HRSA Announcement: NIH Community Infrastructure Grant Program

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has established a new grant program entitled Building Sustainable Community-Linked Infrastructure to Enable Health Science Research. This program, also called the “Community Infrastructure” grants program, will support the development, expansion, or reconfiguration of collaborative infrastructures needed to facilitate partnerships between academic health centers and community-based organizations for health science research.

Letters of intent are due November 12, 2009, and the announcement closes December 11, 2009.

NIH establishes the role of Community Research Associate (CRA), "who will be a community representative and serve as a primary liaison facilitating communication and collaboration between the academic health center and the local community. Applicants must identify at least one CRA."

This initiative is funded under the Recovery Act. NIH has allocated up to $30 million in FY 2009-2010 to fund 30 or more grants, contingent upon the receipt of a sufficient number of scientifically meritorious applications. Budget requests should be commensurate with project needs. The total cost for individual awards is expected to vary, depending on the scope of the project, but is limited to maximum of $1 million for the full project period. The requested duration may not exceed three years.

The full announcement is located here.

HRSA recognizes that some grantees have engaged in collaborative research as a way to strengthen their organizations and improve the health of their communities. The Agency encourages grantees to review this opportunity to determine its relevance and feasibility and reach out to academic research partners, as appropriate.

HRSA hopes that interested grantees work collaboratively with these partners to develop strong proposals.