SONSIERE: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to
the Office of Minority Health Technical Assistance Webinar for
the Empowering Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative
Competitive Cooperative Agreement
Funding Opportunity Announcement.
I am Sonsiere Cobb-Souza, the director
of the Division of Program Operations
in the Office of Minority Health
at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Our webinar this afternoon is organized in three segments.
The first two presentations from the Office of Minority Health
and the Office of Grants Management
will provide you an overview of the essential components
of the Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative
for the ECI funding opportunity announcement.
The last segment of the webinar
is the question-and-answer panel
that is comprised of the subject matter experts
from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
from the Office of the Assistant Secretary
for Planning and Evaluation,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the Health Resources and Services Administration
and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency.
However, before we start, I must inform you
that we will answer questions at the end of today's session.
We encourage you to submit questions
via the questions section of the toolbar
on the right of your screen.
Please submit your questions throughout the webinar,
and your questions will be placed in queue
to be answered after the last presentation.
If, for some reason, we are unable to answer all questions
before the end of today's session,
please send us your email address,
and we will forward a written response.
Our first presenter this afternoon is Ms. Violet Woo,
the team lead for the Division of Program Operations.
She will provide an overview of the program section
of the funding opportunity announcement.
Ms. Woo.
VIOLET: Thank you very much, Sonsiere,
and thank you to those in the field who have joined us today
for the Technical Assistance Webinar
on Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative.
As Ms. Cobb-Souza mentioned,
Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative
may be abbreviated to ECI during this presentation.
The first slide, please.
This Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative
is sponsored by the Office of Minority Health.
The mission of the Office of Minority Health, or OMH,
is to improve the health of racial and ethnic
minority populations through the development
of health policies and programs
to eliminate health disparities.
The purpose of this ECI program is to support Secretary Price
of the Department of Health and Human Services's
three priorities, which include combating opioid abuse,
childhood and adolescent obesity and serious mental illness.
This program seeks to support and demonstrate
the effectiveness of collaborations
to support minority and/or disadvantaged communities
disproportionately affected by these three health issues
through the implementation of evidence-based strategies
with the greatest potential for impact.
The ECI program is a cooperative agreement,
and this is a form of agreement that allows
substantial involvement by the Office of Minority Health staff.
Page nine of the funding opportunity
describes a cooperative agreement.
This involvement includes providing prior approval
for change of time that the key personnel
are dedicated to the ECI project,
as well as if a key personnel is replaced
during the implementation phase.
It also involves assisting the awardee
to establish, review and update priorities
that are in the planning that is submitted in your application.
The OMH staff will assist the awardee
to develop its CAB, or the community advisory board, and
the CAB's role in evaluating the progress of the ECI program.
The cooperative agreement serves as a resource
to provide programmatic support
and contribute with the subject matter expertise of the CAB,
as well as the expertise of the OMH staff.
The cooperative agreement will identify other organizations
and collaborate on the development of
measures, methods and materials that are used in the
development and implementation of this ECI program.
We will also assist with monitoring the progress of the
project and participate in the dissemination and preparation
of publications and public presentations.
So each proposed project must address only one
of the three priority areas, and to reiterate,
the three priority areas are opioid abuse,
childhood and adolescent obesity
and serious mental illness, or SMI.
Let's look at the first priority, opioid abuse.
To be an eligible applicant, this organization
must target disadvantaged communities most affected
by the opioid crisis [inaudible] counties
with more than 19.9% of persons living in poverty
as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau
or counties with violent crime rates in excess
of 400 per 100,000 population.
And the third element is required:
This eligible applicant is at least one or two and
must be a county or state for which the county or state data
indicates high non-fatal or fatal opioid overdose rates.
So if you were deemed eligible for the opioid abuse priority,
you need to develop a community-level strategy.
Each project must implement Strategy A and/or Strategy B
as a [inaudible] community-level strategy.
