Measures and Methods for Research on Family Caregivers for People Living with Alzheimers Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) (R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA AG 23 023

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA AG 23 023

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is offering an Exploratory/Developmental Grant (R21) opportunity titled "Measures and Methods for Research on Family Caregivers for People Living with Alzheimers Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) (R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" under funding opportunity number RFA-AG-23-023 (CFDA 93.866). The main purpose of this announcement is to stimulate early-stage, innovative research that creates or improves research methods and measurement tools that better capture what "family" and related social relationships look like in real caregiving situations for people living with Alzheimers disease and related dementias. The emphasis is not simply on caregiving in general, but on developing ways to measure expanded, culturally relevant definitions of family and caregiving networks, including relationships that may not fit traditional definitions used in many health studies.

A central theme of the FOA is that informal dementia caregiving often involves more than one person and may include extended family, fictive kin, close friends, neighbors, church members, or other community ties that function like family. NIH is encouraging applicants to develop measures and methods that can accurately reflect these caregiving structures and dynamics, especially where standard questionnaires or study designs fall short. In practice, that can mean designing survey items, interview guides, network mapping tools, observational approaches, or data collection strategies that better document who provides care, what roles they play, how responsibilities are shared, how decisions are made, and how caregiving responsibilities change over time as dementia progresses. The FOA also explicitly supports testing these newly developed measures in populations that have been underrepresented in AD/ADRD research, which typically includes many racial and ethnic minority communities, rural groups, and other populations less often reached by traditional recruitment and study methods.

This is an R21 mechanism, meaning NIH is looking for exploratory, potentially high-risk/high-reward work that may still be in a development phase. The announcement is also described as a companion to a separate NIH funding opportunity, RFA-AG-23-022, which uses the R01 mechanism. The distinction matters: the R01 is generally more appropriate when investigators already have strong preliminary data and are ready for a larger, more definitive project, while this R21 is positioned for projects that are more novel or methodologically experimental and may not yet have extensive preliminary evidence. The FOA signals that applications with substantial preliminary data may be better matched to the companion R01 announcement, while applicants aiming to build and pilot new measurement approaches without much prior data may be a better fit here.

The "Clinical Trial Not Allowed" label is important for eligibility and project design. It indicates that applications should not propose clinical trials as defined by NIH policy. In other words, this opportunity is oriented toward measurement and methods development and testing rather than interventions being tested for health outcomes through a clinical trial framework. Applicants can still conduct human subjects research to develop and validate measures, but they must stay within the boundaries of what NIH considers non-clinical-trial research for this FOA.

From an applicant eligibility standpoint, NIH makes the opportunity broadly accessible across many organization types. Eligible applicants include state, county, city or township governments, special district governments, and independent school districts. Public and state-controlled institutions of higher education and private institutions of higher education are eligible, as are federally recognized Native American tribal governments and tribal organizations that are not federally recognized. The FOA also allows public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (as long as they are not institutions of higher education), for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), and small businesses. The announcement further highlights additional eligible applicant categories such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. At the same time, it places strict limits on foreign involvement: non-U.S. entities and foreign institutions are not eligible to apply, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible, and foreign components (as NIH defines them) are not allowed.

In terms of basic funding details, the award ceiling listed for this opportunity is $275,000. The FOA was created on 2022-06-09, and the original closing date was 2022-10-20. The funding instrument is a grant, the opportunity category is discretionary, and the activity category is health, reflecting NIHs mission and the focus on improving the science that underpins caregiving research in AD/ADRD.

Overall, this opportunity is aimed at improving the foundations of dementia caregiving research by upgrading the tools researchers use to define, identify, and measure family caregiving networks in the real world. NIH is signaling that better measures are needed to reflect diverse living arrangements and social relationships and that those measures must be tested in communities that have historically been left out of AD/ADRD research. The practical outcome NIH is pushing for is a stronger measurement toolkit that can support future studies, improve the accuracy of caregiving research, and make findings more applicable across the full range of families and communities affected by dementia.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Measures and Methods for Research on Family Caregivers for People Living with Alzheimers Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) (R21 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): 93.866.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2022-06-09.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-10-20. (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 $275,000.00 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.

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