The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking applications for its Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative: Exploratory Data and Methods to Address Urgent Needs to Stem the Opioid Epidemic.
Donor Name: National Institutes of Health
Country: United States
State: All States
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline (mm/dd/yyyy): 02/10/2022
Size of the Grant: $275,000
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to develop new, exploratory methods, approaches, and/or tools to apply to existing data streams (e.g., electronic health records, syndromic surveillance, claims data, registry data, pharmacy dispensing, and mortality records) that could provide novel insights into the dynamics of opioid and prescription drugs misuse, addiction, recovery, relapse, and recovery to facilitate rapid understanding of the opioid epidemic for prevention and treatment or to develop methods for small area estimation that inform decisions of local (e.g., substate) jurisdictions. It will emphasize approaches that shorten the lags between data capture and data availability so the data is available real-time or near real-time to provide actionable insights, and methods and tools that improve efficiency and practical use of surveillance, clinical or other relevant data that may allow for faster or better localized responses or better allocation of resources to address the opioid epidemic.
Applications should describe how the exploratory data or methods proposed will be applicable to solving current problems. This may include facilitating the extraction and transformation of data from electronic health records (EHR) for research use and consideration of social determinants of health as crucial contributors to health. This is an opportunity to foster the adoption of standardized data structure such as Fast Healthcare interoperability Resources (FHIR®) in accessing and exchanging data from EHR.
The datasets produced, when applicable, shall adhere to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reproducible) and shall be ethically sourced, trustworthy, well-defined, and accessible. The principles also apply to algorithms and other digital assets. The end products of this effort shall have three potentials: 1) the linked/integrated datasets that can be used to address significantly important questions, such as longitudinal data linked with mortality records for the trends and types of drug poisoning; 2) the datasets that can be further integrated in an established data management system/network for reuse and sharing; and 3) methods to shorten the time lag or improve the geographical precision of data capture that leads to timely data that generates actionable insights.
Some examples of exploratory projects considered responsive to this FOA include but are not limited to the following:
- Enhance methods to identify hidden opioid misuse and OUD populations that are outside the formal medical treatment system (e.g., syringe service programs (SSPs) data) and include these populations in the existing data infrastructure
- Develop methods that can efficiently link data from diverse systems for trackable datasets aggregation or evaluate optimal linkage of data from multiple sources (e.g., incorporation of the drug market data with near or real-time data to understand emerging drug problems)
- Leverage new data sources, ranging from individual physician researchers-hosted data to public census data, using innovative linking or matching methods that can assemble a bigger picture for opioids misuse to address fundamental issues in prevention, treatment, management, and harm reduction
- Develop methods to capture data on opioid usage on a near or real-time basis
- Develop methods and workflows for integration of heterogenous data; approaches for data/metadata acquisition, processing, provenance, wrangling, and compression, including development of standards and data exchange formats for domain-specific data; validating and benchmarking analysis (e.g., creating a joint point for harm reduction data sets and understanding what information related to harm reduction is available near real-time or real-time)
- Improve technologies to mine or automatically extract data from EHR, clinical trial data, digital health devices, social media, and other observational and experimental data to generate evidence that informs opioid treatment and prevention
- Enhance existing tools, algorithms, or methodologies through additional data, automation, or increased interoperability (e.g., methods to track and categorize emerging illicit drugs, increasing interoperability and automation for data from laboratories and medical examiner/coroner’s office to increase the timeliness of incorporating the information in an existing surveillance systems)
- Enhancing methods for nowcasting small-area or local estimates by linking multiple data and using tools such as natural language processing to increase precision
- Develop data visualization and dissemination tools for small area estimation or local estimates (e.g., including a feature to implement ‘outbreak’ detection or spatial outlier detection methods to identify counties or small areas)
- Explore methods to model the contribution of opioid drug use on other causes of death, especially for deaths not explicitly recorded as drug overdose or drug-related
- Develop methods to leverage existing longitudinal data, while minimizing selection biases
Relevant data sets may include but are not limited to:
- Data collected through unique tools, methodologies, technologies, or other innovative means (e.g., datasets from mobile devices captured, social media data, web-based data)
- Data collected through local, state, or tribal government agencies (e.g., State birth and death registry, existing nationally representative data, syndromic surveillance data, residential or community service facility data)
- NIH-supported datasets that are being generated under investigator-initiated research (applicants should describe how they will access data, e.g., through existing repositories or working with collaborators)
- Data collected through nongovernment organizations such as administrative data from healthcare, clinic, and criminal justice settings (e.g., insurance claims, EHR, prescriptions, laboratory)
- Data from first responders or other sources integrated into local communities
Funding Information
The NIH HEAL Initiative expects to commit $5,000,000 in FY 2022 to fund approximately 10 awards through this FOA and the companion FOA, RFA-DA-22-044, pending availability of funds and receipt of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.
The following will be considered in making funding decisions:
- Scientific and technical merit of the proposed project as determined by scientific peer review.
- Availability of funds.
- Relevance of the proposed project to program priorities
The combined budget for direct costs for the two-year project period may not exceed $275,000. No more than $200,000 may be requested in any single year.
Award Project Period
The total project period for an application submitted in response to this FOA may not exceed 2 years.
Eligible Organizations
- 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:
- Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education
- Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
- Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
- For-Profit Organizations
- Small Businesses
- For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)
- Local Governments
- State Governments
- County Governments
- City or Township Governments
- Special District Governments
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized)
- Federal Government
- Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
- U.S. Territory or Possession
- Other
- Independent School Districts
- Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
- Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
- Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
- Regional Organizations
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
