Funding Opportunity Number: RFA-DA-25-024
Deadline: February 11, 2025, August 13, 2025
Program Objectives and Scope
Substance use remains a key driver of new HIV infections and an important factor affecting clinical and health outcomes related to HIV and HIV-associated comorbidities. People who use substances often experience gaps in the HIV care continuum. New HIV cases in the US disproportionately occur among young adults, while persons living with HIV have increasingly longer lives which necessitate a lifespan perspective and recognition that patterns of substance use can vary across the life course. People living chronically with HIV and substance use also face the risk of multiple cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological and psychiatric comorbidities that affect health outcomes. This NOFO is therefore designed to attract exceptionally talented teams of investigators to conduct cutting-edge research at the intersection of HIV and substance use to stimulate basic HIV/substance use research and inform effective HIV prevention, care and cure strategies. Listed below are the NIDA’s HIV research priorities:
- Prevent new infections and transmission of HIV among people who use addictive substances and their sexual and/or injection partners.
- Increase the understanding of etiology, pathogenesis, spread, and persistence of HIV among people with substance use and SUDs.
- Address comorbidities and improve health outcomes among people who use addictive substances and have HIV.
- Accelerate scientific discoveries in HIV/AIDS and substance use research.
Research areas of interest including, but not limited to:
- Innovative strategies and interventions at the individual, provider, organizational/setting and/or community level to reduce stigma that impedes the provision and utilization of services for substance use and HIV prevention and/or care.
- Innovative approaches to assess and/or address social determinants related to substance use and HIV with attention to longstanding structural issues such as racism and disparities in health care resources.
- Studies developing and testing the use of media and communication campaigns to address stigma and stimulate demand for evidence-based practices addressing substance use and HIV prevention and/or treatment.
- Targeted intervention to increase uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among people who use or misuse substances, in particular people who use methamphetamine.
- Clinical intervention and implementation studies to evaluate integration of HIV testing and care in the overdose prevention and care facilities.
- Innovative approaches to model HIV risk and predict future hotspots in the context of changing drug use epidemics (domestic or international).
- Novel modeling approaches to estimate population-level effects of substance use epidemic dynamics and/or intervention strategies on HIV incidence and HIV clinical outcomes.
- Novel biomedical, behavioral and/or integrated strategies to improve prevention and treatment outcomes for people living with or at risk for HIV and SUDs.
- Implementation research that develops and tests strategies to increase the availability, uptake, and sustainability of evidence-based HIV and substance use prevention and/or treatment interventions.
- Novel approaches to data aggregation of different data sources to understand population needs, resources and infrastructure within jurisdictions and promote effective community-based approaches to address HIV and substance use prevention and/or treatment.
- Novel approaches to address HIV prevention and/or treatment and substance use in the context of infectious disease and/or psychiatric comorbidities.
- Creative ways to enhance HIV care and prevention in women, girls, and, in particular, women of color who have SUD.
- Develop and test novel expansions of harm reduction services that incorporate HIV prevention and care modalities.
- Applications of optimization and/or adaptive trial strategies to increase delivery of evidence-based practices and improve outcomes, particularly complex patient/client populations.
- Research to evaluate effectiveness of novel treatment and prevention strategies to address polysubstance use in people with HIV.
- Clinical research to evaluate feasibility, uptake, drug-drug interactions and efficacy of new line of long-acting injectable antiretrovirals.
- Research to test and generate evidence for effectiveness of non-opioid pain management strategies in aging adults living with HIV.
- Studies to optimize HIV and SUD care strategies that minimize risks of polypharmacy and/or ensure sustainability during transitions of care among aging people living with HIV.
- Innovative strategies to optimize immune responses to HIV and HIV vaccine candidates in people with substance and SUD.
- Creative strategies to monitor HIV infection or latency in the CNS and/or determine the size and nature of the viral reservoir under the influences of substance use and/or therapies for SUD and HIV.
- Innovative approaches to achieve sustained antiretroviral therapy (ART)-free remission and/or eradication of HIV among people who use addictive substances and experience ART interruptions and delays, and relapse in drug use.
- Explore and develop potential biomarkers or therapeutic targets for diagnosing and treating neurocognitive disorder and to block and/or eliminate CNS HIV reservoirs in people with HIV and SUD.
- Novel approaches to unravel the roles of addictive substances in epigenomic or transcriptional regulation, or other molecular processes critical to HIV replication, persistence and reactivation.
- Research to decipher the contributions of addictive substances and inflammatory stimuli on HIV infection, latency or pathogenesis.
- In vivo analysis of HIV infection, latency and immunity as a result of addictive substance use using longitudinal patient studies or primate models.
For more information, please see the opportunity webpage.