CTSA Program Data to Health (CD2H) Coordinating Center (U24) | RFA TR 17 006

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA TR 17 006

The CTSA Program Data to Health (CD2H) Coordinating Center (U24) opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number RFA TR 17 006) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement intended to stand up a single, national coordination center that helps the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program use data more effectively to speed the path from research discovery to real-world health benefit. The CTSA Program is described as a national consortium of academic medical centers organized as “hubs” that work together to improve how translational science is done, with the practical aim of getting more treatments to more patients faster. This FOA focuses on informatics, data stewardship, standards, and cross-hub collaboration as the leverage points for improving the research process at local, regional, and national scales.

The core purpose of the CD2H Coordinating Center is to function as the connective tissue for a CTSA-wide informatics community, ensuring that people, tools, and practices are aligned across institutions rather than fragmented into isolated solutions. The FOA lays out six major expectations for the coordinating center. First, it should support and strengthen a collaborative informatics community for the entire CTSA Program, meaning it is expected to convene stakeholders, coordinate shared priorities, and enable practical cooperation among hubs. Second, it must develop and promote Good Data Practice (GDP) for information stewardship, which implies establishing guidance and norms around how data are collected, curated, documented, governed, protected, and shared so that data can be trusted and reused responsibly. Third, the center should promote software standards for interoperability so that systems and datasets can work together across institutions; this is aimed at reducing the friction that occurs when every site has its own formats, interfaces, and pipelines. Fourth, it is expected to foster collaborative innovation in informatics tools, methods, and processes, with an emphasis on co-development and shared testing rather than duplicated one-off builds. Fifth, it should stimulate the use of cutting-edge biomedical informatics and data science education for CTSA researchers, reflecting the idea that improved tools and standards only matter if the workforce knows how to apply them well. Sixth, it must evaluate the impact of its activities, meaning the coordinating center is expected to measure whether its coordination, standards, education, and tool-related work actually improves translational research efficiency and contributes to downstream health impact.

A major theme in the announcement is that the coordinating center is not just an administrative hub; it is expected to actively discover, develop, demonstrate, and disseminate innovation in informatics tools, standards, methods, and processes. In practice, that framing points to a center that pilots and proves approaches in real CTSA settings, then scales them through the consortium by documentation, training, shared infrastructure, and community adoption. The emphasis on “demonstrate” and “disseminate” signals that the work should produce usable, transferable outputs that other hubs can implement, not just internal reports or conceptual frameworks. The intended endpoint is a stronger national capability for informatics-enabled translational science, where data can be responsibly stewarded, combined, and analyzed across sites to generate evidence more quickly and reliably.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary health-related funding opportunity administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through NIH (CFDA 93.350). It uses a cooperative agreement mechanism (U24), which typically indicates substantial NIH involvement during the project period, often through shared governance, milestone expectations, and active programmatic collaboration rather than a fully investigator-driven grant with minimal agency interaction. The FOA anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1) with an award ceiling of $3,500,000, reflecting the scale expected for a national coordinating function. The posting shows a creation date of January 27, 2017 and an original closing date of April 14, 2017.

Eligibility is broad and includes many categories of domestic entities: state, county, city/township, and special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments and other tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education when specified); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses, along with other applicants as allowed by the FOA’s additional eligibility language. This breadth suggests NIH was prioritizing the capacity to coordinate and deliver national informatics leadership over the applicant’s sector, as long as the organization could credibly manage consortium-scale collaboration, standards and tool development, training activities, and impact evaluation.

Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a national-scale investment in the informatics backbone of the CTSA consortium. It aims to reduce fragmentation across hubs, establish stronger data stewardship norms through Good Data Practice, improve interoperability through shared standards, accelerate the development and adoption of informatics innovations, expand informatics and data science skills among translational researchers, and hold the effort accountable through meaningful evaluation of outcomes. The through-line is practical: better coordinated data practices and interoperable tools are expected to make translational research more efficient and more likely to produce improvements in health.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "CTSA Program Data to Health (CD2H) Coordinating Center (U24)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.350.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jan 27, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Apr 14, 2017. (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 $3,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• 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 (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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