NLM Information Resource Grants to Reduce Health Disparities and Promote Health Equity (G08 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This Notice of Funding Opportunity Announcement (NOFO) solicits resource grant applications for projects that will provide accurate, useful, usable, and understandable health information to populations that experience health disparities and their health care providers. This NOFO supports the development of resources that can be used to improve health and well-being and that lead to reductions in health disparities. Access to accurate, useful, usable, and understandable health information is an important factor when managing health and health care. Proposed projects should harness the capabilities of information technology and medical or health libraries to disseminate clear, evidence-based health-related information in formats used by individuals and their health care providers. Proposed projects should emphasize the development and deployment of new information resources or services, or expand and improve an existing resource or service, to meet the needs of populations experiencing health disparities and to promote health equity.

Resource Project Objectives
The G08 program supports resource projects that use information technology to improve the organization and management of health-related information, with a broad range of usability, user and personal access factors considered. Strategies proposed to achieve NLM’s G08 programmatic goals should be scalable, sustainable, generalizable and have the potential to provide useful information to communities that experience health disparities and those who provide health care for these communities, including doctors, nurse practitioners, midwives, hospitals, health centers, and clinics.

Applications submitted to this notice of funding opportunity must provide evidence that the intended audience is a population with health disparities or a health care provider for one of these populations. A population that experiences health disparities must have a significant disparity in the overall disease incidence, prevalence, morbidity, mortality, or survival rates in the population compared to the health status of the general population. Proposals that do not address a health disparity will be withdrawn for non-responsiveness.

In planning, applicants must include evidence of a collaboration with a medical or health library to ensure that materials developed have generalizability and are capable of being disseminated through medical or health libraries and their instrumentalities. Applicants are expected to present evidence of their demonstrated commitment to the needs of communities that experience health disparities. This NOFO requires the inclusion of a resource evaluation plan and evidence of resource sustainability. An evaluation plan that measures the value of the resource, usability, and user experience, should be provided in the application. Evaluations that meet the definition of a clinical trial are not allowed under this funding mechanism and will be withdrawn for non-responsiveness.

Topics that are responsive to this grant program include, but are not limited to:
Developing or upgrading health information resources or services to meet the information needs of groups that experience health disparities.
Providing health information resources or services to community organizations who serve populations that experience health disparities.
Developing novel information strategies to facilitate the implementation of innovative patient-centered care and precision medicine for diverse communities.
Developing information resources that enable persons from populations that experience health disparities to make informed decisions regarding research participation, such as providing culturally tailored clinical trial education materials.
Facilitating the use of library resources to identify population needs related to types and forms of information, including information visualizations, displays and interfaces to access information, to assist in making health-related decisions.
Applications Not Responsive to the NOFO
The following types of projects are non-responsive to the scope of NLM's Information Resource Grants to Reduce Health Disparities and Promote Health Equity program:

Projects that do not address a population that experiences health disparities.
Projects that do not include a medical or health library.
Evaluations that meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial.
Installation of online library catalogs.
Electronic health record systems, single-purpose or closed clinical information systems such as a stand-alone laboratory system or picture archiving system (PACS).
Digitization of print materials.
Projects that duplicate NLM products and databases such as biomedical literature indexing projects.
Non-responsive applications will not be reviewed.

Consult with the scientific contact to discuss responsiveness of your project.

See Section VIII. Other Information for award authorities and regulations.