Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness (ALACRITY) Research Centers (P50 Clinical Trial Optional) | PAR 18 701

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 18 701

The Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness (ALACRITY) Research Centers opportunity (PAR-18-701) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) center grant program using the P50 mechanism, with clinical trials allowed but not required. It is designed to fund research centers that bring together unusually integrated, transdisciplinary teams to run high-impact studies aimed at changing real-world mental health care in the United States. The core idea is to move beyond incremental, single-discipline projects and instead support coordinated center-level efforts that can generate actionable evidence, strengthen clinical practice, and speed the translation of research into routine care for both youth and adults with mental illness.

The FOA emphasizes building teams that intentionally combine clinical and mental health services research with behavioral and social science, while also incorporating technical and systems-focused expertise such as health information and communications technology, health systems engineering, and decision science. A distinctive requirement is the active inclusion of mental health stakeholders in the work, including service users, families, clinicians, and payers, so that research questions, methods, implementation strategies, and outcomes reflect practical needs and constraints. In other words, these centers are meant to function like advanced "laboratories" embedded in or closely connected to real service settings, where researchers can iteratively develop, test, and refine approaches that can actually scale.

The research scope is organized around three broad, connected aims. First, centers should pursue ways to optimize the effectiveness of therapeutic or preventive interventions for mental disorders in clearly defined target populations, which could involve tailoring, improving engagement, strengthening clinical response, or identifying what works best for whom. Second, the program supports innovations in how optimized mental health services are organized and delivered in real-world treatment settings, which can include workflow redesign, technology-enabled supports, new care models, and strategies that address barriers in routine practice. Third, ALACRITY centers are expected to focus on continuous improvement: developing approaches that improve the quality, impact, and durability of interventions and service delivery over time across diverse care systems, rather than treating implementation as a one-time event. This continuous-improvement focus signals that the program is interested in sustained performance in the face of staff turnover, shifting resources, and variation across clinics and communities.

A major theme throughout the FOA is synergy across projects and disciplines. NIH is explicitly looking for center proposals that are hard to do through standard R01-type mechanisms because they require shared infrastructure, coordinated multi-project research, rapid-cycle evaluation, and integrated collaboration among different scientific and stakeholder perspectives. The program prioritizes research with strong public health potential, especially work that increases the reach and impact of existing and emerging interventions and service delivery strategies. Put simply, the expectation is that a funded center will create more than the sum of its parts by connecting methods, data, technology, and on-the-ground partnerships into a cohesive engine for translation and implementation.

The opportunity also has a workforce development dimension. ALACRITY centers are expected to create meaningful opportunities for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career investigators to participate in transdisciplinary T2 translational mental health research, meaning research that bridges clinical knowledge into routine practice and service systems. While not framed as a separate training grant, this expectation signals that reviewers will likely look for plans that embed trainees in center activities, expose them to cross-disciplinary mentorship, and build skills relevant to real-world mental health care transformation.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of U.S.-based organizations: state, county, and local governments; public and private institutions of higher education; independent school districts; special district governments; federally recognized tribal governments and other tribal organizations; public housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding higher education institutions when specified); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); and small businesses. The FOA also calls out additional eligible applicant categories such as Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISISs), faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. Non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply, although foreign components as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement may be allowed, which typically means specific, justified parts of the research may occur abroad under NIH rules even though the applicant organization must be eligible and primarily U.S.-based.

From the funding details provided, the activity category is health (CFDA 93.242), the instrument is a grant, and the award ceiling listed is $1,000,000. The original closing date in the source information is June 30, 2020, and the FOA creation date is March 5, 2018. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a center-level investment in rigorous, stakeholder-engaged, transdisciplinary research meant to rapidly improve how effective mental health interventions are refined, delivered, and sustained in everyday care settings, with the ultimate goal of producing measurable, scalable public health benefits.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness (ALACRITY) Research Centers (P50 Clinical Trial Optional)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.242.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2018-03-05.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-06-30. (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 $1,000,000.00 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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