NIH Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement: Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa
The National Institute of Health (NIH) released four Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa). The estimated publication date of the funding opportunity announcement is July 10, 2020.
This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive multidisciplinary Research Hub projects. Additionally, this notice inform the research community of a Virtual Symposium Platform that will launch the program and facilitate networking.
Opportunities:
1. Research Hubs (U54 – Clinical Trial Optional)
Focus on critical health research areas to be addressed through data science approaches. Hub applicants should engage African government, industry, and/or other organizations, diverse departments from Hub institutions, and organizations in the United States and/or globally that can partner to provide synergistic expertise, collaborate on research, and support data science linked to new technologies and solutions. Applicants will be required to propose a minimum of two collaborating partner organizations, one of which must be non-academic, and the number of partners within each Hub is expected to grow throughout the duration of the award to enhance existing research or to collaborate on new projects. The cooperative agreements will be direct awards to African organizations and are designed to become recognized centers of excellence in data science and innovation focused on a health priority in Africa.
Read more here.
2. Research Training Program (U2R – Clinical Trial Optional)
To support long-term data science health research and innovation training through graduate degree (master’s and/or doctoral) training and faculty development activities. Grantees will train cohorts of African investigators that will have the skills to become independent investigators, research leaders, and research collaborators. The cooperative agreements can either be direct awards to African institutions or awards to U.S. institutions in partnership with African institutions. Regardless of the applicant organization, the training programs must focus on building institutional capacity at one or more African institutions and train African researchers. Partnerships with additional organizations, including for-profit or governmental organizations, are encouraged as a means to provide applied research experiences for the trainees.
Read more here.
3. Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research (U01 – Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
The overarching theme of these projects will be to conduct empirical studies that address ELSI research questions central to data science in Africa. The cooperative agreements will be direct awards to African institutions, although partnership with US and other high-income country institutions will be allowed and encouraged. While the specific area(s) an ELSI application proposes to address will be determined by the applicant, topics that might be considered include, but are not limited to:
- Policy implications, with consideration of national and regional differences
- Informed consent considerations, with additional consideration of vulnerable populations
- Data privacy & sharing of data for additional research purposes
- Sharing of results with participants
- Use of geospatial information
- Unique perspectives about these types of data and their use (views from researchers, participants, the broader public)
- Consideration of heterogenous cultural topics
Read more here.
4. Open Data Science Platform (ODSP) and Coordinating Center (U2C – Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
The ODSP will enable discovery and harness the collective data into actionable insights that individual researchers and health care professionals would not easily be able to develop with only the data generated from their own studies – democratizing access to and use of data through the use of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. The ODSP will also provide a core set of tools that enable cross-network projects and have the ability to deploy computational pipelines, workflows, and analyses developed by the Research Hub investigators and other users to analyze their own data in conjunction with other data accessible via the ODSP. The awardee will serve as a technical resource for the DS-I Africa Consortium to support relevant use cases including system capabilities to comply with international data protection and anonymization requirements. The awardee is also expected to foster collaborations with industry to leverage existing technologies and solutions that are cost-effective and sustainable.
Read more here.
Estimated Publication Date July 10, 2020.
