Grants to support Innovative Population-based Research in the US

Deadline: 07-Sep-24

The National Institutes of Health has announced the applications for the Role of Work in Health Disparities in the U.S. to support innovative population-based research that can contribute to identifying and characterizing pathways and mechanisms through which work or occupation influences health outcomes and health status among populations with health and/or health care disparities, and how work functions as a social determinant of health.

Areas of Interests

• National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD):
  • NIMHD is interested in studies that evaluate:
    • The role of work as a SDOH, teasing apart work as a social class marker, as a source of “exposures and risk factors”, and/or source of beneficial social and economic resources.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH explains health and health care disparities, in the context of socioeconomic status (years of education and/or household income) and racial or ethnic minority populations.
    • The mechanisms and causal pathways by which work contributes to health and health care disparities. This includes mechanisms influenced by structural racism, such as occupational segregation and workplace segregation as well as other inequity-generating mechanisms such as climates of racism, perceived societal discrimination by other factors such as sex, age, marital status, immigration status, social class, and other power structures that constrain choices around work and health.
    • The mechanisms and causal pathways by which work as a SDOH contributes to health disparities for specific diseases or clusters of diseases (e.g., syndemics), health conditions, and general indicators of health such as greater global burden of disease, quality of life, and daily functioning.
    • The mechanisms and causal pathways by which work as a SDOH contributes to health care disparities in access to and quality of primary care, preventive services, and specialty consultations, after accounting for type of health insurance coverage.
    • The role of work as a SDOH for household units, and the mechanisms and pathways by which work influences health disparities for household members, such as primary employee, partners, children, grandparents, dependents, and extended families.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH influenced by structural racism within macro-level conditions (e.g., decline in unions, globalization and workplace restructuring, entrepreneurism, rise of self-employment occupations, rise of the gig economy, increases in precarious jobs, percent of immigrants in labor force, natural disasters such as COVID-19, recessions) can explain, exacerbate, or mitigate national, regional or location specific health disparities.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH is influenced by system-level trends, shifts in labor, and sector disruptions (e.g., issues of social justice versus individualism, distributive justice versus free market, economics and the tradeoff between efficiency and equity) and their role in exacerbating or mitigating the contribution of work to health and health care disparities.
    • The implementation of laws and regulations at the municipal, state or national levels (e.g., paid family and medical leave, paid sick leave, workers’ compensation, medical benefits, minimum wage, and diversity, equity and inclusion policies) and their differential effects for populations with health disparities.
    • The reciprocal relationship between work and health, and how health for populations, such as increased burden of disease and co-morbidities impacts work as a SDOH, including access to different work opportunities, working conditions, and work benefits, and how that varies by different social identities.
• National Institute on Aging (NIA):
  • The NIA mission is to support and conduct genetic, biological, clinical, behavioral, social, and economic research on aging; foster the development of research and scientists in aging; provide research resources to facilitate innovative aging research; and disseminate information about aging and advances in research to the public, health care professionals, and the scientific community, among a variety of audiences. NIA’s interest in this FOA includes research to understand the influences employment, occupational factors, and voluntary/involuntary job loss on life course health and aging, including Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD).
• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA):
  • NIDA is interested in research that explicates the mechanisms by which employment and drug use are related, in order to inform the future development and testing of interventions to directly address those mechanisms. NIDA encourages stakeholders and end users to be active partners in all stages of research so that findings have greater potential to directly influence practice. Examples of NIDA interest areas include, but are not limited to:
    • Studies to understand the structural (e.g., loss of venues or sectors) and individual level (e.g., occupational injuries) aspects of employment and their influence on drug use (including opioids and stimulants) and related health problems including infectious disease (e.g., HIV, HCV) and mental illness.
    • Studies of the effects of drug involvement on employment opportunities, job seeking behaviors, job training/job readiness, and job retention to identify the mechanisms by which use impacts employment and vice versa.
    • Studies that examine structural or social aspects work environments that might facilitate or hinder recovery, e.g., peer recovery groups in restaurant or entertainment industry.
    • Studies that examine how structural aspects of engaging in treatment (e.g., residential treatment, daily visits to an Opioid Treatment Program, timing of appointments, transportation) influence occupational opportunities and outcomes.
    • Studies that examine the influence of structural aspects of work environments and/or employment outcomes for family members or supportive others (e.g., parents, spouses) and how those factors influence substance use, treatment and recovery outcomes for individuals who have a substance use disorder.
    • Studies that examine how working in a peer recovery support role influences the worker’s own substance use, mental health, and recovery.
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS):
  • The mission of the NIEHS is to discover how the environment affects people to promote healthier lives. NIEHS has long recognized the harmful impacts of the physical work environment and other occupational exposures on human health. These workplace exposures disproportionately affect health disparity populations and are often an issue of environmental justice.
• National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH):
  • NIMH is interested in studies that examine:
    • The mechanisms and potential causal pathways by which work as a SDOH affects mental health symptoms/disorders, either by contributing to, or ameliorating mental health care disparities in individuals and among household members. Establishing causal pathways could be examined through randomized controlled trials where appropriate, or through analytic methods such as instrumental variables, propensity score matching, or other appropriate analytic methods.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH differentially impacts the presence and severity of mental health symptoms in individuals who have histories of job loss and/or periods of underemployment, and/or the mechanisms and potential causal pathways that contribute to the impact of such job loss/underemployment on the mental health symptoms among members of their family, neighborhood, and community.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH impacts interpersonal relationships that may affect mental health status, for example, by creating differences in quality of interpersonal relationships within the work environment (e.g., perceptions of interpersonal disconnectedness, bullying, verbal abuse) that contribute to worsening mental health status, including feelings of hopelessness, isolation, burdensomeness, emotion dysregulation, and presence of suicide ideation and behaviors.
    • The extent to which work as a SDOH promotes positive experiences at the individual (e.g., improved self-efficacy, improved belongingness), familial (e.g., positive familial relationship, reduced family conflict, improved family functioning), neighborhood (e.g., neighborhood cohesion, support), and community-level (e.g., improved community investment, reduced community violence) to reduce presence and severity of mental health symptoms.

Funding Information

• The number of awards is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.
• The maximum project period is 5 years.
• The Application budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.

Eligibility Criteria

• Higher Education Institutions
  • Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
  • Private Institutions of Higher Education
• The following types of Higher Education Institutions are always encouraged to apply for NIH support as Public or Private Institutions of Higher Education:
  • Hispanic-serving Institutions
  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
  • Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs)
  • Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
  • Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)
• Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education
  • Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
  • Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
• For-Profit Organizations
  • Small Businesses
  • For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)
• Local Governments
  • State Governments
  • County Governments
  • City or Township Governments
  • Special District Governments
  • Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
  • Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized)
• Federal Governments
  • Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
  • U.S. Territory or Possession
• Other
  • Independent School Districts
  • Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
  • Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
  • Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
  • Regional Organizations
  • Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions)

For more information, visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=334380