NCCIH FOA for Behavioral Interventions for Prevention of Opioid Use Disorder or Adjunct to Medication Assisted Treatment-SAMHSA Opioid STR Grants – Applicant FAQs

This NCCIH Request For Applications (RFA) is set up to work with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)-funded Opioid STR grants. These grants from SAMHSA provide funds to increase services for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) Treatment including Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT).

The NCCIH funding cannot fund the same services funded by the SAMHSA grant. The proposed research in the NCCIH application should not have the same aims as any SAMHSA-funded research projects.

No. You do not need to have a SAMHSA-funded grant. This is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding opportunity announcement that was designed to dovetail with the SAMHSA-funded Opioid STR grants.

The grant applicants would need to work with relevant state staff within a specific state. Each grant application will be reviewed by a special review group for this set of applications, and therefore the application must follow NIH requirements, including identifying a research team with required expertise to conduct the proposed research.

As stated in the FOA, all project teams must include relevant state agency staff listed as key personnel (or as other staff on the project) to ensure adequate input from state agencies regarding study design and planned outcomes.

This funding opportunity is for investigators with expertise in behavioral interventions for the treatment or prevention of opioid use disorders (OUDs). Please see Section III. Eligibility Information in the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for a complete listing of eligibility criteria. Your application would need to collaborate with a state agency/agencies who have received Opioid STR grants (see above for further information).

State officials with active responsibilities for SAMHSA-funded projects may have several types of relevant expertise, such as access to state infrastructure for identifying potential subjects, access to data systems that collect relevant outcome measures, or similar responsibilities that can ensure data outcomes are relevant to the state and aid in reducing otherwise-high infrastructure costs for an individual grant.

Project teams must include relevant state agency staff as key personnel (or as other staff on the project) to ensure adequate input from state agencies to study design and planned outcomes.

Proposed grant applications may dovetail with the state-funded services or research (but not overlap) or may focus on OUD patient populations that are of interest to the state and relevant to this FOA.

No, this is an NIH funding opportunity announcement with funds coming from NCCIH. Funding for this NCCIH initiative is completely independent of the funds used for the SAMHSA projects.

You can study people with opioid use disorders (OUDs) who are receiving Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT). You can also study people for whom the behavioral interventions you’re investigating would be used as primary prevention (people at high risk of developing OUDs) or secondary prevention (people deemed no longer requiring MAT but at risk of relapse). This funding opportunity is not for studying pain populations who may or may not be at risk of developing OUDs.

Yes, a state can support submission of more than one application if they appear relevant to the OUD population and the FOA. Multiple applications can be submitted by a state that has the infrastructure to support the planned research in multiple applications.

No, this FOA only funds behavioral research. The types of behavioral interventions for prevention of OUD or as an adjunct to Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) for OUD that are of interest to NCCIH for the purposes of this FOA include, but are not limited to, the following: biofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy, guided imagery, hypnosis, meditation (e.g., mindfulness meditation), mindful techniques and multidisciplinary rehabilitation, progressive relaxation, tai chi, and yoga.

No, this is only for the U.S. states and territories who received funding from the Opioid STR grants as part of the 21st Century Cures Act.

This NCCIH FOA is a phased award.

The R21 phase will support the development of preliminary data; feasibility studies; case report forms and other resources necessary for the performance of the study; further development and finalization of study partnerships including signed contracts with performing clinical sites; Institutional Review Board/Data and Safety Monitoring Board approval of the trial protocol, informed consent(s), and manual of operations. All regulatory approvals should be obtained prior to the end of the R21 award.

The R33 phase will support the conduct of the research study, including training of intervention providers, comparison group providers, or other resources required for study initiation. These should be planned at the start of the R33 award to allow for the successful launch and execution of the proposed clinical study in the R33 phase. The R33 award is subject to NCCIH funding availability and scientific priorities. R33 awards will be made after administrative review with attention to the extent to which agreed upon milestones have been met.

Review the list of state grantees and description of state projects for the SAMHSA Opioid STR grants on the SAMHSA website: https://www.samhsa.gov/grants/awards/2017/TI-17-014.

If you are unable to locate contact information for the state agency staff, please contact Donna Hillman (SAMHSA) at Donna.Hillman@samhsa.hhs.gov.