"HEAL Initiative: Limited Competition: Resource Coordinating Center for Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain (PRISM) to Reduce Opioid Prescribing (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" | RFA AT 19 011

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The funding opportunity titled "HEAL Initiative: Limited Competition: Resource Coordinating Center for Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain (PRISM) to Reduce Opioid Prescribing (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-AT-19-011) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement aimed at maintaining and expanding a central coordinating function that supports large, real-world research efforts in healthcare systems. It sits within the NIH HEAL Initiative framework, reflecting a broader federal push to address the opioid crisis by improving pain management practices and reducing unnecessary or high-risk opioid prescribing through evidence-based, system-level change.

At its core, this announcement solicits applications to continue an existing Coordinating Center that provides national leadership for the NIH Health Care Systems (HCS) Research Collaboratory program. The HCS Research Collaboratory is designed to make pragmatic research easier to plan, launch, and run in routine care settings such as health systems and large clinical networks, where studies must work within operational constraints, electronic health record environments, and complex clinical workflows. The opportunity specifically expands the Coordinating Center's responsibilities to also include oversight and coordination of trials funded under the PRISM initiative, which focuses on pragmatic and implementation studies for pain management strategies that can reduce opioid prescribing. In practical terms, NIH is looking for a hub that can help multiple funded projects align around consistent methods, shared resources, and coordinated problem-solving, rather than having each study reinvent infrastructure and procedures on its own.

The funding instrument is a cooperative agreement (U24), which signals that NIH expects substantial involvement from program staff in the conduct and stewardship of the overall program. Cooperative agreements typically require close coordination, shared governance expectations, and active engagement with NIH on priorities, milestones, and program-wide integration. The FOA is explicitly designated as "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," meaning the Coordinating Center itself is not expected to propose or run an independent clinical trial under this award mechanism. Instead, the Center's role is supportive and coordinating: enabling, harmonizing, advising, and providing shared services and expertise to the broader set of pragmatic and implementation studies funded elsewhere, including those under PRISM.

This announcement is described as a limited competition, which generally indicates that eligibility may be restricted to a narrow set of applicants, often tied to existing awardees or specific prior participation. While the summarized source data lists eligible applicants as public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, the full FOA language typically provides the definitive eligibility rules and any limitations related to the "limited competition" status. The announcement also places clear restrictions on foreign involvement: non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities (foreign institutions) are not eligible to apply, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible, and foreign components as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement are not allowed. In effect, the work supported by this award must be carried out entirely within allowable U.S.-based organizational structures, without foreign components.

From a programmatic standpoint, the Coordinating Center is meant to function as a national resource that strengthens the design and execution of pragmatic and implementation research in healthcare delivery settings, with an emphasis on pain care and opioid prescribing reduction. This typically involves developing and disseminating best practices, providing technical assistance, supporting common data and outcome approaches where appropriate, facilitating collaboration across studies, and helping ensure that research can be implemented in operational clinical environments. Because PRISM studies are expected to be conducted in real-world healthcare systems, coordination becomes especially important for topics like stakeholder engagement, workflow integration, ethics and regulatory considerations in pragmatic research, data quality and extraction from electronic health records, and consistent approaches to implementation and evaluation.

Key administrative details from the source information include: the sponsoring agency is NIH; the opportunity category is discretionary; the activity category is health; the CFDA number is 93.213; the FOA was created on 2019-04-26; and the original application closing date was 2019-07-08. The provided source extract does not specify an award ceiling or the number of expected awards, suggesting those fields were either not populated in the extract or were defined only in the full announcement text. As with most NIH announcements, the FOA itself would be the controlling document for details such as budget expectations, project period, required components of the application, review criteria, and any mandatory participation in governance structures or steering committees.

Overall, this opportunity is best understood as NIH investing in shared national infrastructure and leadership to accelerate high-quality, real-world research on pain management and opioid prescribing practices. Rather than funding a single study, it funds the connective tissue that helps multiple studies run more efficiently, consistently, and credibly across diverse healthcare systems, with the ultimate aim of producing evidence and implementation strategies that can be adopted at scale to improve pain care and reduce opioid-related harms.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled ""HEAL Initiative: Limited Competition: Resource Coordinating Center for Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain (PRISM) to Reduce Opioid Prescribing (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)"" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.213.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2019-04-26.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2019-07-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

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