DoD Peer Reviewed, Behavioral Health Science Award | W81XWH 22 PRCRP BHSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 22 PRCRP BHSA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) Behavioral Health Science Award (BHSA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity (administered by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, USAMRAA) designed to push forward innovative, high-reward research in behavioral health as it relates to cancer. The program is centered on improving survivorship by addressing real-world behavioral, psychological, cognitive, and social challenges that come with cancer diagnosis, treatment, and life after treatment. The opportunity is meant to fill important gaps in what is known about survivorship and to generate findings that can translate into better care, better support, and better outcomes for people affected by cancer, including patients and their families or caregivers.

The scientific scope is intentionally broad within behavioral health science, covering areas like quality of life, symptom management, resilience, neurocognitive deficits, and psychosocial concerns tied to cancer across the survivorship continuum. Proposed work must connect to at least one FY22 PRCRP Topic Area and tackle one or more critical behavioral health issues within that topic area. The opportunity is open to studies that explore how behavioral and social functioning relate to cancer initiation, progression, detection, treatment, and rehabilitation, and it welcomes projects that examine decision-making, cognitive functioning, and educational or behavioral interventions. Examples of relevant topics include developing or testing approaches to reduce treatment-related distress, anxiety, and other psychological burdens; improving coping and resilience; addressing palliative care and symptom burden; and building or validating evidence-based practices, behavioral health interventions, surveillance approaches, and psychosocial outcome measures.

A major emphasis of this award is impact. Applications are expected to show a clear line of sight from the proposed research to meaningful improvements in patient outcomes, particularly across the three stages of survivorship described as acute, extended, and permanent. The DoD signals that it is looking for projects that can transform behavioral health outcomes in a way that challenges current assumptions or standard approaches, and that can move promising ideas toward clinical use. Translational and clinical research are appropriate under this mechanism, including pilot clinical trials, as long as the work is positioned to accelerate progress from concept to practical application in survivorship care.

Study design expectations are specific and fairly demanding. Applicants must clearly explain the study architecture and justify why that design is the right fit for the research question, whether the approach is descriptive, correlational, field experimental, prospective or retrospective recruitment, or even a meta-analysis. Study populations need to be well defined, and the application should include statistical reasoning that supports the design choices (for example, power considerations or analytic plans that match the hypotheses and endpoints). If questionnaires or similar instruments are used, they must be described in enough detail that reviewers can understand how results will be interpreted and why the measures are appropriate for the population and outcomes of interest.

Preliminary data requirements depend on what is being proposed. If an application includes active (prospective) recruitment of human subjects for a pilot clinical trial, preliminary data are required. If the project does not involve active recruitment, preliminary data are not strictly required, but the application still needs to be grounded in strong logic and supported by relevant prior literature and reasoning that makes the project credible and feasible.

Patient advocate participation is not optional under this opportunity and is treated as a core feature of the award mechanism. The project team must include at least one cancer patient advocate who is integrated into the work from planning through implementation and evaluation. The advocate can be a person currently living with cancer, someone previously treated with no evidence of disease, or a family member/caregiver, and they should be active in a cancer advocacy organization. The DoD expects this advocate to contribute substantively to shaping the research question, strengthening the design, providing oversight, and helping assess the project with an eye toward real patient impact. The advocate role is meant to be ongoing and well integrated, not limited to occasional attendance at meetings, and at least one advocate should have strong familiarity with current issues in the chosen FY22 PRCRP Topic Area(s).

The announcement also draws a firm boundary around animal research. Studies involving animal use are described as not appropriate for this award, and proposing animal studies can lead to the application being withdrawn. While the text includes a note that animal studies are not prohibited if strongly justified in the narrative, the overall message is clear that this mechanism is intended to prioritize human-focused behavioral health science in cancer survivorship rather than animal-based experimentation.

From an administrative standpoint, the funding opportunity number is W81XWH-22-PRCRP-BHSA. It is a discretionary opportunity using grant and cooperative agreement instruments under CFDA 12.420 (military medical research and development). Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning a wide range of organization types may apply, subject to any additional eligibility clarifications in the full announcement. The posting date is March 31, 2022, with an original closing date of August 2, 2022. The opportunity lists an expected four awards, and the public listing shows an award ceiling of 0, which typically indicates that the ceiling is defined elsewhere in the full funding announcement or depends on proposal scope rather than being stated in the summary listing.

• The Department of Defense, 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, Behavioral Health Science 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 Mar 31, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 02, 2022. (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 4 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 22 PRCRP BHSA

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