CDC announces the availability of fiscal year (FY) 2020 funds to implement CDC-RFA-DP20-2007, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS): Impact in Population Health. CDC established the BRFSS in 1984 with 15 states participating in monthly data collection. Since that time, the BRFSS has grown to be the only continuous, state-based health surveillance system that is conducted nationwide. The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to provide financial and technical assistance to recipients to conduct health-related behavioral surveillance through the BRFSS and increase the use of BRFSS data to inform public health actions to improve health. The period of performance for this NOFO is three years with a 12-month budget period and an anticipated award date of August 1, 2020.

Although monitoring of health risk behaviors is conducted at the national level, these surveillance systems do not provide state-level data that public health and health care professionals need to improve population health. In addition, there is growing demand for data that corresponds with smaller, sub-state geographic areas such as metropolitan statistical areas and counties. Therefore, state and territorial (state) and sub-state level surveillance data are needed to better understand and address the health status, health risk behaviors, and health disparities within states and across the nation. State and local governments are charged with the responsibility to protect the health of residents.

Targeting health prevention efforts, evaluating those efforts to determine effectiveness and cost efficiencies and ultimately reducing health disparities and morbidity and mortality, demands high quality, valid surveillance systems. Accurate, timely surveillance information is essential to inform decision makers to guide strategic approaches to improving population health status. At the same time, there is growing demand for robust data on a variety of individual health concerns that is more responsive to time and cost constraints, particularly related to emerging public health issues or emergencies. This NOFO will fund recipients to collect and analyze surveillance data using a sample of telephone numbers, to monitor the prevalence of health risk behaviors that are associated with chronic health problems, preventable injuries and help respond to current and emerging health threats. While not covered in this NOFO, CDC will work with internal sponsoring programs and recipients to simplify and expedite decision making and governance, reduce the number of core questions, and reduce the time and resources needed to deliver the core questionnaire.

The Warfighter Medical Optimization Division (RHM) intends to solicit White Papers under this announcement with the focus of conducting medical research in support of optimizing of the warfighter by enabling, enhancing, restoring, and sustaining the Airman to more effectively execute the Air Force mission. This medical research objective is dual-natured: (1) ensure medical availability of Airmen by analyzing attributes (sensory, behavioral, physiologic) and operational environments (chemical, physical, psychological, biological, radiological stressors) to drive optimal performance of Airmen engaged in high-demand, high-impact mission tasks (2) investigate how the flight environment affects the process of life, the ability to maintain homeostasis, and the risk for injury or secondary insult, seeking to ameliorate these stressors to optimize Airman health and performance.

This is a Hybrid BAA solicitation which consists of an Open BAA and a BAA with Calls. This BAA is set up in two parts: (1) Open BAA, in which white papers may be submitted at any time during the open period, and (2) BAA with Calls, in which proposal call announcements may be issued by the Government in beta.sam.gov under FA8650-20-S-6008 at any time during the effectivity of the BAA. The two parts are explained in greater detail in separate sections in the solicitation. This BAA will remain open for seventy-two (72) months with Calls being released throughout the seventy-two (72) month period of performance.

White papers may be submitted at any time during the Open Period for specific research objectives and/or aims in accordance with the instructions in Section V found in the solicitation. The Government will suspend white paper submissions for research objectives and/or aims identified in an active Call and this will be stated in the Call announcement. Offerors should monitor the Beta.SAM website at http://www.beta.sam.gov in the event this announcement is amended.

White paper submittals for Open BAA portion must be submitted to the email address of the Contracting POC, AND AFRL/RAKHC.Office@us.af.mil. Proposals as a result of the 2nd step Open BAA and white papers/proposals as the result of a Call, shall be submitted to the Contracting POC’s postal delivery address, unless otherwise stated in the RFP or Call, respectively. Additional submission instructions will be contained in RFP and/or Call.

Applications to the Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) Vision Research Program (VRP) are being solicited for the Defense Health Agency (DHA) J9, Research and Development Directorate, by the US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) using delegated authority provided by United States Code, Title 10, Section 2358 (10 USC 2358). As directed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (OASD[HA]), the DHA manages the Defense Health Program (DHP) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. The execution management agent for this Program Announcement is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). The VRP was initiated in 2009 to fund impactful military-relevant vision research that has the potential to significantly improve the healthcare and well-being of military Service members, Veterans, their family members and caregivers, and the American public. Appropriations for the VRP from FY09 through FY19 totaled $104.95 million (M). The FY20 appropriation is $20M.