Strategy A is to prevent opioid abuse
and increase access to treatment and recovery services
and overdose reversal capacity in rural and/or urban areas by
using strategies that employ evidence-based interventions,
including each of the following three.
The first one is training and education
of providers, pharmacists and the public
about opioid overdose prevention and reversal,
naloxone administration
and the availability of naloxone via standing orders at
community pharmacies and other community-based organizations.
It also requires training of primary care providers
and screening and diagnosis of opioid misuse and
motivational interviewing of other evidence-based techniques
to engage individuals in treatment,
including medication-assisted treatment
in the event of opioid overdose,
and a third requirement is, strategies should include
the following partners:
local public health substance abuse providers,
medical community-based prevention
and risk reduction organizations,
law enforcement in states with Good Samaritan laws,
and it also may include faith-based organizations.
The other strategy to consider, if not include, is Strategy B.
This is to identify and implement the most effective
strategies to reach, engage and retain people who inject drugs
in substance abuse treatment, including but not limited to
medication-assisted treatment, psychosocial therapies,
and counseling for opioid abuse,
and may include a focus on reducing the transmission
of viral hepatitis and HIV
and providing overdose prevention education
and naloxone distribution in the community.
These strategies must include the training
of family and friends of people who inject drugs
to increase the likelihood of effective use
of life-saving treatment for persons who have overdosed.
The second priority to consider
is childhood and adolescent obesity.
If this priority is selected, the eligible applicant
organization must target communities
with high levels of childhood and adolescent obesity
or children and adolescents at risk for obesity.
This population includes those who have
20% or more of children ages two to nine years
that have a body mass index at or above the 85th percentile
of children and teens of the same age and sex.
If your organization chooses obesity,
and you meet the eligible application,
you must select Strategy A and/or Strategy B.
Strategy B involves implementation of behavioral
interventions to reduce recreational sedentary time
and improve nutritional, physical activity
and weight-related outcomes among children and adolescents,
and/or Strategy B, which is to identify and implement
the combination of intervention components
that are most effective for minority
and/or disadvantaged children
and determine which components are critical to success.
The third priority we have for the ECI
is serious mental illness, or SMI.
If your organization selects this priority, to be eligible,
the applicant organization must target communities
within a state, territory and/or tribe that is
a health professional shortage area, or HPSA for short,
that has a shortage of mental health providers.
HPSAs with a shortage of mental health providers are designated
by the Health Resources and Services Administration
with a HPSA score of 16 or higher.
A copy of the HPSA-generated document
which displays your eligibility for the SMI priority
must be included in the appendices.
How do you determine if your organization
has a HPSA score of 16 or higher?
If you go to this website that's listed on top,
the Health Resources and Services Administration
Data Warehouse -- the URL is listed there,
DataWarehouse.HRSA.gov/Tools/Ana lyzers/HPSAfind.aspx,
and this will pop up on your screen.
It'll say "HPSA Find," and then mid-screen
it says "HPSA Search."
Let me show you a larger picture of this.
The first step you do on this HPSA Find
is to find out if you choose a state or territory.
So that first one -- let's say you're doing
the state of Maryland, and you hit the scroller,
and you hit Maryland, and that'll pop up there.
After you do that, you want to see what county.
You have to have a county that seems to be short
on behavioral health providers.
Then you select the county or counties.
If you select All, it'll list all the counties
in the state of Maryland.
The third one is, you need to choose the discipline,
and because we're looking at behavioral health.
(Inaudible) that last one should be clicked,
and it says, "Mental Health Provider,"
and I can't read it from here.
It's the last one that is selected.
After those three steps are taken, you hit Search.
What will be generated is a list of the counties,
and on the far right of the screen will be the HPSA score,
and those counties with a score of 16 or higher are
short of the behavioral health or mental health providers.
That would deem you an eligible applicant
for the serious mental illness category.
If you choose the SMI, you need to select your strategy.
