NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Administrative Supplements

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announces the opportunity for investigators and United States institutions/organizations with active NIH Research Grants to request administrative supplements for the purpose accelerating the tempo of scientific research on active grants. Support for these supplements will come from funds provided to NIH through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“Recovery Act” or “ARRA”), Public Law 111-5. Consistent with the intent of the Recovery Act, the purpose of this program is to promote job creation and economic development along with accelerating the pace and achievement of scientific research. In addition, Recovery Act funds allocated to NIH specifically for comparative effectiveness research (CER) may be available to support supplements. Projects receiving these funds will need to meet this definition of CER: “a rigorous evaluation of the impact of different options that are available for treating a given medical condition for a particular set of patients. Such a study may compare similar treatments, such as competing drugs, or it may analyze very different approaches, such as surgery and drug therapy.” Such research may include the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data as they apply to CER. This announcement is one of three ARRA administrative supplement/competitive revision notices issued by NIH. Approximately $1 billion of ARRA funds will be obligated by September 30, 2010 to support requests submitted in response to these three notices or any reissuance of these notices. This administrative supplement solicitation requests submissions in all scientific and programmatic areas funded by NIH. Support may be requested for up to 2 years for qualified grants (see eligibility section in full announcement).