Health-professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) (R25 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA TW 17 001

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA TW 17 001

The Health-professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) funding opportunity is an NIH Fogarty International Center Research Education Program (R25) grant designed to strengthen research-related education and workforce capacity in settings with heavy HIV burden and limited resources. It focuses specifically on low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and aims to build a stronger pipeline of health professionals and researchers who can contribute to biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research priorities. The program is framed as research education rather than a traditional research project mechanism, and it is explicitly labeled "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," meaning supported activities should not include conducting clinical trials as part of the award.

At its core, HEPI is meant to complement and enhance the training of a workforce that can meet national and regional health research needs by improving the skills of health professionals and strengthening institutional capacity. A major emphasis is placed on expanding health workforce capacity in high HIV-burden environments, while also improving how teams deliver care and how evidence is generated and used. The opportunity also highlights diversity in the research workforce, encouraging interprofessional education approaches that bring different health disciplines together to improve team-based healthcare delivery and problem-solving. Another stated goal is to recruit and develop individuals with particular specialties or disciplinary backgrounds into research careers in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical sciences in low-income countries, which also supports the long-term capacity of U.S.-linked global health research efforts.

The FOA supports "creative educational activities" that primarily center on structured training and educational programming rather than hypothesis-driven research. The main activity types called out include skills development courses, research training, mentoring activities, and curriculum or methods development. In practical terms, competitive proposals would likely include well-designed coursework or short courses to build research competencies, formal mentoring structures to guide trainees and early-career professionals, and the development or modernization of curricula and teaching approaches that can be sustained locally. The announcement also stresses outreach to broad communities to widen participation in these training and mentoring opportunities, suggesting that applicants should plan for recruitment strategies that reach beyond a narrow group of trainees and help expand access to research education.

Eligibility is fairly broad across higher education institutions, including public/state-controlled and private institutions of higher education, with additional "other" applicants permitted as described in the full FOA. Importantly, foreign (non-U.S.) organizations and foreign institutions are eligible to apply directly, which aligns with the program's goal of strengthening capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. However, non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply as the applicant entity. At the same time, foreign components (as NIH defines them in its Grants Policy Statement) are allowed, meaning a U.S. applicant can include foreign components in the project structure when appropriate, but those components do not serve as the applicant organization.

Administratively, this is a discretionary grant opportunity (Funding Instrument: Grant) administered by the National Institutes of Health under CFDA 93.989. The funding opportunity number is RFA-TW-17-001, and the original closing date listed is March 28, 2018. The award ceiling is listed as $600,000, indicating an upper bound on the budget level NIH anticipated for an individual award under this announcement (with the exact budget structure and allowable costs governed by the FOA and NIH policy). Overall, HEPI is positioned as a capacity-building and education-forward mechanism: it is meant to strengthen training ecosystems, mentoring and curricula, and research understanding so that institutions and professionals in high-need settings are better equipped to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based health services and contribute meaningfully to biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research agendas without running clinical trials under this particular award.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Health-professional Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) (R25 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): 93.989.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2017-12-18.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2018-03-28. (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 $600,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, Others.

Apply for RFA TW 17 001

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