This initiative represents the next iteration of the NIMHD Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) program that was established in 2005. As CBPR methodologies and other forms of community-engaged research approaches have become more common in NIH- and NIMHD-funded projects, the need to have an initiative focused on the CBPR approach rather than specific research questions or topic areas has decreased. Instead, this initiative will emphasize research priorities that can be addressed through community-engaged research approaches and that utilize the NIMHD Research Framework to assess and intervene on health determinants beyond the individual level, at the interpersonal, family, organizational, neighborhood, community, and societal levels. Recommendations generated from the NIMHD Science Visioning process indicated the need for a shift from individual-level and researcher-derived interventions to more community-derived, structural, multi-level, and multi-sectoral interventions to improve minority health effectively and sustainably and reduce and ultimately eliminate health disparities. Community-level interventions, in which interventions target determinants associated with the overall community, such as physical, built, or sociocultural environments; resources; or functioning, address many of these identified priorities, and by necessity, require community engagement to develop and/or evaluate them.
The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to support research to develop and test community-level interventions to improve minority health and reduce health disparities.
Applications are due January 7 2027.