Each project must seek to improve the rates
of routine screening for mental disorders
in primary care settings
and link or provide persons diagnosed with SMR
with mental health treatment
through collaborative care networks, including
through the use of telemedicine and telehealth services,
as well as improve the health outcomes by Strategy A,
increase providers' use of evidence-based protocols
for the proactive management of diagnosed mental disorders,
and/or Strategy B, improve the clinical
and community support for active patient engagement
in treatment goals, settings and self-management.
Page 15 of the FOA reviews the program impact of each program.
To demonstrate significant program impact,
all proposed projects should employ
either an experimental or quasi-experimental
evaluation design
with sufficiently large intervention control groups
that detect sufficiently significant differences
when comparing the population receiving the intervention
compared with the control group over time at 0.05 alpha,
and this is explained on page 15 of the FOA.
Pages 18-22 of the FOA review the program requirements.
This includes the partnerships,
the community advisory board,
social determinants of health and national CLAS standards,
the external evaluation, innovation, dissemination,
experience, HIPAA or confidentiality of data.
This is reviewed, as mentioned, on pages 18-22 of your FOA.
In addition to those eight items,
you have eight other elements which are required,
and these should be submitted in the appendices.
This includes the work plan, letters of commitment, the
logic models, a letter from the institutional review board, the
confidentiality plan, the resume for key project personnel,
organizational chart, a brief accreditation license
and experience of provider organization summary
and the HPSA-generated document for those
who choose serious mental illness
that displays a HPSA score of 16 or higher.
These appendices where these eight items are listed
are reviewed in detail on pages 46-49 of your FOA
and is also described on page 22.
This ECI program currently has approximately $5 million
to award for this first round of awards.
We anticipate that 14-16 submitted applications
will be awarded.
The range of awards is between $300,000 to $350,000
per budget period.
The anticipated start date of the ECI
is September 30th, 2017, for three years.
The budget period length is 12 months,
so it'll be September 30th, 2017, to August 31st, 2018,
and as mentioned, this ECI
is a competitive cooperative agreement.
Who is eligible? Pages 23-24 of the FOA
list these following applicants who are eligible to apply
as the applicant organization.
They range from state governments,
independent school districts,
nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status
or a nonprofit without the 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,
small businesses and Native American tribal organizations.
So please read pages 23-24
to see the list of eligible applicants.
Included in the FOA is also
application responsiveness criteria, on pages 24-26.
Some of the elements that
the application responsiveness criteria includes
is that the submitted proposal addresses only one
of the three focus areas.
And again, the three areas is opioid abuse,
childhood and adolescent obesity
and serious mental illness.
There's only one application per organization per focus area.
So if I was Organization X, my application
should focus on only one focus area, not two, not three,
and not touch on other than one focus area.
The application must demonstrate collaborative partnerships
with two or more partners, and this includes
the applicant organization.
A signed letter of commitment between applicant organizations
and each partner organization is required.
And the applicant must submit a confidentiality plan
for participants that covers
the entire three-year project period.
This plan must include the signature of all the partners
and must be signed by an authorized representative
of each project partner.
If your organization selects serious mental illness,
a copy of the HPSA-generated document
displaying a HPSA score of 16 or higher
must be included in that package.
Number eight, the application cannot exceed three files.
These three separate files include,
one, the project narrative,
two, the budget narrative,
and three, the combination of all the required appendices
in the third file.
Let's go over the project narrative,
which is included in each submitted proposal.
There are eight different components
of the project narrative.
The project narrative is explained in detail
on pages 29-37 of your FOA.
These eight separate elements are listed on page 30.
Please note that the proposed intervention plan
and the project management are subtopics of the program plan.
You can see that on this screen, item six, the program plan.
The two subtitles include the proposed intervention plan
and, 6B, the project management information.
What is the executive summary?
This is summarized on pages 29-37.
The executive summary should clearly indicate
the focus area chosen, meaning opioid abuse,
childhood and adolescent obesity or serious mental illness,
and include a brief description of the proposed project,
including the target population,
goals, objectives, outcomes and evaluation plan.
