NIH is issuing this FOA in response to the declared public health emergency issued by the Secretary, HHS, for 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). This emergency cooperative agreement funding opportunity announcement (FOA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides an expedited funding mechanism as part of the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) initiative, a consortium of community-engaged research projects to understand factors that have led to disproportionate burden of the pandemic on the underserved and/or vulnerable populations so that interventions can be implemented to decrease these disparities. This FOA seeks to fund a single Coordination and Data Collection Center (CDCC) as an integral part of the consortium. The funding for this supplement is provided from the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, 2020.
The Office of the Director (OD) is therefore supporting a new cooperative agreement addressing the objectives described below. This FOA is therefore released in parallel with three companion emergency Notices of Special Interest (NOSIs)
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NOT-OD-20-121 encourages community-engaged Testing Research Projects to supplement large scale networks, consortia, or centers, will examine SARS-CoV-2 infection patterns and efforts to increase access and effectiveness of diagnostic methods.
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NOT-OD-20-120 encourages community-engaged Testing Research Projects, but shifts the pool of eligible grants for supplementation to individual research awards that include community collaboration or partnership, generally targeting specific populations.
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NOT-OD-20-119 seeks research to understand the Social, Ethical and Behavioral Implications (SEBI) of COVID-19 testing in these populations.
The CDCC will serve as a national resource, working with NIH scientific staff and consortium members to coordinate and facilitate research activities. The CDCC will also serve as a spoke in the larger NIH initiatives by providing deidentified individual data to an NIH-based data center. The RADx-UP CDCC will provide overarching support and guidance in the following four domains: (1) Administrative Operations and Logistics, (2) COVID-19 Testing Technology, (3) Community and Health System Engagement and (4) Data Collection, Integration and Sharing. The CDCC will facilitate RADx-UP collaborative research by providing organizational and analytical infrastructure and expertise, supporting data integration and analysis, and coordinating across RADx-UP projects and the NIH-supported RADx initiatives that are developing and validating new COVID-19 testing technologies.