HEAL Initiative: Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center (U2C Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA DA 19 023

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA DA 19 023

The funding opportunity titled "HEAL Initiative: Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center (U2C Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" is a National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) cooperative agreement designed to strengthen how justice settings and community health systems respond to the opioid crisis. It is part of the broader HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative and focuses on the point where people move between correctional or court-involved environments and community-based care, a transition that often determines whether someone gets effective treatment or falls through the cracks. The overall aim is to build a national consortium of investigators and partners who can test and refine promising interventions and practical approaches that improve justice system capacity to address opioid use disorder and related harms.

JCOIN is structured as an integrated network with three interconnected pieces. First are multiple Clinical Research Centers, each responsible for proposing and running a study across at least five research performance sites, ensuring the work is multi-site and positioned for real-world relevance. Second is a single Coordination and Translation Center that serves as the operational and communications backbone of the network, helping align activities, promote consistent processes, and support translation of findings into practice. Third, and the focus of this specific announcement, is a single Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center. This Resource Center is intended to provide the specialized technical leadership the network needs to produce credible, usable evidence across diverse justice and community settings. While the overall network conducts applied research, this particular award is explicitly labeled "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," indicating the Resource Center itself is not the vehicle for running a clinical trial; instead, it supports the trials and studies being conducted by the Clinical Research Centers through methodological and analytic expertise.

The Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center is meant to function as the network's hub for study design consultation, advanced statistics, data science, and other analytic methods that can handle the complexities of justice-related research. In practice, that typically means helping network investigators plan rigorous evaluations, choose appropriate designs for real-world constraints, and apply analytic approaches suited to multi-site data, clustered settings, policy variation, and changing operational conditions within courts, jails, prisons, probation, parole, and community treatment providers. Because justice-health research often involves non-randomized elements, interruptions in services, heterogeneous populations, and complex outcomes (overdose, recidivism, treatment initiation and retention, linkage to medication for opioid use disorder, and more), the Resource Center's role is to ensure the network uses consistent, state-of-the-art methods that make results trustworthy and comparable across studies.

This opportunity is offered as a cooperative agreement (U2C), which signals substantial NIH/NIDA involvement during the project period rather than a hands-off grant. In cooperative agreements, the funded organization generally works closely with NIDA and other network components on shared priorities, common standards, and coordinated deliverables. That structure fits a national consortium model where success depends on harmonized methods, shared data strategies, and rapid cross-site learning. The Resource Center award is the single central award for that function, and the announcement anticipated one award total, reinforcing that applicants are competing to become the core methodological and analytics partner for the entire JCOIN network.

From an administrative standpoint, the announcement is a discretionary funding opportunity issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through NIH/NIDA. The funding opportunity number is RFA-DA-19-023, and it was created on December 10, 2018, with an original application due date of February 27, 2019. The listed award ceiling is $2,500,000, and the expected number of awards is one. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers associated with the opportunity are 93.273 and 93.279, reflecting NIH programs relevant to drug abuse and addiction research and related infrastructure.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of institutions that can credibly serve as a national methods and analytics center. Eligible applicants include state, county, and city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments and other Native American tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education where specified); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses, plus other entities as permitted under the additional eligibility language in the full announcement. This wide eligibility reflects the reality that advanced analytics capacity can reside in universities, research institutes, health systems, specialized nonprofits, government-affiliated research units, or even certain private-sector organizations with appropriate expertise and compliance infrastructure.

Finally, this funding opportunity is explicitly part of a coordinated set of parallel announcements. Alongside this Resource Center solicitation (RFA-DA-19-023), NIDA released companion announcements seeking applications for the Clinical Research Centers (RFA-DA-19-025) and the single Coordination and Translation Center (RFA-DA-19-024). Taken together, the three-part structure is intended to create a tightly connected national research network that can develop strong evidence, support implementation in justice settings, and speed the translation of what works into routine practice to reduce opioid-related harm among justice-involved populations.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health in the education, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "HEAL Initiative: Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center (U2C Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.273, 93.279.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 10, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 27, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for RFA DA 19 023

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