
• Genome editing: Translational science research projects that will support future clinical studies of genome editors in the treatment of multiple rare genetic diseases are needed.

Application and Submission Information

This notice applies to due dates on or after July 10, 2020 and subsequent receipt dates through November 10, 2021.

Submit applications for this initiative using one of the following funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) or any reissues of these announcement through the expiration date of this notice.

• PAR-19-099 - Limited Competition: Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program: Collaborative Innovation Award (U01 Clinical Trial Optional)
• PAR-19-100 - Limited Competition: Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program: Exploratory Collaborative Innovation Awards (R21 Clinical Trial Optional)

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and the funding opportunity announcement used for submission must be followed, with the following additions:

• For funding consideration, applicants must include NOT-TR-20-007 (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.

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