HEAL Initiative: Research to Increase Implementation of Substance Use Preventive Services (R61/R33 Clinical Trial Optional)

Overview

The goal of this initiative is to support research that can improve public health and respond to the opioid crisis by increasing knowledge pertaining to the implementation and sustainability of prevention services. This notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) solicits applications to address understudied areas of opportunity that, if researched, could create the foundation needed to inform a prevention infrastructure for ongoing delivery and sustainment of interventions to prevent opioid and other substance misuse and use disorders.

To ensure existing prevention intervention research efforts have a broad public health impact, research is needed to identify pathways for effective prevention strategies to be adopted and funded for wide-scale delivery. Thus, the goal of this initiative is to support research to address service delivery related questions. Projects submitted in response to this NOFO may define research to inform the establishment of a prevention infrastructure in one of two ways –

1. Research on strategies to implement and sustain evidence-based prevention services, so they are embedded within existing systems and settings (e.g., healthcare, child welfare, justice, education), facilitating the ongoing delivery of prevention services by adapting programs to setting, using natural providers and leveraging existing resources within the system or setting; OR
2. Research to understand how to best develop and maintain an independent prevention workforce and delivery system that the settings/systems noted above can utilize to ‘refer’ individuals or families to for the receipt of preventive services when they may be experiencing risk for opioid or other substance use.

Example areas of research interest include, but are not limited to:   

• Developing and testing approaches to the implementation, scale-up and sustainability of effective interventions to prevent opioid and other substance misuse and use disorder, including the testing of strategies to build infrastructure and capacity to deliver prevention services within diverse systems and settings.
• Research to examine scientific solutions to prevention workforce capacity challenges, including developing and testing new approaches to training and retaining prevention workforce personnel (e.g., prevention practitioners, intervention implementers), task shifting and identifying opportunities to integrate prevention service delivery into a variety of staff positions, and strategies to build centralized, community-based prevention systems and workforces. 
• Developing and testing innovative strategies and models for optimizing key implementation processes: identifying intervention core components, adaptation and customization, implementation fidelity, and organizational or system level strategies to enhance uptake and sustainability of evidence based preventive interventions.
• Research to leverage technology and/or ‘direct to consumer’ strategies to facilitate access to preventive care – this may include increased use of smartphone /mobile technology, use of social media for intervention delivery, or other methods as appropriate.
• Research to test the cost benefits/offsets and cost-effectiveness of investment in prevention infrastructure and evidence-based interventions, including broad investment and benefits at the community or population level.
• Studies examining the impact of evidence-based practice registries and other decision-making tools on uptake of evidence-based interventions and the longer-term impact on preventing substance use and promoting public health.
• Strategies that seek to improve quality, availability, and utility of data that can be used to track the extent of program implementation and/or receipt of services within or between systems.

Award Information: 

R61 phase: less than $300,000 in direct costs per year for 2 years

R33 phase: less than $750,000 in direct costs per year for 5 years