The second element is the problem statement.
This includes a definition of the problem
and contributing factors.
Describe and document, with data,
the significance or prevalence of the problem or issues.
Indicate how your applicant organization qualifies.
And these were reviewed earlier regarding the poverty
and violent crime for the opioid abuse,
the prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity
for childhood and adolescent obesity
or the HPSA score of 16 or greater for SMI.
Further detail is listed on pages 29-37
of the problem statement.
The third element is the organizational capability.
This should describe how the applicant agency
is organized, the nature and scope of its work
and the capabilities it possesses.
This description should cover the capabilities of the
applicant agency not included in the program narrative,
such as the relevant experience
and/or the record of the project team
in preparing useful reports, publications and other products.
The application should document significant experience
working in the selected priority area,
meaning, again, the opioid abuse, obesity or SMI,
and describe the relationship of the project
to the current organization.
Please include any information on any contractual
or support staff that will have secondary roles
in implementing the project and achieving the project goals.
For the organizational capabilities,
include the organizational chart.
And the organizational chart is part of the appendices.
The fourth item includes goals and objectives.
These should include the annual short-term
and the long-term objectives,
identify the impact outcomes and performance measures
for the proposed activities for the selected focus area,
tie the outcomes and impacts and the measures
to the long-term goals and objectives --
all objectives related to the chosen focus area
must be stated in specific, measurable, accurate,
realistic and timely -- or SMART -- terms.
The SMART objectives must include the baseline data
and quantifiable time frames for achievement.
The objectives must focus on the overall goals of the project
rather than the project activities.
The goals must be ambitious and achievable
in the three-year time frame of this program.
The fifth item, outcomes -- these must be
clearly identified, the measurable outcomes
that will result from your project.
The Office of Minority Health will not fund any project
that does not include measurable outcomes.
In addition to discussion in the narrative,
the applicants must describe how the project
will benefit the community at large.
Now, the outcomes we had broken down,
the process and outcome measures for the three priority areas.
These are the recommended process measures for Strategy A
in the opioid abuse:
the number of persons receiving opioid overdose education
and naloxone administration training, the
number of primary care providers trained in screening and
the number of community-based pharmacies or other
community-based organizations with standing orders.
This is all explained in detail on pages 15-18
and pages 29-37 of your FOA.
Some of the measurable outcome measures for Strategy A
is a significant increase in the proportion of persons
screened for opioid misuse and use disorder
or a significance increase in the proportion of persons with
opioid use disorder entering evidence-based treatment.
If you select Strategy B for opioid abuse,
some of the recommendation process measures include
number of persons with opioid use disorder who inject drugs
and are enrolled in treatment,
or the number of persons who have a friend or family member
with active opioid use disorder who inject drugs
that are trained in administrating naloxone.
Some of the recommended outcome measures for Strategy B
include significant decrease in the rates
of new HIV and viral hepatitis infections
and significant decrease in the number of opioid overdoses.
And these are recommended processing outcome measures
for Strategy A and B for opioid abuse.
Looking at priority area
Childhood and Adolescent Obesity,
some of the recommended process measures include
number of families with children ages 2-19
who are enrolled in obesity prevention programs
aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable consumption,
or it can include the number of families
with children ages 2-19 enrolled in obesity prevention programs
aimed at increasing the number of minutes in physical activity.
Some of the recommended outcome measures
for the children and adolescent obesity include significant
increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables,
a decrease in the consumption of simple carbohydrates
or a significant decrease in the body mass indexes
among obese and overweight children ages 2-19.
Looking at serious mental illness,
each project must seek to do two or more of the following
recommended process measures:
These include the number of primary care providers trained
to screen and diagnose SMI, or serious mental illness,
in communities with HPSA scores of 16 and higher,
the number of primary care providers trained in use
of evidence-based protocols for the proactive management
of diagnosed mental disorders in communities
with HPSA scores of 16 and higher
and/or the number of persons diagnosed with SMI
participating in self-management programs
in communities with HPSA scores of 16 and higher.
