IMPACT Collaboratory Requests Applications: 2026 ePCT Planning Grants Program

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) Imbedded Pragmatic Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory (U54AG063546) was established in 2019 to build the nation’s capacity to conduct embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) of non-pharmacological interventions within health care systems to improve the care of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners.

The IMPACT Collaboratory will fund up to two 12-month awards for up to $150,000 (total direct costs) to support the activities needed to collaboratively plan and develop a feasible, fully specified protocol for a Stage IV effectiveness ePCT in dementia care. Applicants must partner with a nursing home organization and include at least two nursing homes (either within a single organization or across multiple organizations).

This opportunity focuses exclusively on non-pharmacological interventions to improve the management of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in nursing homes, including person-centered approaches and strategies to reduce antipsychotic or similar neuroactive medication use. Proposed projects must emphasize nursing home-level approaches suitable for future pilot or full-scale ePCTs.

This award emphasizes strong partnerships among investigators, nursing home provider partners, and advisory boards of residents, care partners and other caregivers to ensure the interventions are feasible, aligned with real-world workflows, and ready for testing in an ePCT.  By the end of the award, awardees are expected to deliver a fully specified, implementation ready trial protocol for either a pilot or full-scale ePCT.

This funding opportunity does not support early-stage intervention development (Stages 0-I) or protocol development for efficacy trials (Stages II-III on the NIH Stage Model).

Read the full RFA here

Informational Webinar

An optional informational webinar will be hosted to provide investigators with an overview of application details and an opportunity to ask questions.

May 21, 2026, at 3pm ET: Register here.

Letters of intent are due June 18, 2026, at 6pm ET

Questions? Please contact, Elaine Bergman, IMPACT Communications Lead

Call for Applications, Proposals, and Papers from NIA Supported Centers and Networks

• The Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s (CAPRA) Pilot Core is seeking novel, population-based Emerging Scholar Pilot Proposals that address CAPRA’s main thematic areas including health policy and healthcare system impact on acute and long-term care outcomes; diffusion of new diagnostics and drugs into practice; heterogeneity in disease risk, care access, and outcomes across populations; or innovative applications of population data.  Learn more and submit your application by March 2, 2026.  

  
  

• The Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA) announces a call for applications for its Research Fellows program. This two-year mentored pilot project program is designed to provide early career scholars with resources to complete a small project in Year 1 and develop a grant application to the NIA in Year 2. Learn more and submit your pre-proposal by March 2, 2026.  

  
  

• The State Alzheimer’s Research Support (StARS) Center is currently accepting letter of intent (LOI) for the Dementia Care Innovation Grants.  They are seeking proposals that advance the provision, understanding, documentation, and evaluation of dementia care services, with a priority focused on dementia care service coordination projects. Learn more and submit your letter of intent by March 12, 2026.  

  
  

• The Hopkins Economic of Alzheimer’s Disease & Services Center (HEADS Center) is currently accepting pilot proposals related to their themes to identify and quantify the range of AD/ADRD care needs and related economic consequences or examine how the organization and financing of services and technology affect accessibility, affordability, and quality of AD/ADRD care. They encourage applicants who are Early-Stage Investigators, new investigators who have not yet received a major R or K grant, and those new to AD/ADRD research. Learn more and submit your complete proposal by March 13, 2026. 

  
  

• The Center on the Economics & Demography of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley is currently accepting applications for both the Emerging Scholars Pilots and the Innovation Pilots. Emerging Scholar Pilots will support early career researchers while the Innovation Pilots will support researchers at any stage who are highly innovative research for which pilot funding is necessary to test ideas and demonstrate feasibility to support strong extramural grant proposals. The next deadline for the Emerging Scholars Pilot is on April 1, 2026, while the Innovation Pilots is on a rolling basis. Learn more and submit your applications.  

• NIA IMPACT Collaboratory is accepting applications for their Health Care Systems Scholars Program. The Health Care Systems Scholars Program is a 1-year mentored experience designed to support immersion of mid-career investigators (MD, PhD, or equivalent) within a health care system to foster durable partnerships, advance system-informed research priorities, and lay the groundwork for future embedded pragmatic clinical trials in dementia care.  Learn more and submit your letter of intent on April 2, 2026.  

