 Hello, and welcome to the Genomics and Health Equity RFA's pre-application webinar. My name is Lucia Hindorf. I'm a Program Director in the Training, Diversity, and Health Equity or Tied Office at the NHGRI. I want to welcome you to this webinar on behalf of my colleagues at the NHGRI who are representing the Review and the Grants Administration branches, as well as Program Directors from four other Institute Centers and Offices at the NIH. A few housekeeping rules before we get into the meat of the RFA's. I wanted to note that this is a Zoom webinar and as such, the chat will be disabled for the participants. However, if you have questions at any time, you can enter them in the Q&A feature in the toolbar of Zoom. We will also, when it comes time to the Q&A session of the chat, if you would like to verbally speak, we'll allow the option to raise your hand and then we can call on you and enable your sound as well. Otherwise, the video and sound for all of the participants will be turned off. I also want to note that NHGRI will be archiving this recording and updating Q&As on the website that was in the notice for the webinar so that if you have colleagues who weren't able to make it or if you want to refer back to this webinar or the FAQs, that will be available after this webinar is over. Okay, so I think we're ready to get started and let me review our agenda for this webinar. I'll start by giving a purpose of the RFA's as well as the summary of the funding opportunities, the two funding opportunities that are the focus of this webinar. And then I will present an overview of the IC-specific research interests of the participating or participating collaborators as well as summarizing additional application information and important dates. And then my other ICO colleagues will join me for the Q&A if there are specific questions that they should be addressing. So, just a brief overview of how we'll spend our time today. So, just to dive into the purpose, so NHGRI was really excited to partner with our other collaborators at NIH to be supporting R01 and R21 investigator-initiated research in genomics and health equity. And for us, this includes developing approaches, generating and disseminating data, and implementing metrics or interventions in order to advance the equitable use of genomics to improve health in all U.S. populations. We want to note that this is a fairly broad opportunity. We want to encourage research that spans the scientific missions or areas of interest to NHGRI, NIA, NCI, ORWH, and the all of us research program. So, I'll start by just presenting a very brief overview of what we're defining health equity as and how we're sort of looking at that from a genomics lens. So, this is a definition of health equity from the CDC and it's when every person has the opportunity to attain their full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances. And as we think about health equity research, we also want to encourage that inclusion of populations or communities experiencing health disparities is encouraged in your research plans. The proposed research must go beyond simple inclusion of disadvantaged or health disparity populations and address the health equity research question and we'll get into what examples of some of those research questions might be. I also want to note, because we have gotten a couple of inquiries, the health equity impact should apply to U.S. populations for applications that are going to be submitted to this RFA. We do allow foreign applications as well as foreign components, but we wrote the RFA so that the focus would be on health of U.S. populations at large. I want to note that there are two different RFAs that support two different activity codes, the R01 and the R21. Many of you are likely familiar with this idea of investigator initiated research projects, which are kind of the research grants that NIH supports. And these are grants that represent an investigator specific interest and competencies and are relevant to the stated program interests of participating NIH Institute centers or offices. So the examples that we lift in the list in the RFA are really just broad examples. And the idea is that the idea for the research design and the research plan comes from you, the investigators. So the two different RFAs that we're supporting are the R01, which ends in 017. And these are intended for research that's based on mature scientific ideas with preliminary data. And then we are also supporting an R21 RFA that's more for exploratory and developmental research. And if you have questions about how your research might fit into either of the activity codes, please reach out to a program director and we can walk you through this. Okay, so that's just the general RFAs. And then I do want to spend some time talking about the IC specific interest since there are a number of different ways that each of each of our ICOs are thinking about genomics and health equity. So at the NHGRI, we are thinking about health equity very broadly. We're thinking about it beyond kind of health outcomes, which is how a lot of health equity research I think has been thought about and funded to date. So at NHGRI, we are also interested in access to high quality and comprehensive genomic information. So a lot of this falls under the biology of the biology of genomes or biology of disease areas of NHGIs portfolio. We're talking about maximizing the utility of genomic social and environmental data to address health disparities. We're talking about addressing challenges to genomic data sharing or data science that could impact health equity. And then we're also including integrating genomic data with fine scale data across multiple dimensions. So lots of different omics or precision environmental health to better characterize health disparities. So these are just examples. I want to know it in all of these sites that I'm going through are just examples and please do. I encourage you to reach out to a program director at the specific institute center