Maternal-Child Surveillance and Partnerships for Action, Results, and Knowledge

CDC proposes to allocate funds to implement Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) DD-27-0028, Maternal Child Surveillance and Partnerships for Action, Results, and Knowledge. This NOFO will integrate maternal child health surveillance with national partnership activities to address key public health challenges including alcohol use during pregnancy, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), and cytomegalovirus (CMV). The NOFO will support entities with appropriate data authority and infrastructure to initiate, sustain, enhance, and/or expand clinical surveillance systems capturing data on pregnant women, infants, and/or children. Funding will prioritize improving data quality and enabling timely reporting and dissemination of evolving outcome data. Funded entities participating in clinical surveillance will monitor prenatal exposures such as alcohol use and polysubstance use during pregnancy as well as conditions with significant public health impact such as FASDs, NAS, congenital CMV, and other outcomes. CDC will also fund entities with informatics expertise to provide technical assistance to funded entities conducting clinical surveillance, improve data quality, and support dissemination of data through visualizations. Furthermore, this clinical surveillance network could be leveraged to address emerging, reemerging, and persistent public health threats to pregnant women and infants. In addition, this NOFO will invest in national partnership activities to prevent FASDs and improve early identification as well as support and care of affected infants and children. Activities may include serving as a national FASD resource; advancing evidence-based messaging; building clinical capacity through a holistic, lifespan approach; addressing regional, state, local, and/or tribal jurisdiction gaps; advancing coordination and translation of activities; and evaluating program strategies. Together, these activities establish a combined framework that emphasizes data to action approaches that translate high quality surveillance data into prevention strategies, pathways to referral and support, and improved outcomes.

The NOFO has three components: Component A, Component B, and Component C. Eligible applicants may apply for only one component. If an applicant submits multiple applications, all applications submitted by that applicant will be deemed non-responsive, and will not receive further review. In the "Descriptive Title of Applicant's Project" on the SF-424 form, applicants must identify the component and, as applicable, the strategies for which they are applying. Applicants that do not identify the applicable components and strategies on the SF-424 form will be deemed non-responsive and will not receive further review. Eligible applicants for Component A must have the public health authority, legislative mandate or otherwise show legal access to the requisite data to conduct clinic-based surveillance. This authority or access must allow unique and specific access to datasets from multiple data sources that are required to implement the activities outlined in this NOFO. Eligible applicants must upload this documentation as a PDF to www.grants.gov under "Other Attachment Forms" using the attachment name "Legal Authority".CDC will consider any application that does not include this required documentation as non-responsive, and it will receive no further review. Eligible applicants for Component B must demonstrate their ability and capacity to identify and reach one or more target populations, which include people with FASDs, their families, and/or their communities, as well as clinical and public health professionals, who serve patients or clients who could be impacted by FASDs, across the United States. Applicants must also demonstrate their ability to develop new communication materials and continually identify and update resources that could be applied to one or more target populations, as well as quantify metrics of impact. Applicant's history of outreach to these populations should include, but may not be limited to, evidence-based educational information, resources, and support.Eligible applicants for Component C must be able to demonstrate ability to provide informatics and technical support to Component A applicants supporting standardized data collection, quality assurance, and timely data submission.

In general, applications are reviewed on the basis of scientific/technical merit, with attention given to such matters as: (1) The degree to which the applicant satisfies the essential requirements and possesses other desired characteristics, such as depth, breadth, and merit of the overall application relative to the types of projects proposed; (2) clarity of purpose and overall qualifications, adequacy and appropriateness of personnel to accomplish proposed prevention research projects and demonstration projects, and the nation's health priorities and needs; (3) ability to generalize, translate and disseminate to State or local health departments, and other appropriate national regional, and local public health agencies and organizations; (4) reasonableness of the proposed budget in relation to the work proposed.

Match: none required (federal program listing). This program has MOE requirements, see funding agency for further details.