High-Priority Areas for Research Leveraging EHR and Large-Scale Data (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | PAR 18 929

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 18 929

The High-Priority Areas for Research Leveraging EHR and Large-Scale Data (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number PAR 18-929) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research project grant announcement that supports R01 studies using large-scale, real-world healthcare data to advance understanding of mental and neurological disorders. The core idea is to take advantage of existing electronic health records (EHRs) and administrative claims data from major systems such as the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and other public or private healthcare systems and networks. Rather than funding clinical trials, this FOA emphasizes observational, analytic, and methods-driven research that can clarify who is at risk, when conditions begin, how they progress over time, and how treatments and services work in real-world settings.

A central priority area is post-trauma mental health and neuropsychiatric outcomes. The announcement specifically calls for research that uses EHR and administrative data to better understand and improve treatment of posttraumatic psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and suicide risk. This includes work that can identify patterns of care, gaps in treatment, predictors of poor outcomes, and signals that might help clinicians intervene earlier or tailor services more effectively. Because EHR and claims datasets can capture long time spans, repeated encounters, comorbid diagnoses, medication histories, service utilization, and outcomes such as hospitalizations or emergency visits, the FOA is designed to encourage studies that can move beyond small samples and short follow-ups.

A second highlighted priority focuses on the multi-symptom recovery trajectories that can follow trauma and TBI. The FOA encourages projects that characterize how people recover over time and how symptoms cluster and evolve, including PTSD, depression, cognitive impairment, pain, substance use disorders, and suicide risk. The emphasis on "trajectory patterns" signals interest in research that can map different recovery paths, identify subgroups with distinct courses, and determine what factors (clinical history, demographics, service use patterns, co-occurring conditions, or treatment sequences) are linked to better or worse recovery. This kind of work is well suited to large datasets where longitudinal records can reveal real-world variability in outcomes and care.

Beyond trauma-related topics, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) also invites innovative applications that leverage EHR and administrative data to study mental disorders more broadly. In practice, this means applicants can propose projects that use large-scale datasets to examine risk factors, onset, progression, treatment effectiveness in routine care, disparities in access or outcomes, and the impact of different services or care models. The FOA is also aimed at identifying promising new directions in mental health and neurological disorders research that become visible when analyzing large, heterogeneous populations and healthcare delivery systems.

This is a discretionary grant program under the NIH, using the R01 funding instrument, and it is explicitly labeled "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," which generally means applications should not propose prospective interventional studies where participants are assigned to receive an intervention. Instead, strong applications typically rely on secondary analysis of existing clinical data, pragmatic epidemiologic approaches, comparative effectiveness analyses using real-world evidence, advanced statistical or computational methods for observational data, and rigorous strategies to address confounding, bias, missingness, and data harmonization across systems.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of organizations that can manage NIH research grants. Eligible applicants listed include state, county, 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 tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofit organizations with or without 501(c)(3) status; for-profit organizations (other than small businesses) and small businesses. The FOA also calls out additional eligible applicant categories such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISISs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, U.S. territories or possessions, and non-U.S. (foreign) entities.

Key administrative details from the posting include: the opportunity title as listed above, the NIH as the agency, the original creation date of September 21, 2018, and an original closing date shown as September 7, 2021. The activity category is health, and CFDA numbers associated with the opportunity are 93.242 and 93.853. The source text does not specify an award ceiling or the expected number of awards, indicating those fields were not provided in the excerpt.

Overall, this FOA is aimed at researchers who can responsibly access and analyze large EHR and claims datasets and translate those analyses into clinically and operationally meaningful insights, especially for trauma-related conditions like PTSD and TBI and for suicide risk. Competitive projects under this announcement would typically demonstrate a clear clinical or public health question, strong data access and governance plans, careful attention to data quality and harmonization, and rigorous analytic methods suited to real-world data.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "High-Priority Areas for Research Leveraging EHR and Large-Scale Data (R01 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): 93.242, 93.853.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2018-09-21.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-09-07. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• 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.

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