Coordinating Center to Support NIDA Rural Opioid HIV and Comorbidity Initiative (U24 - Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA DA 19 004

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA DA 19 004

The grant opportunity titled "Coordinating Center to Support NIDA Rural Opioid HIV and Comorbidity Initiative (U24 - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-DA-19-004) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement designed to fund one interdisciplinary Coordinating Center. The central goal is to formalize and streamline support for a large rural opioid-focused initiative led by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and co-funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). This broader rural opioid initiative originally supported projects under earlier funding announcements (RFA-DA-17-014 and RFA-DA-17-023), and the Coordinating Center is meant to serve as the hub that connects, standardizes, and strengthens the collective work of those grantees and the funders.

At its core, the Coordinating Center is expected to provide comprehensive, centralized support across scientific, technical, regulatory, ethical, and logistical domains. A major emphasis is on improving data comparability across participating rural sites and projects, which typically collect information in different ways and operate under different local constraints. To address this, the Center is tasked with supporting new data collection where needed, enabling data integration across studies, and building integrated datasets for the overall rural opioid initiative. In practice, this includes developing shared data elements or harmonization approaches, creating processes for combining multi-site data, and ensuring the resulting integrated datasets are usable for cross-site analyses that can inform policy and practice in rural communities affected by opioid use, HIV, and related comorbidities.

Another key responsibility is helping grantees access and use local administrative and research datasets. Many implementation and community-level interventions rely on data held by local agencies or systems such as public health departments, hospitals, emergency medical services, criminal justice systems, Medicaid programs, or other community organizations. The Coordinating Center is expected to assist participating projects with acquiring these datasets (as feasible and appropriate), navigating data use agreements and governance issues, and analyzing them to evaluate implementation activities or strengthen local community assessments. Beyond supporting local project needs, the Center must also be able to conduct analyses requested by the initiative that draw on the integrated multi-site datasets, effectively acting as an analytic resource for the network when cross-cutting questions arise.

The opportunity also places strong weight on dissemination, meaning the Coordinating Center is not only expected to manage and analyze data but also to help ensure the initiative produces accessible, publishable, and actionable outputs. The Center must develop and execute a publication and dissemination plan for the rural opioid initiative. That plan would typically include coordinated manuscripts, data reporting standards, authorship and review processes, and strategies for reaching diverse audiences such as researchers, practitioners, rural health systems, community partners, and federal stakeholders. Because this is a cooperative agreement mechanism, the work is expected to be highly collaborative and interactive with NIDA and the other funders rather than functioning as a fully independent research grant.

Operationally, the Coordinating Center must provide logistical support for coordination across the initiative. This includes organizing and supporting in-person meetings, conference calls, and webinars that bring together rural opioid initiative grantees and funders. The Center is also represented on the initiative's executive steering committee along with funders and participating grantees, which signals an ongoing governance and coordination role. In other words, the awardee is expected to help guide initiative-level planning and decision-making while also handling the practical infrastructure that keeps a multi-site network functioning smoothly.

The award uses the U24 cooperative agreement mechanism and explicitly does not allow clinical trials under this announcement. It falls under the Education and Health activity category and is associated with CFDA number 93.279. The original closing date listed is August 15, 2018, and the opportunity was created March 20, 2018. The maximum award amount (award ceiling) is listed as $500,000. While the posting notes expected awards, it also clearly states the intent to fund a single Coordinating Center, indicating that only one award is anticipated for the central hub function.

Eligibility is broad across many U.S.-based organization types, reflecting the interdisciplinary and infrastructure-oriented nature of the work. Eligible applicants include state, county, city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; Native American tribal organizations other than federally recognized tribal governments; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); small businesses; and additional entities categorized as "others." The announcement also highlights additional eligible categories such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISISs), faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions.

At the same time, the opportunity clearly restricts foreign participation. Non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply. Foreign components, as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are not allowed. These restrictions reinforce that the initiative is intended to focus on U.S. rural contexts and U.S.-based data systems, partnerships, and implementation environments.

Overall, this funding opportunity is best understood as an infrastructure and coordination award intended to maximize the collective impact of multiple rural opioid-related projects by standardizing and integrating data, strengthening evaluation capacity with local datasets, enabling cross-project analyses, and coordinating communications and dissemination. The Coordinating Center is essentially the backbone of the broader initiative, ensuring that separate rural efforts can be compared, combined, learned from as a network, and translated into evidence that is useful for both local rural communities and national stakeholders addressing opioid use, HIV, and related comorbidities.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Coordinating Center to Support NIDA Rural Opioid HIV and Comorbidity Initiative (U24 - Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.279.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2018-03-20.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2018-08-15. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for RFA DA 19 004

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