Over the years, health and medical care has been improving for Americans due to advancements in medicine and science. Despite improvements gained as a result of the use of technologies, there continues to be an alarming disproportionate burden of illness among minority and other health disparity populations.
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NMHD) www.nimhd.nih.gov within NIH www.nih.gov is looking for eligible U.S small business concerns to submit STTR grant applications for NMHD’s Funding Opportunities Announcement (FOA). The agency intends to commit $1,000,000 in FY 2017 to fund 3-4 awards.
The purpose for the FOA is to stimulate a partnership of ideas and technologies between innovative small business concerns and non-profit research institutions. The goal is to improve minority health and reduce health disparities by commercializing innovative technologies in one or more NIH-defined health disparity priority population groups such as in rural populations.
The technologies to receive funding must be effective, affordable, culturally acceptable, and easily accessible to those who need them. This funding is expected to reduce health disparities in the priority areas of cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, infant mortality, mental health, and obesity, as well as lung, liver, and kidney diseases, psoriasis, scleroderma, plus other illnesses and conditions affecting public health in communities.
Technologies that are needed include:
- Mobile health and telehealth and/or telemedicine technologies and apps for communication, diagnosis, monitoring, evaluation, medical management, tracking and treatment in underserved communities
- Products or services that facilitate coordination between primary care providers, emergency departments, specialty physicians, nurse practitioners, mental health and behavioral health providers, and patient navigators in medically underserviced communities
- Software apps for mobile devices and other low cost tools and technologies to help individuals engage in health seeking behaviors
- Technologies for the rapid identification in human specimens such as blood or genes and/or genomic variants of known importance to minority health
- Tools and technologies to help detect a broad array of unhealthy social and environmental exposures. Technologies many include upgrading data collection and integration across disparate data sources such as clinical patient data, public health data etc.
- Technology to help reduce the frequency of high-risk pregnancies in health disparity populations
- Appropriate survey instruments, tools modules, and databases to promote community-based research
- Technology to provide for educational media such as software, videos, plus curriculum materials
- Development of software to link social determinants of health with massive datasets such as EMRs, genomic information, census data, surveys, and other state or community-level data sources
Go to https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-MD-17-002.html for details on the FOA titled “Technologies for Improving Population Health and Eliminating Health Disparities”. Applicants are strongly encouraged but not required to submit a letter of intent to Thomas M. Vollberg at vollbert@mail.nih.gov by January 22, 2017 with applications due February 22, 2017.