And as mentioned, each project that selects SMI
must seek to do two or more
of those mentioned [inaudible] measures.
The recommended outcome measures for the serious mental illness
include increase in the number of persons screened for SMI
in communities with high HPSA scores
and/or a significant reduction of symptoms
among persons diagnosed with serious mental illness.
The program plan is included in detail
on pages 29-37 of the FOA.
The proposed intervention plan for all three focus areas
includes: Must specify evidence-based strategies
and practices to be used in the proposed activities
in relation to the problems or factors that are addressed;
clearly describes how the project will carry out goals
of collaborating organizations and subcontractors;
describes the strategies, processes and/or interventions
planned to achieve each objective, including
how, when, where, by whom and for whom per objective;
describes the unique goal and responsibilities
of each partner in the collaborative partnership;
describes any products to be developed by the project.
The work plans must be provided in the program plan
and included in the appendices.
In addition to the before-mentioned items,
each program plan must include the plan
for the selected priority area.
So if you select Strategy A for the opioid abuse,
listed there are the two proposed intervention plans
for Strategy A of the opioid abuse.
It's evidence-based interventions
that include training.
And item two is strategies that --
each strategy should include the following partners:
local public health, substance abuse providers,
medical community, community-based prevention,
the Good Samaritan laws, and then
may include faith-based activities.
And this is listed on pages 33-34 of your FOA.
If you select Strategy B, in addition to the program plan,
the proposed intervention for Strategy B is listed on page 34.
This is identify and implement the most effective strategies
to reach, engage and retain people who inject drugs
in substance abuse treatments, including
medication-assisted treatments,
psychosocial therapies and counseling for opioid disorders,
plans that focus on reducing the transmission
of viral hepatitis and HIV,
engaging opioid use disorder treatment
and providing overdose prevention education
and naloxone distribution in the community.
The other plan includes strategies that include
training of family and friends of people who inject drugs
to increase the likelihood of effective use
of life-saving treatment.
This proposed intervention plan for Strategy B
is detailed on page 34 of your FOA.
The proposed intervention plan for those that select
childhood and adolescent obesity is detailed on page 34.
This includes behavioral interventions
to reduce recreational sedentary time
and identifies and implements combinations
of intervention components that are most effective
for minority and disadvantaged children.
Pages 34-35 have the proposed intervention plans
for serious mental illness.
And again, to reiterate, this improves the rates
of routine screenings in primary care settings
for mental disorders by primary care providers, and
it works through collaborative networks, including
the use of telemedicine and telehealth services
and improves health outcomes by increasing
provider use of evidence-based protocols
for the proactive management of diagnosed mental disorders
and/or improves the clinical and community support
for active patient engagement
in treatment, goal-setting and self-management.
This is on pages 34-35.
The second subtopic of Program Plan is Project Management,
and this is detailed on pages 35-36 of your FOA.
This provides the description and duties
of the proposed program staff,
proposed consultants and volunteers,
includes the resume of key project personnel
that is included in the appendices,
discusses how the organizations will interface
with the applicant organization and each other,
describes how the partner organization will interface
with the applicant organization.
The application also must describe
the community advisory board for the project, as stated
in the project requirements section above in the FOA.
The project plan should also describe the approach
that will be used to monitor and track progress
on the project's path and objectives.
The Office of Minority Health expects that,
throughout the grant period, project directors
will have involvement in and substantial knowledge about
all aspects of the project.
And as mentioned before, you must involve
the involvement of the community advisory board
throughout the planning and implementation phase
of this program.
Under project management, for applicants that select
the opioid abuse or the serious mental illness,
you need to describe
the accreditation, licensure and experience
of the partner organizations,
the selected provider organizations' experience
at providing at least two years of relevant services
to the populations of focus,
describe the capacity to provide the expected services
and describe whether the organizations
are accredited, licensed and credentialed
in the targeted jurisdictions
for the targeted populations to be served.
