Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Data Analysis Center (U24) Clinical Trial Not Allowed | RFA OD 22 022

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA OD 22 022

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced this cooperative agreement funding opportunity, RFA-OD-22-022, to support a dedicated Data Analysis Center for the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. ECHO is a large national effort focused on understanding how a wide range of environmental factors shape children s health and development. Under this FOA, NIH is looking for a central hub that can manage and harmonize ECHO Cohort Protocol data and then help the consortium turn those data into high quality analyses that can be shared and used broadly. The award mechanism is a U24 cooperative agreement, which typically means substantial NIH program involvement in key decisions, coordination, and oversight. Clinical trials are not allowed under this opportunity, which signals that the work is intended to be infrastructure, data coordination, and analytics support rather than interventional research.

The Data Analysis Center is expected to carry three core responsibilities. First, it must lead the standardization and integration of ECHO Cohort Protocol data capture, management, and storage through a centralized data system. In practice, this means creating or operating the primary data platform that receives study data from many cohort study sites, ensuring consistent formats and definitions, applying quality control processes, and maintaining secure, well documented storage so the data remain usable over time. Because ECHO involves multiple cohorts and institutions, a major emphasis is placed on harmonization, reducing variability in how measures are recorded, and ensuring that data collected across sites can be combined for large scale analyses.

Second, the Center must provide analytic support and expertise for analysis proposals that are approved by the ECHO Cohort consortium. This implies a service and collaboration role: supporting investigators across the consortium with study design input, statistical methods, power and feasibility checks, analytic plan development, implementation of approved analyses, and potentially reproducible workflows. The Center functions as the analytic backbone of the program, helping ensure that results are rigorous, comparable across projects, and generated efficiently using shared methods and standardized code where possible.

Third, the Center must strengthen research infrastructure and data science capabilities in ways that make it easier to share ECHO data and related resources with the broader scientific community. That includes building processes and tooling for data documentation, metadata, codebooks, common data models, and possibly pipelines that support external data access and use. The goal is not only to serve the internal ECHO consortium, but also to increase the long term scientific value of the data by making them easier to discover, understand, and reuse responsibly, consistent with NIH policies and privacy protections.

This FOA is part of a coordinated set of related ECHO funding announcements being run in parallel. Companion FOAs (referenced in the description as RFA-XXXX placeholders) cover Cohort Study Sites for follow up of existing ECHO participants and recruitment of new pregnant participants, Cohort Study Sites focused only on follow up, Cohort Study Sites focused only on new recruitment, as well as an ECHO Coordinating Center, an ECHO Measurement Core, and an ECHO Laboratory Core. Together, these components form the overall ECHO infrastructure: study sites collect participant data and specimens, cores provide specialized measurement and laboratory capacity, a coordinating center helps run the program operationally, and the Data Analysis Center provides the central data and analytics engine that allows the full network to function as an integrated research enterprise.

Eligibility is broad across U.S. based organizations and governments. Eligible applicants include state, county, city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; Native American tribal governments (federally recognized); tribal organizations (other than federally recognized tribal governments); 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; and small businesses. The FOA also highlights additional eligible applicant types such as Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, Hispanic serving institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, faith based or community based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, U.S. territories or possessions, and Indian or Native American tribal governments that are not federally recognized.

At the same time, there are clear limits on non U.S. participation. Non domestic (non U.S.) entities (foreign organizations and foreign institutions) are not eligible to apply, and non domestic components of U.S. organizations are also not eligible to apply. However, foreign components as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed, which typically means a U.S. awardee may include certain justified foreign activities or collaborations under NIH rules even though a foreign organization cannot be the applicant organization.

Key administrative details included in the source information are that the sponsoring agency is NIH, the opportunity category is discretionary, the funding instrument type is a cooperative agreement, and the activity category spans multiple public service and health related areas (including education, environment, food and nutrition, health, and social services). The original closing date listed is 2022-11-21, and while an award ceiling and expected number of awards are referenced, no specific numeric values are provided in the excerpted source data.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, environment, food and nutrition, health, income security and social services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Data Analysis Center (U24) 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): 93.113, 93.121, 93.213, 93.233, 93.242, 93.273, 93.279, 93.307, 93.310, 93.350, 93.361, 93.837, 93.838, 93.839, 93.840, 93.847, 93.853, 93.855, 93.865, 93.866, 93.879.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2022-08-30.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-11-21. (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 OD 22 022

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