The Road to Prevention of Stillbirth Data Coordinating Center (UM2 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA HD 25 011

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA HD 25 011

The Road to Prevention of Stillbirth Data Coordinating Center (UM2 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) is an NIH cooperative agreement opportunity (RFA-HD-25-011) to fund a single Data Coordinating Center (DCC) that will serve as the operational and scientific backbone for a new Stillbirth Research Consortium. Rather than funding a stand-alone research project, this award supports a coordinating hub that will organize, integrate, and accelerate the work of multiple research sites funded under the companion NOFO (RFA-HD-25-010). The overall intent is to build a tightly connected national consortium capable of producing high-impact basic, translational, clinical, and data science findings that move the field toward preventing stillbirth, with a clear emphasis on using an equity lens to reduce stillbirth rates in vulnerable and disproportionately affected populations across the United States.

The DCC is expected to provide comprehensive consortium management and support functions. In practical terms, that means the DCC will help align participating Research Centers around shared goals and common approaches, maintain consistent data practices across sites, and enable cross-project analyses that are not possible when studies remain siloed. Because this is a cooperative agreement, NIH will have substantial programmatic involvement, and the DCC will be expected to work closely with NIH and the Research Centers in an ongoing, collaborative way to meet consortium-wide milestones, respond to emerging scientific needs, and ensure that the consortium functions as an integrated enterprise rather than a loose network of independent studies.

A central requirement is deep technical and scientific capacity in handling complex, high-volume biomedical data. The NOFO signals that applicants should bring strong expertise spanning clinical and health informatics, bioinformatics, omics data (such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, or related high-dimensional molecular datasets), biostatistics, epidemiology, and modern data science methods. The DCC team should also demonstrate experience supervising clinical studies and managing the realities of multi-site human studies, including coordinating workflows, supporting consistent data capture, and ensuring that analyses can be conducted reliably across varied settings. A key point in the description is the expectation that DCC personnel can analyze large-scale demographic, clinical, laboratory, and imaging data, and that they have experience working with large national datasets, suggesting that the consortium will likely integrate site-collected data with broader population-level or administrative data resources to strengthen inference and improve generalizability.

Equity is not treated as a side topic in this opportunity; it is positioned as a major scientific and operational priority. The consortium is intended to generate knowledge that directly advances stillbirth-relevant research nationwide, while specifically encouraging approaches that can identify drivers of disparity and pathways to reduction of stillbirth incidence in vulnerable populations. For the DCC, this typically translates into responsibilities like supporting harmonized measures that capture social and structural determinants of health, enabling subgroup and disparity-focused analyses, helping standardize definitions and metadata that allow fair comparisons across populations and settings, and facilitating data practices that make it possible to detect inequities rather than obscure them.

Eligibility is broad and includes many categories of U.S.-based applicants, including state, county, city/township, and special district governments; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; tribal organizations (including those other than federally recognized tribal governments); public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses. The NOFO also explicitly highlights additional eligible applicant types such as HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, AANAPISIs, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, and U.S. territories or possessions, reflecting an intent to encourage participation from institutions that may be well-positioned to support equity-focused national coordination. Foreign (non-U.S.) organizations are not eligible to apply as the applicant institution, but non-domestic components of U.S. organizations may participate, and foreign components are allowed as defined by NIH policy.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity with a cooperative agreement funding instrument and a health-related activity category (CFDA 93.865). The original application due date listed is 2024-11-01, and the agency is the National Institutes of Health. The title includes "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," indicating the DCC award itself is not intended to directly propose or conduct an NIH-defined clinical trial under this mechanism; instead, the DCC’s role is to coordinate, manage, and support the consortium’s research activities and data infrastructure in line with NIH expectations for a coordinating center.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health, income security and social services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "The Road to Prevention of Stillbirth Data Coordinating Center (UM2 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.865.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-07-19.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-11-01. (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 RFA HD 25 011

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