Funding Opportunity Number: PAR-24-273
Deadlines: February 5, 2025, March 5, 2025, May 5, 2025
Research Objectives
The overarching aim of this NOFO is to identify and understand best practices to engage older adults and their caregivers in providing appropriate care that is central to the attainment of optimal physical and mental health and wellbeing of older adults and the reduction of health disparities in this population.
Projects should focus on one or more NIH-designated health disparity populations living in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Tribal Nations, and the U.S. territories. Projects that focus on racial and ethnic minority populations and/or low socioeconomic status (SES) persons are of particular interest. For all other categories, projects that explore the intersectionality of age, sex, race, and ethnicity and/or low SES with rural populations or SGM groups, and people with disabilities are encouraged. Applications proposing approaches which consider multi-level determinants of health (e.g., patient, clinician, health care system, community) to address health disparities while optimizing the health and well-being of older adults from populations that experience health disparities are encouraged. Please refer to the NIMHD Research Framework for additional detail. Applications that plan to collect primary data from older adults, caregivers, clinicians and other persons are strongly encouraged to use the measures on social determinants of health in the PhenX tool kit.
This initiative will support research in outpatient, inpatient, institutional-based long term care settings, home-based care, and emergency care facilities serving diverse older adults. In addition, research that involves a partnership with relevant agencies (such as area agencies on aging, state units on aging, senior services, advocacy organizations for older adults, faith-based services) that offer home and community-based services for the older adult such as home-delivered meals, case management, companionship programs, are welcome. Outpatient settings include primary care, specialty clinics and specialty care settings such as dialysis or chemotherapy centers. Inpatient and institutional long-term care settings include hospitals, assisted living facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and long-term chronic care institutions. Research within the context of transitional care (e.g., hospital to home, or rehabilitation to home), palliative care, end-of-life care, and long-term care, where patients interact with clinicians on a regular basis, is also of interest. Studies may involve in-person and/or telemedicine encounters. This initiative is not solely focused on clinical health outcomes. Research on intermediary measures of non-clinical outcomes (e.g., trust, self-efficacy, self-autonomy, empowerment, safety, and resilience) are of interest.
Research Methodology
This NOFO seeks to support descriptive studies, interventions (especially multi-component, multi-sectoral, and/or or multi-level interventions), clinical trials (including cluster-randomized trials, and pragmatic trials), quasi-experimental studies, natural experiments (e.g., impact of policy), quality improvement studies, mixed methods research, and simulation modeling. Projects focused on rural populations, SGM groups, and people with disabilities are encouraged to examine intersections with race and/or ethnicity, and SES. Comparison groups/populations may also be included as appropriate for the research questions posed. It is expected that lessons learned from this initiative can help build research evidence regarding approaches to improve health outcomes for older adults from populations that experience health disparities.
For more detailed information, please see the opportunity website.