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This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) seeks applications for the design and development of technologies to monitor health or deliver care in a real-time, accessible, effective, and minimally obtrusive way for older adults with a chronic heart, lung, blood, or sleep (HLBS) condition. These technologies may be novel sensor or monitoring systems, home-use point-of-care devices, home or mobile therapy or rehabilitation tools, or information systems and should have the goal of fostering healthy and independent living for aging adults with HLBS conditions. The development of such technologies should incorporate specific human factors for aging adults including disabilities, mild impairments, as well as chronic HLBS conditions. Technology usability for these populations must be incorporated early in the development of the design. Usability considerations include but are not limited to patient-facing displays, hearing and visual impairments, tactile limitations, literacy, and design preferences between men and women. These improvements in technology design could yield more accurate and earlier detection of changes that may interfere with healthy and independent living for older adults.

The purpose of this FOA is to solicit applications for the next 6-year cycle of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which is the leading longitudinal data resource on patterns of age-related changes in the health and well-being of adults age 50 and older in the U.S. The goals of the next cycle are to: 1) continue the current structure and design elements of the HRS while reducing respondent burden; 2) establish a repository of blood samples for future study; 3) enrich administrative linkages and collaborations with genetics consortia; 4) conduct follow-up dementia assessment using the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) to update data on the prevalence of dementia including Alzheimer's Disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD); 5) enhance harmonization with comparable surveys of population aging; and 6) augment data dissemination and user support. 

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) issued by the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) at the National Institutes of Health, encourages Research Project Grant (R01) applications from institutions/organizations that propose to develop basic and applied projects utilizing systems science methodologies relevant to human behavioral and social sciences and health. This FOA is intended to encourage a broader scope of topics to be addressed with systems science methodologies, beyond those encouraged by existing open FOAs. Research projects applicable to this FOA are those that are either applied or basic in nature (including methodological development), have a human behavioral and/or social science focus, and feature systems science methodologies

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications from institutions/organizations proposing clinical studies of the use of current and emerging technologies for monitoring of blood glucose and insulin administration in older adults with T1D.

This RFA invites applications for planning awards to develop and finalize protocols for well-powered cognitive training intervention trials to remediate or prevent age-related cognitive decline as well as possibly prevent or delay the onset of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Planning activities may include the collection of pilot data and the refinement of cognitive training protocols consistent with Stage I of the NIH Stage Model. Trial designs must justify the means used to assess cognition and to explore the underlying mechanisms of change. Such methods as structural and functional neuroimaging with biomarkers justified by an underlying model of change, CSF fluids, and blood biomarkers are appropriate candidate tools.

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation has issued a Request for Proposals for its Preclinical Drug Discovery program. Through the program, grants of up to $600,000 over two years will be awarded to promising preclinical drug discovery programs relevant to Alzheimer's disease, related dementias, and cognitive aging. Preclinical research funding priorities include high throughput screening, medicinal chemistry hit-to-lead development and optimization, in vitro and in vivo efficacy studies, ADME, toxicology, pharma-cokinetics and pharma-co-dynamics, and in vivo proof-of-concept with lead compounds and biologics. Program areas of particular interest include new chemical compounds for Alzheimer's disease, preclinical proof-of-concept, and re-purposing. With regards to potential drug targets, ADDF is interested in novel targets that include but are not limited to neuro-inflammation, protein degradation/autophagy, growth factor signaling, synaptic function/morphology, calcium regulation, energy utilization/mitochondria function, insulin sensitivity, epigenetics, ApoE function and cholesterol metabolism, vascular injury and the blood-brain barrier interface, cognitive enhancers, myelin changes, ischemia and oxidative stress, and tau-related toxicities. To be eligible, applicants must be academic investigators seeking to create and support innovative translational programs in academic medical centers and universities; biotechnology companies with programs dedicated to Alzheimer's disease translational development; and new biotechnology company spinouts or existing biotechnology companies that demonstrate a clear need for nonprofit funding. Funding is provided through program-related investments (PRIs) that require a return on investment based on scientific and/or business milestones.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications for the next 5-year cycle of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to include a sixth wave of data collection (Wave VI). Add Health is a nationally representative, longitudinal study of individuals primarily born from 1976 through 1982 who were first interviewed as adolescents in grades 7-12 (ages 12-19) in 1994-1995. Add Health respondents are now entering middle age. The goals for Add Health Wave VI are to: Re-interview Add Health cohort members in a combination of web-based and in-person modes, including aggressive non-response follow-up and oversamples of race/ethnic-minority and low-socioeconomic-status individuals. Re-visit cohort members for an in-home health exam that includes venous blood collection. Assay biological specimens for biomarkers of disease. Enrich measures in domains that may elucidate mid- and later-life health and disparities therein (e.g., cumulative stress, discrimination, work-life balance, caregiving). Clean, document, disseminate, archive (including storage of biological specimens for future study), and promote the Wave VI data to the scientific community for aging research.

The Administration on Aging (AoA), a division of the Administration for Community Living, working with a national network of state, tribal, and local agencies, is committed to ensuring that current and future older adults have the information, tools, and services they need to remain healthy and the support they need to remain independent and active for as long as possible. Recently much has been learned about the individual and societal impact of social isolation and loneliness. Based on current estimates, isolation is a social problem that impacts as many as 17% of older Americans.[i] A large body of literature indicates that social isolation and loneliness have negative impacts on health of older adults and is associated with an increased risk of dying. According to a report by the AARP Public Policy Institute and Stanford University, social isolation among people with Medicare is associated with an estimated $6.7 billion in additional Medicare spending every year.[ii] That's comparable to additional program spending for people with chronic conditions like high blood pressure. Research has linked social isolation and loneliness to higher risks for a variety of physical and mental conditions[iii]. In fact, a Brigham Young University study found that prolonged social isolation is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and is more harmful than obesity.[iv]

Age is the number one risk factor for diagnosis of many age-related lung diseases, including COPD and pulmonary fibrosis. Despite this, little is known regarding the interactions that likely occur between the molecular and cellular mechanisms of disease and the changes in molecules and cells that can be attributed to normal aging. In fact, very little is known about the normal aging process in the lung at the cellular and molecular level. In 2015, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) co-sponsored a workshop that identified a major knowledge gap in the understanding of normal lung aging in humans, as well as the need to develop a map of molecular changes that occur during normal aging in the lung that can serve as a reference for studies of age-related lung diseases.