DOD, Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s, Transforming Diagnosis Award | HT9425 23 PRARP TDA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT9425 23 PRARP TDA

The Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s Research Program (PRARP) Transforming Diagnosis Award (TDA) is a funding opportunity aimed at making Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease related dementias (AD/ADRD) diagnosis and prognosis meaningfully better in the near term, with an emphasis on practical impact rather than distant, exploratory work. The program is looking for projects that can improve how people obtain a diagnosis, how disease is monitored in a meaningful way, and how accurately clinicians can predict outcomes (prognosis). The central expectation is that the work directly benefits the real end users: people living with dementia and their families, not just researchers or health systems.

Projects are expected to tackle major real-world barriers that keep timely, accurate diagnosis and monitoring out of reach. The opportunity explicitly recognizes that barriers can be technical, clinical, social, or structural. Examples include high cost, limited patient access to specialty care, gaps in patient and caregiver education, challenges integrating new tools into routine clinical workflows, uncertainty about how diagnostic measures relate to clinical outcomes, lack of biomarker validation, limitations of existing diagnostic technologies, and the absence of longitudinal data needed for prediction and prognosis. It also places strong attention on health equity, including barriers rooted in structural and social determinants of health that can lead to unequal access and unequal quality of diagnosis across populations.

A defining feature of this award is near-term applicability. Applicants are expected to focus on “diagnosis now,” meaning that the proposed work should accelerate progress and be positioned for real-world implementation within roughly three to five years. The intent is not simply to publish findings, but to move solutions toward community uptake as quickly as feasible, with a clear line of sight from the proposed research to tangible improvements in diagnostic or prognostic practice.

Another core requirement is person-focused research grounded in partnership with affected communities. The program emphasizes that diagnostic and prognostic tools only succeed if the people most affected trust them, understand them, and see them as useful. Because of that, every project must include a collaborative community partner approach. In practical terms, investigators are expected to work alongside relevant stakeholders, such as individuals living with dementia, caregivers, and the communities where the research will take place, so the research questions, methods, and outputs align with lived needs and real constraints.

To reinforce that community-driven approach, the opportunity expects the investigator to hold a community meeting with a facilitated discussion within the first three quarters of the award period. This meeting should involve the intended research population and their community, and it is meant to actively shape how the research is executed. The feedback gathered should help refine the research questions, improve feasibility and acceptability, and inform how results will be shared and disseminated in ways that are understandable and actionable for the people who will use them.

The award also requires prospective recruitment and data collection involving human participants. While applicants are encouraged to leverage existing resources where possible, the project must include an element of new, prospectively collected human subjects data. Importantly, the study population must be representative and applicable to a diverse population, and the program signals that equitable and diverse inclusion, both in the study participants and in the research team, is a high priority. The underlying goal is to ensure that any diagnostic or prognostic advances produced by the project are broadly beneficial and do not unintentionally widen existing disparities.

Administratively, this opportunity is run by the Department of Defense (Department of the Army, U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, USAMRAA) under Funding Opportunity Number HT9425-23-PRARP-TDA. It is offered as a discretionary program using cooperative agreements and grants under CFDA 12.420. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to many entity types unless further limited by details in the full announcement. The opportunity anticipated making about two awards, and the posting lists an award ceiling of 0 (often indicating the ceiling is defined elsewhere in the full solicitation or varies by project scope). The original posting date was March 27, 2023, with an original closing date of July 10, 2023.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DOD, Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s, Transforming Diagnosis Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 27, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 10, 2023. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for HT9425 23 PRARP TDA

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