NIH needs your innovative research ideas through our newly announced NIH HEAL Initiative funding opportunities

NIH leadership from across the agency has been working diligently over the past several months to identify areas of greatest opportunity for research to address the national opioid crisis.  The result is more than 30 new funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) to solicit the best and brightest research ideas through the NIH HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term^SM) Initiative. 

Through these and other investments, NIH plans to award more than $850 million in support of HEAL Initiative research in fiscal year (FY) 2019 (from funds appropriated in FY 2018 and FY 2019).   This adds to a substantial investment made by NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) in the areas of pain, addiction, complementary medicine, and much more.  

The NIH HEAL Initiative is taking an “all-hands-on deck” approach to this crisis, garnering expertise from almost every NIH IC to attack the problem from all angles.  New HEAL programs reflect the full spectrum of research from basic science to implementation research and across all disciplines in the areas of:

• Opioid Addiction and Overdose Medications
• Implementation Science for Preventing and Treating Addiction
• Addiction Prevention and Treatment
• Preclinical Research on Pain
• Clinical Trials on Pain Management
• Improving Outcomes in Infants and Children Exposed to Opioids

We are seeking applications from research institutions that understand innovative clinical trial design and a wide range of pain conditions to help us build a clinical trial network that can evaluate the full spectrum of potential strategies for pain management. For HEAL’s success, we will call upon expertise in modeling human organs on tissue chips so that we can study how the brain is altered by addiction, and how to reverse these changes with medication.  And by working with researchers with linkages to the criminal justice system, we aim to provide effective treatments directly to a community that is hard hit by opioid addiction.

These new FOAs add to several FOAs already released.  For example, the HEALing Communities study will test the impact of integrating multiple strategies proven to prevent and treat opioid addiction.  You can learn more about the NIH HEAL Initiative through the updated research plan and review the full list of funding opportunities on the NIH HEAL Initiative Funding page.  You can also read more about the areas of research supported by participating NIH Institutes and Centers under the related links section.  We recognize that the plan is ambitious, but we are confident that with the robust contributions of the research community, we will improve treatments for opioid misuse and addiction, enhance pain management, and provide lasting solutions to the opioid crisis.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health