American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Information and Resources

NIH has announced the availability of Recovery Act funds for administrative supplements, competitive revision applications, and for administrative supplements providing summer research experiences for students and science educators. The guidelines for these funding opportunities appear as follows:

1. NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Administrative Supplements
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-056.html

2. NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-058.html

3. NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Administrative Supplements Providing Summer Research Experiences for Students and Science Educators
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-060.html

The Office of Research Administration has developed a detailed document explaining how to submit applications in response to these announcements. You can read the document here: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Research/Stimulus/StimulusSOMApplicationGuidelines.doc

NIH has designated at least $200 million for a new initiative called the NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research (see RFA http://grants.nih.gov/grants/
funding/challenge_award/). This new program will support research on topic areas which address specific scientific and health research challenges in biomedical and behavioral research that would benefit from significant 2-year jumpstart funds. NIH Institute and Centers have selected specific Challenge Topics within each of the Challenge Areas. The research in these Challenge Areas should have a high impact in biomedical or behavioral science and/or public health.

NIH has designated at least $200 million in FYs 2009 - 2010 to fund 200 or more grants. In addition, Recovery Act funds allocated to NIH specifically for comparative effectiveness research (CER) may be available to support additional grants. Projects receiving these funds will need to meet this definition of CER: "a rigorous evaluation of the impact of different options that are available for treating a given medical condition for a particular set of patients. Such a study may compare similar treatments, such as competing drugs, or it may analyze very different approaches, such as surgery and drug therapy." Such research may include the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data as they apply to CER.

The requested budget may not exceed $500,000 total costs per year for a maximum of $1,000,000 total costs over a two-year project period. The application due date is April 27, 2009. Complete details on the Challenge Grants may be found here: http://grants.
nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-09-003.html

We hope that faculty will utilize the resources provided by our Office of Research Administration in order to successfully compete for these ARRA funds.

Chi V. Dang, MD, PhD
Vice Dean for Research

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