Funding Opportunity Number: RFA-MD-24-005
Deadline: January 7, 2025
For this RFA, the following definition is listed below:
Populations experiencing health disparities and NIMHD research priorities: Racial and ethnic minority groups (Blacks or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations), and/or people with less privileged socioeconomic status (SES), and intersectionality with underserved rural residents and sexual and gender minority populations and/or disability condition (https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/resources/understanding-health-disparities/minority-health-and-health-disparities-definitions.html.
Research Objectives
The objective of this initiative is to support research to determine the underlying mechanisms that contribute to health disparities in HIV and aging and how multiple comorbidities influence overall health outcomes and quality of life among people with HIV from populations that experience health disparities.
Studies for this initiative may include multi-disciplinary clinical, translational, behavioral, epidemiology, prevention, and health services research projects that leverage understanding of the biological factors that may explain worse health outcomes (e.g., burden of comorbidities, premature or excessive mortality, poorer health-related quality of life) in PWH populations experiencing health disparities. In addition, projects can involve primary and/or secondary data collection and analysis.
Multidisciplinary projects proposing to understand the underlying mechanisms that contribute to multiple comorbidities in PWH are expected to propose human subjects research or utilize human clinical samples along with any available clinical data. Studies in the clinical setting of successfully ART- treated PWH doing well who develops (or has) multiple chronic conditions, with the focus on clinical care of their comorbidities, is of interest. Applicants are strongly encouraged to include conceptual models and/or theoretical frameworks to examine mechanisms and pathways that contribute to multiple comorbidities in PWH.
Specific Areas of Research Interest may include but are not limited to:
- Studies examining the effects of race and ethnicity and low SES on aging pathways in PWH.
- Studies examining the effects of race and ethnicity, SES, neighborhood factors and multiple comorbidities on frailty, decline in physical function and end organ disease outcomes in PWH.
- Studies examining the influence of SDOH on immune responses -innate and adaptive, and inflammation and interactions with various social stressors on aging and HIV disease outcomes.
- Cohort studies to conduct population-based HIV health disparities research addressing the relevant SDOH to outline mechanisms that lead to disparities in HIV disease pathogenesis and clinical outcomes.
- The interplay of multiple factors including social factors with microbiome, epigenomics, and proteomics to identify risk patterns for HIV related comorbidities.
- Studies examining how behavioral factors (such as alcohol consumption, substance use and smoking) and comorbidity burden contribute to disparities in HIV and aging in PWH from populations that experience health disparities.
- Studies on HIV and co-infections (e.g., CMV, HCV, HBV) and how they collectively affect HIV related comorbidities and health related quality of life in PWH from populations that experience health disparities.
- Studies that address access to care and integrated models of care for PWH with multiple comorbidities to optimize care delivery in diverse care settings, especially rural settings.
- Patient, clinician, and system/policy-level factors that predict receipt of appropriate treatments for co-occurring multiple comorbidities in PWH from populations that experience health disparities.
- HIV and women studies in minority populations with comorbidities including but not limited to addressing access to care, stigma, discrimination, gender-based violence and intimate partner violence in cis and transgender women.
- Studies focused on using community based participatory research methods while addressing clinical and patient-centered outcomes in PWH with multiple comorbidities from populations that experience health disparities.
- Studies examining interplay of multilevel factors (i.e., individual, interpersonal, community, societal) and how they affect multiple comorbidities in PWH with intersecting identities.
- Studies that address social and structural barriers to HIV testing, treatment-ART access and adherence, and prevention such as housing instability, food insecurity, poverty, transportation, stigma in PWH from populations that experience health disparities.
- Studies examining resiliency factors to reduce comorbidity risks and improve health outcomes in PWH from populations that experience health disparities.
For more information, please see the opportunity webpage.