2009 Announcement of Availability of Funds for Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Public Awareness Campaign Cooperative Agreement Projects.

Authority: This program is authorized by Section 1704 of the Public Health Service Act, 42 U.S.C. § 300u-3. The OPA is under the direction of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (DASPA), who serves as the senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) on reproductive health science issues. The OPA announces the anticipated availability of funds for FY 2009 and requests applications for cooperative agreement projects that will contribute to increasing public awareness of embryo donation and/or adoption. The increasing success of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has resulted in a situation in which an infertile couple typically creates several embryos through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). During IVF treatments, couples may produce many embryos in an attempt to become pregnant with several being cryopreserved (frozen) for future use. If a couple becomes pregnant without using all of the stored embryos, they may choose to release the remaining unused embryos for donation and adoption allowing other infertile couples the experience of pregnancy and birth. Embryo donation and/or adoption is a relatively new process in which individuals who have extra frozen embryos agree to release the embryos for transfer to the uterus of another woman, either known or anonymous to the donor(s) for the purpose of the recipient(s) attempting to bear a child and be that child’s parent.