• Gateway to Global Aging Data announced a research hackathon for early-career researchers from July 27-30 in Washington, D.C.  The hackathon is a team-based competition where participants will collaborate on a study investigating the role of education in determining risk, resilience, and disparities in non-communicable diseases, with a special interest in cognition. Winners will receive financial support for attending future conferences to present the work and journal article submission or publication costs. Learned more and submit your research proposals and CV by Friday, April 17, 2026. 

New Funding Opportunities and Announcements from NIA and NIH

NEW! PA-26-002: NIH Collaborative International Research Project (Parent PF5 Clinical Trial Optional). Multiple receipt dates through May 07, 2029. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) seeks to advance its mission by maintaining strong, productive, and secure international research collaborations in support of the NIH mission. The NIH Collaborative International Research Project (Parent Announcement) supports international research collaborations. This opportunity specifically implements an award structure of prime domestic awards with independent foreign awards that are linked to the prime. This structure provides NIH with oversight capacity for international collaborations, and allows NIH to track international funding, as identified in NOT-OD-25-104. This funding opportunity is specifically designed for NIH to support funded international collaborations between a domestic prime organization and foreign organizations. This NOFO should not be used for foreign consultants, purchasing unique equipment or supplies from foreign vendors, foreign collaborations that do not involve NIH funding, or any other foreign component that would not result in a foreign subaward.

All collaborative international research project applications must include at least 1 international subproject. The proposed project must be related to the programmatic interests of one or more of the participating NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices (ICOs) based on their scientific missions. The application will be evaluated as a whole, and the international subproject(s) will be evaluated on whether the project presents special opportunities for furthering research programs through the use of unusual talent, resources, populations, or environmental conditions in other countries that are not readily available in the United States or that augment existing United States resources, and whether the proposed project has specific relevance to the mission and objectives of the ICO and has the potential for significantly advancing the health sciences in the United States. 

NEW! NOT-OD-26-032: Basic Experimental Studies in Humans (BESH) Will No Longer Be Considered Clinical Trials by the NIH. Posted on January 29, 2026. 

In 2014, the NIH revised its clinical trial definition to increase transparency, accountability, and precision in tracking research:

A research study in which one or more human subjects are prospectively assigned to one or more interventions (which may include placebo or other control) to evaluate the effects of those interventions on health-related biomedical or behavioral outcomes.

This new definition was part of a broader stewardship initiative to ensure all NIH-supported research involving human participants is subject to rigorous standards and that results are rapidly disseminated, even if not considered an Applicable Clinical Trial under Section 801 of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act. As part of this effort, the categories of research considered clinical trials were expanded to include Basic Experimental Studies Involving Humans (BESH).

Because policies related to results dissemination have changed since 2014, and as part of ongoing efforts to reduce administrative burden, effective for applications submitted to due dates on or after May 25, 2026, the NIH will no longer characterize BESH as clinical trials. In the context of the definition of clinical trials, the NIH now considers a health-related biomedical or behavioral outcome as having the potential for direct advancement of health. Although BESH research, which produces fundamental information about biology or behavior, might eventually inform advances in health, it is not conducted with the express intent of changing clinical practice or health but rather aims to understand fundamental aspects of phenomena without immediate clinical applications. Therefore, BESH research is no longer considered to meet the NIH definition of a clinical trial.

PAR-24-273: Advancing Healthcare for Older Adults from Populations that Experience Health Disparities (R01 - Clinical Trial Optional). Multiple receipt dates through January 7, 2028.  

The purpose of this initiative is to advance the science and implementation of innovative multi-level health care research for older adults from populations that experience health disparities. The initiative will support research designed to (1) gain a better understanding of appropriate screening, diagnostic, and clinical care guidelines in a primary care setting, (2) explore shared decision-making that is needed to enhance care planning and patient agency between clinicians and care teams with the older adult and their caregiver(s), and (3) identify effective strategies for care coordination.