DoD Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s, Innovations in Care and Support Award | W81XWH 20 PRARP INCASA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 20 PRARP INCASA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Alzheimer s, Innovations in Care and Support Award (InCASA) is a Fiscal Year 2020 funding opportunity under the Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Alzheimer s Research Program (PRARP), managed by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). It is designed to fund research and development projects that directly improve quality of life and day-to-day care for people living with symptoms common to traumatic brain injury (TBI) and/or Alzheimer s disease and Alzheimer s disease related dementias (AD/ADRD). The core idea is practical, patient-centered innovation: proposals should focus on better care approaches, stronger support systems, and meaningful outcomes for individuals, families, and caregivers, rather than purely theoretical advances.

The program is explicitly looking for work that is creative and paradigm-challenging within the PRARP mission. That means applicants are expected to go beyond incremental improvements and instead propose new or unusually impactful ways to reduce symptoms or lessen burden. The opportunity highlights several example directions, including symptom reduction across cognitive, behavioral, functional, and mood domains; identifying or strengthening resiliency factors; helping individuals maintain or increase independence; and improving supports for families and care providers who shoulder much of the long-term care responsibility. Projects that connect clinical realities to implementable solutions (for example, scalable care models, new caregiver training approaches, technology-enabled supports, or novel service delivery methods) align well with the intent, as long as they are clearly tied to TBI and/or AD/ADRD related needs.

A key feature of this award is that it is innovation- and impact-based, meaning reviewers are expected to weigh how original the approach is and how strongly it can change outcomes in real settings. The anticipated benefits are not limited to one population; the DoD specifically expects funded work to translate across military, Veteran, and civilian communities, reflecting the shared burden of TBI and dementia-related conditions. Another important requirement is credibility and capability: applications should show that the research team has relevant experience in TBI and/or AD/ADRD research, matching the focus of the proposed project.

Because the award is framed as patient-centered care and support research, animal studies are not allowed. In practice, that steers applicants toward human-focused study designs such as clinical, behavioral, health services, implementation, or community-based research, as well as caregiver- and systems-level interventions that can be tested and adopted in real-world care environments.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary federal funding opportunity (CFDA 12.420) offered as grants and cooperative agreements. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning any entity type may apply (subject to any additional eligibility notes in the full announcement). The opportunity number is W81XWH 20 PRARP INCASA. The posting date was May 19, 2020, with an original closing date of July 21, 2020. The announcement anticipated around five awards, and the listed award ceiling is shown as 0, which typically indicates that the ceiling was not specified in the summary field and would need to be confirmed in the full funding announcement.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s, Innovations in Care and Support Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on May 19, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 21, 2020. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 20 PRARP INCASA

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