Notice of Intent to Publish a Forecast for EmbraceHealth Clinical Research Network to Reduce Health Disparities – Research Sites

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) intends to publish a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to solicit applications for the EmbraceHealth Clinical Research Network. The overarching goals of the EmbraceHealth Clinical Research Network are to establish and maintain an efficient and nimble infrastructure to conduct research to address emerging, urgent, or chronic health needs among populations that experience health disparities. Each site or consortium within the Network will conduct research to develop, test, and implement clinical and behavioral interventions and services that address key public health needs and diseases with evidence of health disparities. Interventions will be designed and evaluated using robust scientific methods and must demonstrate feasibility, scalability, and reproducibility. The EmbraceHealth Network will serve the purpose of improving routine healthcare services as well as linking clinical practice and science within lower resourced healthcare settings.

Each research site in the EmbraceHealth Clinical Research Network must establish a robust infrastructure to support research by:

1. Recruiting and enrolling clinicians efficiently for health services and clinical research.
2. Harmonizing electronic health record (EHR) data across systems using approved common data elements for analyses within and across Network sites.
3. Developing, testing, and deploying interventions, workflows, and decision support systems.
4. Creating and testing strategies to address health care disparities in primary and/or subspecialty care
5. Facilitating research on emergent health conditions and factors relevant to health disparities, encompassing their timely prevention, screening, diagnosis, and effective treatment and management.
6. Collaborating with other Network sites and the Coordinating Center to transfer deidentified data to a central repository for further research.

Applications are not being solicited at this time. Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects. In addition, collaborative investigations combining expertise in multiple scientific and clinical disciplines will be encouraged.

Activity Code:

This NOFO will utilize the U01 (Research Program Grant Cooperative Agreements) or the UG3/UH3 activity codes.