or office if you have questions. NHGRI is also interested in development of accessible technology and methods, especially those that are appropriate for under resourced laboratories and clinics. I'm sorry, I need to move my zoom bar here. We're interested in a genomic technology or testing as well as quality of management or genomic testing results. So we do support a lot of genomic medicine research and I think in a health equity framework. This includes research related to how race or other socially defined descriptors can be distinguished from genomic information when you're talking about laboratory reference values and clinical algorithms. And then we also are encouraging studies around decision science, economic or health care utilization around technologies or genomic testing that does affect how allocation of clinical resources occurs and how that could be made more equitable. And then finally, the last area is acceptability of genomic approaches and interventions to the public. This kind of work often falls within our ethical, legal and social implications or LC portfolio. The examples we have here are developing and applying metrics of health equity and genomic research that are acceptable and useful to communities, participants and researchers and identifying and overcoming barriers that limit participation and benefit from genomic research to the public and to the public and to the broad US population. Okay, so the next institute that I will be overviewing is the National Cancer Institute. They are interested in supporting discovery utilization and translation of genome genetic information as it relates to the prevention detection and treatment of cancer across diverse populations. And this can be done through a number of ways, including integrated analysis of diverse populations through holistic approaches such as system modeling studies of cancer types that are rare or disproportionately affect the understudied populations. Novel recruitment efforts and underrepresented populations and partnership with national and global programs and consortia. NCI is also encouraging the leveraging or enhancing resources that NCI supports and investments related to. I'm not going to read through all the examples, but just the kind of broad category. So these resources include those identifying and recruiting cancer cases. Incorporating data through linkages to existing databases with relevant exposure administrative and health related data. Community engagement and cost effective exposure assessment and genomic profiling. So there's a lot of really good useful resources here and we'll make sure these are available to you all in the slides. And they're also in the RFA. Okay, our partners at the National Institute on aging or NIA are interested in applications that focus on aging research as well as Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. Studies drawing from data across the lifespan. Applications are encouraged to are expected to factor sex as a biological variable into research. And then they've also provided some information on their strategic directions for research as well as examples of research milestones. So I encourage you to look at those documents as well. Our colleagues at the all of us research program are interested in supporting our 21 applications focused on understanding how social determinants of health. Influence genomic variations between and with within human genetic ancestry groups. How contributes to unequal burden of disease risk development risk. Disabilities severity and progression across upon sorry across populations historically underrepresented and biomedical research. They wanted to point out that unresponsive applications include those that only address differences and genomic variations and biological processes across populations without addressing social determinants of health in the study design. And then this schematic I think is helpful in understanding the underrepresented biomedical research categories that the all of us research program uses. I won't read through them all, but they're very holistic and I encourage you to read more about this if your application is going to be using all of us research data. So applications are also encouraged from all for all of us that use community engaged research approaches to inform the research study and promoting data justice. Those will be prioritized by the all of us program team. So if you're proposing to use all of us data investigators must register for the researcher workbench and then complete the data access process and there's a link here and will be available to you. And then please note that additional training is required to access the all of us controlled tier and again more information can be found at this link here. Okay, our colleagues from the Office of Research and Women's Health do not accept primary assignments, but they will be working with the other ICs to identify potential co funding for meritorious applications. If you do have specific questions or your application is related to women's health. We encourage you to reach out as well. Okay, so that concludes the different ICO interests in this RFA so hopefully that gives you a better sense of the range and the breadth of the support for genomics and health equity that we have across the NIH. I'm going to go into some additional application information just some practical details as you prepare your applications. So first of all, this information is all in the RFAs, but if you're planning on submitting an R01 application, please note that there is a limit of up to 500,000 indirect costs per year. There is a slight difference in the number of years that are supported depending on which institute will support your application. So for NHGRI, NIA and ORWH applications, it's a maximum of four years. And then it's a maximum of five years for NCI applications. And this is where I really strongly encourage, especially if you're planning on submitting an application that's related to cancer or anything NCI is interested in. Please reach out to both myself and Melissa Ratona, who's the contact listed in the RFA. If you're interested in submitting an R21, please note that your budget limit will be up to $200,000 in direct costs per year for a maximum of a two year project period. Okay, one new ish, a facet of this RFA, at least for NHGRI, is that we are requiring for both R01 and R21 applications a plan for enhancing diverse perspectives. This is a new component that other initiatives at NIH, notably the Brain Initiative, have been pioneering. And what this is, is basically a one page addition to your application that describes how you will advance the scientific and technical merit of the proposed project through inclusivity. And the PEDP guidance material that we linked to in the RFA shows examples of possible strategies. These should be tailored to your research aims. And so I can't give you, for example, a checklist of things that you should or shouldn't include. And I should also notice that there's obviously going to be a difference in scope between R01 and R21 research. And so the PEDP would be tailored accordingly to the scope of that research. So I just want to walk through examples of possible strategies that you might want to consider. Again, these are not requirements, but these are just examples of what we need by strategies that would help support the research aims. So they could include transdisciplinary research projects and collaborations among researchers from different disciplines. It can include engagement from different types of institutions and organizations. So institutional diversity, applications of partnerships that enhance geographic and regional heterogeneity. They include investigators and teams that are composed of researchers at different career stages. And then the participation of individuals from diverse backgrounds, including diverse, including groups traditionally underrepresented in the biomedical behavior and clinical research workforce. And then the final example that we have here is opportunities to enhance the research environment to benefit early and mid career investigators. And here is that enhancing diverse perspectives is something that the NIH believes contributes to creative and dynamic and innovative research. And that is something that that we value in supporting our investigator initiated research as well. So this is just a way for you, the investigators to share with us ideas and strategies that you have to enhance diverse perspectives as you conduct your research. I also want to point out for the data management and sharing plan. There is overall broad NIH guidance. NHGRI in the past couple years has released its own guidance that I think in a sort of top top line summary. We support the broadest appropriate data sharing with timely data released through widely accessible data repositories. If you're generating or using data, these will be important considerations for you to address as well. So feel free to follow up with me or any of the other program directors if you have questions about what a data management and sharing plan component means or how it might apply to your application. Okay, so we're almost to the end here of the overview part. The important dates. I just want to run by all of you. I think we're looking at the next states here. So if you're planning on submitting an application, we would appreciate a letter of intent by October 9th. It's not required and it's not binding. So if you send one in, you're not obliged to submit an application and also if you are still deciding and you don't send a letter of intent and by October 9th, you still are allowed to submit an application. But we do encourage them because it helps us plan for kind of our review workload. The deadline that you do all need to meet if you're planning to apply for this cycle is November 8th 2023. So that's our first deadline and then we will have successive deadlines in July of next year, 2024 and then July of 2025 as well. Okay, so we've now come to the question and answer portion of the webinar. We have a couple of questions that were submitted already that I will get I will start off first. But while I'm doing that, if you have additional questions, please feel free to put them in the question and answer period component of zoom. And then also, if it is easier for you to raise your hand and speak, please go ahead and do that. And then we can we can enable that as well. Okay, first of all, let me actually just see if there are any comments from my other NIH colleagues who are on zoom here if they want to sort of clarify anything I said or add to anything I said before we get to q amp a. Nothing for me, Lucia. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands or chat so maybe we're okay to proceed. So the first pre submitted question I'm going to answer is what understanding of health equity is being employed in the context of this funding announcement. So I hope in working through some of the examples and the definitions of health equity. In the webinar, we've gotten a little bit at that. So I will say, I think our understanding is fairly broad. And so we want to make sure that as you're putting together your applications, you're running by program directors. What ideas you have it always helps us for you to send a draft of your specific aims. A couple of applicants I've talked to. I think have I've encouraged them to broaden beyond just looking at a specific underrepresented population. So a couple of people have asked. Here's a research question I want to address, you know, and it's in a specific underrepresented population. And that's great and we want to encourage that but we also want to encourage this broader view of how is that research going to improve health equity. However, you're defining in your research for all populations. There's an there's an aspect of sort of how can that research that you're doing be be bear on health equity more broadly in the US population. So if you have additional clarifications that you'd like, please feel to type them in chat, but I'm hoping that's going to help address that question. So the second question is, is funding available to for profit commercial organizations are created as a requirement. And I'm going to ask Marcella Marcella Trujillo from NHGRI grants administration branch to address that please. Yeah, hi. Thanks. Can everybody hear me okay. Yes. Okay, great. So both of the notices indicate that for profit organizations can apply and there's no indication of creative being a requirement. So it appears that they can apply individually without, you know, an agreement without a creative agreement. I hope that answers your question. If not, you're welcome to send me, you know, admin questions to if it's specific to my institute in HDRI send it to me. Or otherwise to the admin contact for the particular institute that you're going to apply through. Thank you. Thanks Marcella. Okay, I'm going to turn to the questions and answers. I'm just going to go through the order here. I think we have six so far. The first one is, do you support creating a minority cohort registry. So I'm going to answer on behalf of the NHGRI here I think the answer might be similar but NHGRI is looking for investigator initiated research and so the creation of just a minority cohort registry alone probably would not be supported it would need to be connected to some sort of research question that that deals with health equity. And again, I would encourage you to reach out to me or if you know, if the cohort might be of interest to some of my other NIH colleagues reach out to multiple of us with kind of your draft aims and how the registry fits into a research question that's related to genomics and health equity. Okay, so the second question. Was this webinar recorded and how might we access the slide deck later. Yes, so this webinar is being recorded. And we will have a link to the webinar, as well as we'll be updating the Q&A is based on your questions and answers. There's a web page that was in the notice, the notice that described this pre application webinar and how you register. So that page will have all of the updated information. And it will give us give us like at least a week or so to some number of days to get all of this upon the upon the website but yeah we do plan to update it and make it available. Sorry, not not the the webinar make the webinar available and update the questions. Is the letter of intent due in October, even if we plan to submit in 2024. So I'm sorry if I cause confusion about this. If you're planning on submitting for the 2024 dates, the letter of intent is due 30 days before the date. So there's the letter of intense go with the receipt dates. So you'll have a later a letter of intent date if you plan to submit in 2024. Okay, thank you Leah for putting the link for the application webinar the notice in there in the chat for everyone. Let's see, I think we answered somebody else asked about the slides or video recording available feature reference. We answered that one already. Okay, next question with genomics or multi omic sample sizes in African ancestry populations around 200 be competitive, e.g. as a test set for models built in AOU. Um, Jeanette Sanchez my colleague from the all of us research program is on Jeanette. Do you want to take that one. Yes. For this notice of funding opportunities. We are specifically looking at applications that use all of this research program. Looking at social determinants and how they contribute to different outcomes specifically to the population sizes. We will encourage investigators to apply appropriate methods for small populations. But really it comes down to the research questions specifically and I would encourage you to navigate the researcher workbench to look at those numbers as well of those populations. Yes, and I think it's probably worth mentioning again that the all of us research program is signed on to the art 21 but not the R01 RFA. So I think that kind of also tells you a little bit about the scope of the research that they'll be supporting. There's a question is there a preference of the type of institutions that the researcher should be affiliated with basic research clinical research and geo governmental private. Um, so we actually don't have a preference. We do have a list of eligible institutions that can be supported. It's quite broad. Um, so that I think is really the place I would direct you to. I'm not aware that we would restrict. Any of these. So the main, I think restriction I want to mention is that we. Um, no, I'm sorry, we do support for we don't support foreign applications, but we do support foreign components of applications. Sorry, that's what I meant to say earlier in the webinar. So, yeah, I think if you have additional questions on that, please let me know. But we do support a broad range of eligible institutions. Okay, I'm not seeing any open questions. Um, Gerald, are there any hands? Okay, I'm not seeing any hands either. Oh, and you know what actually more questions have come in. Okay. Um, it is not clear what is unique in this RFA compared with the previous efforts of minority and genomics research supported by NHG. Okay. So, um, this is something we are interested in. It's you're right. It's not necessarily a novel area of research. It's an area of research that we would like to emphasize more. Um, and each year in particular has funded research in the area of health disparities and minority and genomics research. We have a long history of funding. This is as do other institutes and centers and offices at the NIH. But what we would really like to do is lead the way in convening a group of investigators to address things that are specific to genomics and health equity. You know, we kind of want to go beyond looking at just individual health disparity populations and kind of create more of a portfolio that's more at the leading edge of genomics and health equity. So, thanks for your question. Okay. Next question is underrepresented workforce, PIR, co I and the team and necessity for this RFA. No, we encourage everyone to apply and including PIs who are from underrepresented populations, but it's not, it's not a requirement. Okay. Is there a preference for retrospective versus prospective studies with new recruitment? I would say this probably depends on your research question, maybe a little bit, which Institute might be supporting your research. It's really hard to answer this question. Just, it's very broad. You know, I will say some of the applicants I've been talking to, I think, you know, you do have to consider if you're going to be generating new data or recruiting new participants. We do have budget limits that are kind of up to 500K for the R01 and up to 200K for the R21. So that might end up being a factor. But again, I would encourage you to reach out to a program director and maybe get the Institute center offices take on this. Okay. The question about creating a minority cohort registry. Yeah, so I think it needs to be the minority cohort registry would need to be part of a research question in genomics and health equity. I think we would need to sort of see how how the aims were structured around the creation of this registry and what research questions it would answer and how it would answer a genomics and health equity research question. So, sorry, it's a little bit of a vague answer, but I would encourage you to reach out to a program director and talk to us more about your idea. Um, okay, our program officers wanted to communicate via email or call to make sure the ideas ideas are aligned. Yes. Yes. We encourage that we've been fielding calls and emails from applicants already. So, please don't hesitate to reach out if it looks like your research might be relevant to more than one Institute center office. Feel free to email, you know, multiple of us, or if you want to email me, I've also been looping in other program directors as well. If I think that might be interesting. Okay. Question if I want to study cancer related disparities. Should I reach out to you or some other PO from NCI. So I think I would encourage you to reach out to my colleague, Melissa. Who is the contact in the RFA Melissa was unable to make it. So today we have a Leah mechanic from the NCI. Leah, do you want to. I'm sorry, I didn't answer this. Okay. Do you want to answer the question? Um, yes, thanks, Lucia. Yes, please go ahead and email Melissa, but copy Lucia Hintora found that email so that we have tracking across the initiative of what is coming in. And I just want to note that NCI is only participating in the R01 RFA. Correct. Thanks to that reminder. Okay. I don't see any hands. Okay, we have a partial question. Is NCI only supporting our ones? Yeah, I think Leah, Leah just answered that. Just our ones for NCI. We haven't. Okay. Leah, maybe you can put let Melissa's contact in the chat. That would be great. Do you support training minority type grant. I'm going to try and maybe answer this from a very high perspective. I think if you're referring to a training grant. That's basically providing opportunities for research to a range of individuals in the context of their, their research training. No, these are not training grants. These are research grants. That address investigator initiated research. So hopefully that answers your question. If you have questions about how training or students might fit into the context of a research grant. Feel free to reach out and we can talk about your specific idea. I'm sorry. I'm like not keeping up with the answering here. Okay. So, any other questions? Okay. No matter what research area. We choose to research. Can we still choose NHG as I see. So I would encourage, I would encourage you to reach out to me. I think if it looks like there's not a clear. Home for your research area. I would encourage you to reach out to me. I think the assignments. Are done by are done centrally chances are if it doesn't fall clearly within the other. I see, oh, is it will probably get assigned to NHG, but I, you know, again, I would encourage you to reach out to me. We can discuss your research program. Your research idea. Well, there'll be a special emphasis panel to review for this RFA. I guess my simple answer is yes, and I will see a fruity Pazzotti from our review branch at NHG. I has anything to add to this. So just that we'll look at the applications that have come in for review and the kind of reviewer, the expertise of the review panel will be determined by what's proposed in the application. Thank you. Okay. Are there any other questions? So, Lucia, let me just clarify. I think the set panel will be by IC, meaning energy at I not by CSR. Am I correct? Correct. Yes, Rudy was, was responding on behalf of the NHG review branch. So, yeah, it'll be convenient. Hopefully that's clear. Okay. I think if people. Oh, here's my question coming in. Okay. Do you support grants related to health disparities and low and middle income countries? Okay, so I think this is a tricky one. I did mention that the RFA was written to support research that will be relevant to the health of us populations. I think we'll want to talk about the idea that you have for your application in terms of how the research in the low, low and middle income countries. It relates to the goals of the RFA. So I think that's what I would encourage you to do. I don't know if any of my other colleagues from other ICs have anything to add to that. Okay. I hope that helps. Okay. I'm seeing the questions are slowing down. If you do have additional questions again, please don't hesitate to reach out to myself for any of my colleagues at the NIH. I want to make this webinar and we'll update the Q and A's on the webpage that was in the chat. And again, we really appreciate all the interest in this RFA so far. We look forward to talking with you about your applications. And thank you for your interest in genomics and health equity. So I think we'll go ahead and and the webinar now and please don't hesitate to be in touch. Thank you all.