Research Grants
The American Headache Society is now making it easier for its members to access opportunities for research funding. Please refer back to this page as new opportunities will be posted regularly.
Grant: NIH Heal Headache
Deadline: February 11, 2019
The NIH has just launched a major initiative to address the opioid crisis called the Helping to End Addiction Long-term SM (HEAL) Initiative. As part of this initiative Congress has made it a priority to invest in the development of more effective, non addictive treatments for pain conditions with high unmet need. Headache disorders are one of the greatest drivers of disability and should be a focus of the new research. The NIH has published 30+ funding opportunities to address the opioid crisis. The pain-related FOAs span the scope of discovery research, to biomarkers, to early-stage therapy development, to phase 3 clinical trials.
Of particular importance is the release of the FOAs for an ambitious Early Phase Pain Investigation Clinical Network (EPPIC-Net). This clinical trial network will engage with academic and industry partners to test novel non-addictive pain therapies in Phase 2 trials. The trials will be performed in well-phenotyped patients with defined pain conditions such as specific headache types. The clinical coordinating center and the clinical sites will receive “assets” (medical devices, small molecules, or biologics) that have been judged highly meritorious in objective review. The experts in the clinical coordinating center and clinical sites will then work with the asset owners to design the most appropriate clinical trial. The data coordinating center is especially important as it will play a central role in coordinating biosamples and data from across several HEAL clinical studies and networks – including clinical and preclinical data that may come from industry partners. The EPPIC-Net grants are due by February 6th.
Research to inform physicians and patients on best management of pain conditions will be accelerated in the Pain Management Effectiveness Research Network. There is currently a call out for grant applications that propose clinical trials to establish the comparative effectiveness of existing therapies or effectiveness of existing or novel approaches for prevention and management of different pain conditions while reducing risk of addiction. This offers a unique opportunity for effectiveness or comparative effectiveness research on best treatment of particular headache disorders.
There are about 9 RFAs that mention headache. Five are general pain RFAs that make more than just a passing reference to “headaches” (RFA-NS-19-021, RFA-EB-18-003, RFA-NS-18-046, RFA-NS-18-043, RFA-NS-18-042) and four more are general pain RFAs that make just a passing reference to “headaches” (RFA-NS-19-024, RFA-NS-19-023, RFA-NS-19-025, RFA-AT-19-004).
You can read more about these and other HEAL programs, and EPPIC-net here.