NIDA REI: Racial Equity Visionary Award Program for Research at Minority Serving Institutions on Substance Use and Racial Equity

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is a part of NIDA’s Racial Equity Initiative (REI), with goals that include promoting racial equity in NIDA’s research portfolio. This announcement invites applications supporting independent, early career or established scholars who self-identify as health equity, health disparities, or social determinants of health experts with the skills to make exceptionally creative contributions to the study of equity for underserved U.S. racial and/or ethnic minority groups that experience poorer outcomes related to substance use and substance use disorders.

Donor Name: National Institutes of Health

State: All States

County: All Counties

Territory: Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

Type of Grant: Grant

Deadline: 11/14/2024

Size of the Grant: $2,000,000

Grant Duration: 5 years

Details:

The Racial Equity Visionary Award Program embraces transformative science by supporting independent investigators proposing highly innovative research that 1) challenges scientific paradigms that perpetuate inequities, and 2) lays groundwork for large scale efforts to impact substance use-related disparities that affect underserved U.S. racial and/or ethnic minority populations. PIs are expected to self-identify as health equity, health disparities, or social determinants of health researchers and have prior experience conducting collaborative research projects with one or more underserved racial and/or ethnic minority population groups. The application should reflect an exceptionally creative approach to problem solving and a long-term commitment to solution-oriented research with underserved racial and/or ethnic minority communities.

Research Objectives

The Racial Equity Visionary Award program is designed to support health equity scholars conducting clinical research to better understand and/or intervene on systemic factors that drive disparities for racial and/or ethnic minority populations related to NIDA’s mission. For NIH, the definition of clinical research is broad, and includes epidemiological and behavioral studies, intervention research, outcomes research/health services research in addition to patient-oriented research. Investigators may propose to conduct various types of studies, such as natural experiments, cohort studies, policy research, optimization research, pilot/feasibility intervention trials, modeling studies, qualitative/mixed-methods research studies, or human laboratory trials. Pilot or preliminary data may be included in the application, but they are not required for this award.

Funding Information

NIDA intends to commit approximately $2,000,000 to fund 2-3 awards each year between this FOA and the companion FOA, RFA-DA-23-026.
The maximum project period allowed is 5 years.

Eligibility Criteria

Higher Education Institutions
- Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
- Private Institutions of Higher Education
The following types of Higher Education Institutions are always encouraged to apply for NIH support as Public or Private Institutions of Higher Education:
- Hispanic-serving Institutions
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs)
- Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
- Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)
To be eligible for this FOA, the applicant institution must be a domestic institution located in the United States and its territories which:
- has received less than $25 million dollars per year (total costs) from NIH Research Project Grants (RPGs) in each of the preceding two fiscal years, calculated using NIH RePORTER; and
- awards graduate degrees in biomedical sciences; and
- has a historical and current mission to educate students from any of the populations that have been identified as underrepresented in biomedical research as defined by the National Science Foundation NSF (i.e., African Americans or Blacks, Hispanic or Latino Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, U.S. Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities) or has a documented record of: (1) recruiting, training and/or educating, and graduating underrepresented students as defined by NSF (see above), which has resulted in increasing the institution’s contribution to the national pool of graduates from underrepresented backgrounds who pursue biomedical research careers and, (2) for institutions that deliver health care services, providing clinical services to medically underserved communities.