Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Measurement Core (U24) Clinical Trial Not Allowed | RFA OD 22 020

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA OD 22 020

The Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Measurement Core (U24) opportunity (RFA-OD-22-020) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement designed to support a central Measurement Core for the ECHO program. ECHO is a large, multi-site research consortium focused on understanding how a wide range of environmental factors affect child health and development. This specific announcement funds the infrastructure and leadership needed to build, improve, and manage the standardized measurement system used across the ECHO Cohort, and it is explicitly marked as "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," meaning applicants should not propose a clinical trial as part of the work under this award.

At its center, the Measurement Core is meant to function as the program-wide engine for measurement quality, consistency, and evolution. The Core is expected to work collaboratively with the ECHO Cohort consortium and to take on three main responsibilities. First, it will develop and refine measures included in the ECHO Cohort Protocol, along with practical, detailed methods for implementing those measures in real-world study settings. This includes making sure measures are well-defined, feasible, standardized, and appropriate for use across many sites and populations, rather than being site-specific tools that cannot be compared across the cohort.

Second, the Measurement Core will actively support ECHO Cohort Study Sites, Cores, and Centers as they implement and evaluate the ECHO Cohort Protocol. The Protocol consists of standardized measures collected at specified study visits, so the Core's role is not simply to publish a list of recommended instruments, but to help ensure those instruments are applied consistently and correctly across the network. In practice, that typically implies providing guidance, documentation, training support, troubleshooting, and feedback loops that help sites maintain fidelity to standardized procedures while also identifying where implementation challenges or quality issues arise.

Third, the Measurement Core is expected to lead strategic decision-making about updating the measurement framework over time. ECHO science is intended to evolve as new evidence, technologies, and priorities emerge, so the Core must have a disciplined process for incorporating new measures and revising existing ones. A key part of that responsibility is balancing scientific opportunity with burden: adding measurements can improve discovery, but it can also increase workload for site staff and reduce participant willingness to continue. The FOA highlights the need to advance ECHO Cohort science while moderating participant and staff burden, which signals that applicants should propose governance and decision processes that weigh value, feasibility, and impact on retention and data quality.

This FOA is one piece of a larger set of coordinated funding announcements that together make up the ECHO Cohort infrastructure. It runs in parallel with companion FOAs for Cohort Study Sites (including variants for following existing participants and recruiting new pregnant participants), as well as separate awards for an ECHO Coordinating Center, an ECHO Data Analysis Center, and an ECHO Laboratory Core. The way it is structured makes clear that the Measurement Core is not meant to operate in isolation; instead, it is intended to integrate tightly with those other components so that measures, data collection operations, analysis needs, and laboratory methods stay aligned across the consortium.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of domestic organizations and governmental entities, such as state, county, city or township governments, special district governments, and independent school districts; public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments and other tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses) and small businesses; and other eligible entities. The announcement also calls out additional categories of eligible applicants often emphasized by NIH, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. At the same time, it draws clear boundaries around foreign participation: 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. However, "foreign components" as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed, meaning a U.S. applicant may include certain foreign elements in the project when justified and permitted under NIH policy, even though the applicant organization itself must be domestic.

Administratively, this is a discretionary opportunity using the cooperative agreement mechanism (U24). A cooperative agreement generally means NIH will have substantial programmatic involvement, so applicants should expect ongoing collaboration, coordination, and shared decision-making with NIH program staff and the broader ECHO governance structure rather than a fully investigator-driven, hands-off grant relationship. The original closing date listed for this opportunity was November 21, 2022, and the funding opportunity was created on August 30, 2022. The listing includes multiple CFDA numbers associated with NIH programs, reflecting the cross-cutting, multi-institute nature of ECHO and the broad health domains it touches. Award ceiling and expected awards are not specified in the provided source text, so the summary cannot infer a maximum award size or number of awards from this excerpt alone.

In practical terms, a strong application for this Measurement Core would be expected to show deep expertise in measurement science and standardized protocol implementation at scale, along with a credible plan for coordinating across many sites and for continuously improving measures without overwhelming participants or frontline research staff. The focus is on building shared measurement infrastructure and decision-making processes that enable the entire ECHO Cohort to generate consistent, high-quality, comparable data over time.

• 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) Measurement Core (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 22 020

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: