DoD Peer Reviewed Orthopaedic, Women's Health Research Award | HT942524PRORPWHRA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT942524PRORPWHRA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Orthopaedic Research Program (PRORP) Women’s Health Research Award (WHRA) is a FY24 funding opportunity released in direct support of Executive Order 14120 on Advancing Women’s Health Research and Innovation. Its core purpose is to build better evidence and practical solutions for orthopaedic problems affecting women in military environments, especially women in physically demanding roles (including infantry and similar occupations) who experience major orthopaedic injuries. The larger program goal goes beyond treating an injury in isolation and focuses on factors that influence readiness, long-term health, and retention of women in military service, while still producing findings that are broadly relevant to anyone recovering from serious orthopaedic injury.

A strong application is expected to make a clear case for military relevance even though it is not strictly required to use military participants, military datasets, or military biospecimens. In other words, civilian cohorts or non-military data can be used, but the proposal needs to explicitly connect the research question, outcomes, and expected impact to the realities faced by female Service Members and/or Veterans after orthopaedic injury. The solicitation also emphasizes that the project should be hypothesis-driven, with a well-formed, testable hypothesis grounded in solid scientific rationale and logical reasoning.

The WHRA is intentionally broad in the kinds of research it will consider. It welcomes translational and clinical research and is also open to qualitative studies, population science, outcomes research, and health care services research, as long as the work is designed to improve understanding of how orthopaedic injuries affect female Service Members. For clinical research specifically, the program strongly encourages inclusion of female military and/or Veteran populations. If the clinical work is conducted in non-military or non-Veteran populations, applicants must justify why the results should still matter for military and Veteran communities and must spell out practical study-design details such as recruitment strategies and how they will access appropriate participant groups.

A key boundary is that WHRA funds cannot be used to conduct clinical trials. The program does allow research involving human subjects, human datasets, and human anatomical substances, but only when the study is observational and does not prospectively assign participants to an intervention to evaluate intervention-related outcomes. The opportunity provides a detailed distinction between allowed clinical research (for example, studies of disease mechanisms, diagnostic or biomarker work, imaging studies, health disparity research, certain technology development, epidemiologic and behavioral studies, and outcomes or health services research that are not intervention tests) and disallowed clinical trials as defined under 45 CFR 46.102. Applicants who want to run a clinical trial are directed to the separate FY24 PRORP Clinical Trial Award (HT942524PRORPCTA).

The program also puts heavy emphasis on rigor and reproducibility. Projects are expected to follow recognized best practices for design and reporting, reflecting principles such as randomization, blinding, sample-size estimation, and transparent data handling. For proposals using animal models, an Animal Research Plan (Attachment 7) is required, and applicants are directed to use standards consistent with the Landis et al. guidance on transparent reporting as well as ARRIVE guidelines 2.0 to ensure animal research is planned and reported in a way that supports reproducibility and translation.

Collaboration is encouraged, particularly partnerships that connect academia, industry, the military services, the VA, and other federal agencies. These collaborations are viewed as a way to improve feasibility and impact by leveraging specialized infrastructure, expertise, and access to unique clinical populations or databases. If a project depends on special resources or datasets, the application is expected to document access at the time of submission and describe how access will be maintained throughout the project period.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, awards will be made as grants under 31 USC 6304. The total budget for the full period of performance is expected not to exceed $1.5 million per award. The DoD anticipates allocating about $3.0 million total to fund roughly two awards, though actual funding depends on federal funds availability, the number of submissions, and peer and programmatic review outcomes. The administering agency is the Department of the Army, USAMRAA, under CFDA 12.420, and eligibility is listed as unrestricted. The opportunity closing date is September 17, 2024, and awards supported with FY24 funds are expected to be made no later than September 30, 2025, with FY24 funds available for use until they expire on September 30, 2030.

An important topical note is arthritis. Because the Arthritis Research Program has been initiated, the WHRA may not fund arthritis research itself; however, it can support research on conditions or health abnormalities related to arthritis if the proposal remains centered on the WHRA’s main purpose: orthopaedic injuries in women, with clear relevance to women serving in military settings and the downstream effects on health and retention.

• The Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Peer Reviewed Orthopaedic, Women's Health Research Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-05-09.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-09-17. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for HT942524PRORPWHRA

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