In addition to the brief description of project
management, this should also be included in the appendices.
Element seven of the program narrative
is the evaluation plan, and this is described
on page 36 of your FOA.
This must fully and clearly articulate a design
that will evaluate all project components
described in the project's logic model and narrative.
This description of the evaluation plan
should specify the process and outcome measures to be used,
and not expressed as an attempt to develop such tools.
The application is expected to ensure
that the evaluation plan is implemented
at the beginning of the project period
in order to capture and document actions
contributing to relevant project impact and outcomes.
Lastly, describe how much of your total contract award
is being allocated to evaluation or the in-kind services that
will be used to evaluate the project from start to finish.
The Office of Minority Health intends that
the findings of this project will be disseminated.
In the application, please describe the method
that will be used to disseminate the project results
and during the period of performance, such as
conferences and submissions to peer-reviewed journals.
You can propose other innovative approaches to inform parties
who might be interested in using the results of your project
to inform practice, service delivery, program development,
and/or policymaking, especially to those parties
who may be interested in replicating the project.
Please note that all appropriate findings and products
may be posted on the HHS Office of Minority Health website
as determined by the Office of Minority Health.
As mentioned, the application contents should include
the appendices, and remember,
the compilation of these appendices
comprise the third file of your submission.
This includes the work plan, letters of commitment
of the participating organization and agencies,
the logic model,
the institutional review board approval agreement,
the confidentiality plan,
the CV or resume for key project personnel,
the organizational chart,
the experience and evidence of licensure
and accreditation of provider organizations
and the HPSA-generated document
showing HPSA score of 16 or higher
if you selected serious mental illness focus area.
After the submission date, which is August 1st, 2017,
5:00 PM Eastern Time,
these will be reviewed by the objective review committee, and
these are the seven factors that will be reviewed and scored.
Factor one covers the executive summary and problem statement,
which is 10 points.
Factor two is the organizational capability, 10 points.
Factor three, the goals and objectives
and outcomes, 10 points.
Factor four, the program plan,
which includes proposed interventions plan
and the project management, as well as
the special populations and organizations,
and this is the sum of 25 points.
Factor five is 10 points for the experience
of the provider organization.
Thirty points to the evaluation and dissemination plan.
And last but not least is factor seven, the budget,
which is five points.
And as mentioned, the application period is open.
The due date for each submitted application,
which will only be three files, is 5:00 PM Eastern Time
on August 1st, 2017.
Thank you for listening to the review of
the Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative.
SONSIERE: Thank you, Violet.
Our next presenter is Ms. Alice Bettencourt,
who is the director of the Office of Grants Management.
Ms. Bettencourt will present
the grants and competitive application requirements.
ALICE: Thank you, Sonsiere. Good afternoon, everyone.
Violet said it twice, and I'm going to say it a third time.
Your application is due on August 1st, 2017,
by 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
That's not 5:01. It's not 5:02. It's not 5:15.
It is due by 5:00 PM.
And Grants.gov will date and time-stamp your application,
and that is what we go by.
There are no other -- your computer clock won't matter.
The clock on your wall won't matter.
It will be the time stamp that Grant Solutions
puts on your application.
So please, be mindful of that, and start well in advance
to ensure you have an application submitted.
And in that regard, we strongly encourage you to submit
an application three to five days prior to August 1st.
That doesn't mean that has to be your last submission,
but it means you will have a submission in the competition.
If you then go over your application and find things
you want to update, revise, change, correct, you can
put in another application, and as we'll note later
when we go through disqualification criteria,
we'll only take that last one.
But that way you will make sure that you have an application
in the competition.
Grants.gov may take up to 48 hours to notify you
of a successful submission.
On August 1st, Grants.gov is going to be very busy,
so processing times may take that long.
If you fail to submit your application
by that due date and time, we will not review it.
