Secondary Analyses of Existing Cohorts, Data Sets and Stored Biospecimens to Address Clinical Aging Research Questions (R01) | PA 17 088

Opportunity Information: Apply for PA 17 088

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding opportunity titled "Secondary Analyses of Existing Cohorts, Data Sets and Stored Biospecimens to Address Clinical Aging Research Questions (R01)" (Funding Opportunity Number: PA-17-088; CFDA: 93.866) supports investigator-initiated R01 research projects that use secondary analyses to answer clinically meaningful questions about aging. The central idea is to take advantage of information and specimens that already exist, rather than building a brand-new cohort or launching a new primary data collection effort. Projects should focus on how aging-related changes affect health across the lifespan and/or on the diseases, impairments, and disabilities that disproportionately affect older adults, with an emphasis on outcomes that matter for clinical care and real-world function.

A key priority in this announcement is the use of established cohorts and data resources that can be linked to health care delivery information, especially electronic health records (EHRs) and/or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrative data. These linkages can strengthen clinical relevance by allowing applicants to examine diagnoses, procedures, medication use, health care utilization patterns, costs, and longitudinal outcomes at scale. The FOA is aimed at studies that test specific, clearly articulated hypotheses in clinical aging research, such as risk factors for functional decline, trajectories of multimorbidity, predictors of resilience or recovery after illness, or patterns of disability onset and progression. It can also support analyses that help shape the design of future epidemiologic studies or human intervention trials, and it explicitly encourages work that can inform current geriatric practice in maintaining health, managing chronic disease, and preventing disability.

Another important feature is that the FOA is not limited to reanalyzing existing survey or clinical datasets; it also includes projects using stored biospecimens. That opens the door to analyses that integrate biomarkers, genetics, proteomics, metabolomics, inflammatory markers, or other laboratory measures with existing longitudinal clinical and functional data. The intent is to leverage the value of specimens already collected in cohorts or clinical studies to answer new questions about mechanisms, risk stratification, or clinically actionable subgroups in aging populations. In addition to hypothesis-driven clinical questions, the FOA also allows existing datasets to be used for developing and testing new statistical or analytical methods, as long as those methods meaningfully advance clinical aging research and are grounded in the realities of aging-related data (for example, competing risks, informative censoring, time-varying confounding, complex longitudinal trajectories, or harmonization across heterogeneous cohorts).

The announcement also provides flexibility in budgeting for certain enabling activities when they are directly tied to the proposed secondary analyses. Applicants may include costs for archiving data so it can be made publicly available, which aligns with broader NIH expectations around data sharing and maximizing the utility of taxpayer-funded research. The FOA also permits costs related to data harmonization (for example, aligning variables across cohorts, standardizing outcome definitions, mapping to common data models, or reconciling differing measurement schedules) and assay refinement or validation (such as improving the reliability of measures derived from stored specimens). The constraint is that these activities must be pertinent to the secondary analyses rather than standalone infrastructure-building; they should be justified as necessary steps to produce valid, interpretable results.

Eligibility is broad and spans many organizational types, reflecting NIH’s intent to draw from a wide research ecosystem. Eligible applicants include various levels of government (state, county, city/township, special districts), independent school districts, public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, and a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit organizations (including small businesses and for-profit entities other than small businesses). The FOA also highlights additional eligible applicant categories, including historically underrepresented and community-linked institutions and organizations such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISISs), as well as faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, and U.S. territories or possessions. It further includes eligible federal agencies and permits non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities (foreign organizations), along with Indian/Native American tribal governments that are not federally recognized, and tribal organizations other than federally recognized tribal governments.

Administratively, this is a discretionary grant mechanism using the NIH R01 funding instrument, meaning the scope is intended for substantial, multi-year research projects with rigorous aims, strong analytic plans, and clear clinical relevance. The original closing date listed in the source information is May 7, 2020, and the FOA was created on December 16, 2016. While the excerpt does not specify an award ceiling or number of expected awards, the R01 mechanism typically involves budgets and project periods that are justified by scope, with the expectation of robust methodology, appropriate expertise, and credible access to the proposed datasets and/or biospecimens.

In practical terms, a competitive application under this FOA would clearly identify the existing cohort(s), dataset(s), and/or biospecimen repositories to be used; demonstrate confirmed access and feasibility; define clinically meaningful outcomes and aging-related exposures; and present a well-reasoned analytic strategy tailored to secondary data limitations (missingness, measurement differences, confounding, and selection bias). Strong projects would also explain how findings could improve understanding of aging processes, guide clinical decision-making, refine risk prediction, identify targets for intervention, or directly inform the next generation of epidemiologic or intervention studies focused on older adults and age-related disability.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Secondary Analyses of Existing Cohorts, Data Sets and Stored Biospecimens to Address Clinical Aging Research Questions (R01)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.866.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-12-16.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-05-07. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for PA 17 088

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: