Aging Research on Stress and Resilience to Address Health Disparities in the United States (R01) | RFA AG 16 022

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA AG 16 022

Aging Research on Stress and Resilience to Address Health Disparities in the United States (R01) (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-AG-16-022) is a National Institutes of Health grant opportunity designed to push forward interdisciplinary research on why health outcomes in later life differ across priority health disparity populations in the United States. The central idea is that stress exposure, how the body responds to stress, and the ability to resist or recover from stress (stress resilience) can shape aging trajectories in ways that contribute to unequal burdens of disease and disability. The FOA is specifically looking for studies that do more than simply document disparities; it prioritizes research that clarifies mechanisms and pathways that connect stress-related factors to aging-relevant health outcomes.

The opportunity emphasizes linking stress to concrete, high-impact outcomes that matter for older adults and for population health, including mortality, cognitive impairment, multiple chronic conditions, disability, and quality of life. Applicants are encouraged to treat stress broadly and realistically, taking into account the environments people live in, the sociocultural contexts they navigate, the behaviors they adopt or are constrained into, and the biological changes that accumulate over time. In practice, this could mean integrating measures of neighborhood conditions, discrimination, caregiving strain, economic insecurity, or social isolation with behavioral pathways such as sleep, physical activity, diet, substance use, and healthcare engagement, alongside biological indicators such as inflammatory markers, neuroendocrine function, cardiometabolic risk, or other stress-response systems. The FOA is fundamentally about connecting these layers into coherent explanatory models that show how stress and resilience get "under the skin" to influence aging and health disparities.

Because the announcement is framed as an R01, it supports full-scale research projects that can test hypotheses rigorously, often with multi-year study designs, strong analytic plans, and potentially team-based approaches that draw from aging research, epidemiology, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, behavioral science, and related fields. The announcement explicitly aims to stimulate interdisciplinary work, which signals that proposals are expected to bring together expertise and methods capable of handling complex, multilevel pathways rather than single-factor explanations. While the FOA does not prescribe a single study type, its focus on pathways and linkages suggests that well-justified conceptual frameworks, careful measurement strategies, and analytical approaches suited to mediation, moderation, and multilevel influences would be responsive to the goals.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations and government entities. Eligible applicants include state, county, city or township governments, and special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; Native American tribal governments that are federally recognized; Native American tribal organizations that are not federally recognized; public housing authorities and Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education in those nonprofit categories); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; small businesses; and other types of organizations as allowed by NIH. The FOA also highlights additional eligible applicant categories that reflect its health-disparities orientation, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, Indian/Native American tribal governments other than federally recognized, and U.S. territories or possessions. At the same time, it clearly excludes non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations, and foreign components as defined under the NIH Grants Policy Statement, meaning the funded work must be fully domestic in scope and implementation.

From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding, uses the grant funding instrument, and falls under the health funding activity category with CFDA number 93.866. The source information lists an award ceiling of $500,000. The FOA record shows a creation date of September 18, 2015, and an original closing date of January 13, 2016, indicating that this specific announcement was tied to that historical application cycle.

Overall, the FOA is best understood as a call for rigorous, mechanism-focused aging and health-disparities research that treats stress and resilience as central drivers of unequal aging outcomes in the U.S., and that intentionally connects environmental and sociocultural realities to behavioral patterns and biological processes to explain differences in late-life health.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Aging Research on Stress and Resilience to Address Health Disparities in the United States (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 2015-09-18.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-01-13. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• 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 AG 16 022

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