The vision of the VRP is to transform visual system trauma care for our Armed Forces and the Nation. Eye injury and visual dysfunction resulting from battlefield trauma affect a large number of Service members and Veterans. Surveillance data from the Department of Defense (DoD) indicate that eye injury accounts for approximately 15% of all injuries from battlefield trauma sustained during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in more than 182,000 ambulatory patients and 4,000 hospitalizations between 2000 and 2011. In addition, statistics from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center show that through the first quarter of 2018, more than 380,000 Service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI), which can have significant impact on vision even when there is no injury to the eye. Research sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) showed that as many as 75% of Service members who suffered a TBI have visual dysfunction, with some patients suffering vision loss and functional blindness.

The FY20 VRP challenges the scientific community to design innovative research that will significantly advance the understanding, prevention, diagnosis, mitigation, and/or treatment of eye injury or visual dysfunction associated with military-relevant trauma. Research outcomes are expected to ultimately improve the care of Service members and Veterans as well as the American public.

IOS continues to accept no deadline full proposal submission: proposals may be submitted any day, any time

Synopsis of Program:

The Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) Core Programs Track supports research aimed at understanding why organisms are structured the way they are and function as they do. Proposals are welcomed in all of the core scientific program areas supported by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS). Areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to, developmental biology and the evolution of developmental processes, nervous system development, structure, modification, function, and evolution; biomechanics and functional morphology, physiological processes, symbioses and microbial interactions, interactions of organisms with biotic and abiotic environments, plant and animal genomics, and animal behavior. Proposals should focus on organisms as a fundamental unit of biological organization. Principal Investigators (PIs) are encouraged to apply systems approaches that will lead to conceptual and theoretical insights and predictions about emergent organismal properties. The four clusters in IOS which are participating in submissions to this solicitation are:

• Behavioral Systems Cluster
• Developmental Systems Cluster
• Neural Systems Cluster
• Physiological and Structural Systems Cluster

The Rules of Life Track supports integrative proposals that span the subcellular and cellular scales normally funded by MCB to the organ, tissue, organismal, and group scale typically funded by IOS, to population, species, community and ecosystem scales typically funded by DEB. Rules of Life proposals may also include enabling infrastructure through joint submission with DBI. Discovery of fundamental principles and enabling infrastructure will advance understanding and further predict how key properties of living systems emerge from the interaction of genomes, phenotypes, and developmental, social and environmental context across space and time. This track provides opportunities to advance understanding of the Rules of Life by new mechanisms for review and funding of proposals that span two or more divisions in the Biological Sciences Directorate. Proposals submitted to the Rules of Life (RoL) track must integrate research activities across multiple levels of biological organization and span programs beyond a single division in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

To be responsive to the RoL Track proposed activities must:

• Engage or enable innovative approaches to fundamental questions in biology;
• Promise results or approaches that are generalizable beyond particular study systems;
• Seek to discover, enable and/or test foundational principles (rules, theory) that explain or predict the emergence of complex phenomena in biology;
• and Apply integrative approaches that span levels of biological organization beyond the funding programs within a single BIO division.

The NSF IOS program page has additional information including the program solicitation.

Would your research benefit from the involvement of thousands of volunteers? Zooniverse is currently seeking proposals for biomedical projects to be developed as part of the Zooniverse platform. The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most successful online platform for crowd-sourced research with over 1.5 million registered volunteers working in collaboration with professional researchers on more than 50 research projects across a range of disciplines, from physics to biology.

Using our unique Project Builder you can create your own Zooniverse project for free with a set of tried and tested tools, including multiple-choice questions and region marking or drawing tools. If the platform doesn’t yet offer the tools you need, please propose your project below (last link on the post); they are particularly interested in developing novel projects that extend the functionality of their platform.

Project Selection

Zooniverse is looking for biomedical projects that will help them expand the functionality of the Zooniverse and build on the selection of tools available to researchers via the platform. Projects may involve a processing task applied to images, graphs, videos or another data format, data collection, or a combination of the two. Successful projects will be developed and hosted by the Zooniverse team, in close collaboration with the applicants. Examples of current biomedical projects include Microscopy Masters, where volunteers classify cryo-electron microscopy images to advance understanding of protein and virus structure, and Worm Watch Lab, which aims to improve understanding of the relationship between genes and behavior.

Selection Criteria:

1. Projects extending the capability of the Zooniverse platform or serving as case studies for crowdsourcing in new areas are encouraged.
2. Alignment with biomedical research (long-term aim of research is to improve human health outcomes).
3. Merit and usefulness of the data expected to result from the project.

Deadline

Project proposals are accepted on a rolling basis. Applications will be reviewed at the beginning of each month.

SUBMIT A BIOMEDICAL PROPOSAL