It goes no further once we see
that time stamp on the application.
Next slide.
You can find the complete application at Grants.gov,
so that's exactly what it is. www.Grants.gov.
And the easiest way to find it is to search
by the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number,
which for this announcement is 93.137.
Next slide.
We require that all applications be submitted
electronically via Grants.gov
unless an exemption has been granted.
If you submit an application any other way,
it will not be accepted for review.
An application won't be considered valid
until all application components are entered into Grants.gov
and received by us.
And again, by that due date.
You can contact Grants.gov with any questions or concerns
regarding the application process.
If you get error messages, if your files aren't uploading,
you need to call Grants.gov at that number
in the slides and in the funding opportunity announcement.
The Office of Minority Health can't help you.
My office, the Office of Grants Management, cannot help you.
You need to call Grants.gov.
Next slide.
So in the funding opportunity announcement
and on this slide is a link to the Grants.gov
step-by-step instructions.
Please be sure you review those in advance
and follow them as you submit your application.
These instructions are kept up to date
and provide links to frequently asked questions
and other troubleshooting information.
There's a reason we don't put that
in the funding opportunity announcement,
because pretty much once we publish that,
it's a static document.
Grants.gov keeps these instructions and FAQs
up to date, so if they find new system issues or glitches,
the most current information is available to you
as you submit your application.
As Violet mentioned, and I will remind you here,
your applications must be submitted as three files.
File one is your entire project narrative,
and you will see a location in Grants.gov to upload that.
File two is your entire budget narrative,
including your supporting documentation
described in the budget narrative content section.
There will be a place to upload that in Grants.gov.
File three are all of the documents of your appendices,
and those you will upload in the attachments section
of Grants.gov.
It will not say appendices. It will say attachments.
The exceptions are that your required standard forms
that are listed in the disqualification criteria,
your forms go up separately as you submit them in Grants.gov,
so your files, again, are your project narrative,
your budget narrative and then all of your appendices.
Next slide.
The other important piece of information
is that you as an organization must be registered
in the System for Award Management,
and that registration must be active.
Grants.gov will reject submissions from applicants
with nonexistent or expired SAM registrations.
If you haven't done so already and you plan to apply for this,
as soon as you are done with this webinar,
I strongly encourage you to log in to SAM
or have whomever in your organization is responsible
for those administrative requirements to log in to SAM
and check your organization's registration and make sure
that it does not expire before August 1st of 2017.
The minimum time frame to complete
an initial SAM registration is estimated at 30 minutes.
The time frame for it to become active
may be as long as 10 days, and that's usual.
There may be other instances,
if there are issues with your organization with the IRS
or with DOD -- these registrations go through
many layers of approval before they become active.
So you could have as much or more than 10 days
for that registration to become active.
And SAM registrations must be renewed each year,
so even if you've been applying for programs in Grants.gov
earlier this year and you made it through
because your registration was active,
but you're not sure if it goes through August 1st,
you need to check and make sure that it will still be active
by August 1st.
And then the average time frame for updates to take effect
in Grants.gov is 72 hours.
So we can't make behind-the-scenes changes
if those systems haven't updated to get you active
so that your application gets through.
Next slide.
There are specific file type requirements.
While Grants.gov does not restrict
your file types, OASH does.
So any of your files must be in Microsoft Word, Excel
or PowerPoint, Adobe PDF or image formats listed in the FOA.
And please make sure that your Adobe version
is compatible with Grants.gov.
They have all the information on the Grants.gov website.
That is one of our most common problems with folks
at the last minute when they're trying
to get their submissions in, is that
they have not tested their Adobe with Grants.gov,
and they are using an incorrect version.
We also strongly recommend that you upload your files
as an Adobe PDF.
If you convert to PDF prior to submission,
you may prevent any unintentional formatting
that might occur with submission of an editable document.
And then, for the next issue
for the System of Award Management --
not only must you be active at the application deadline.
If you are successful and receive an award,
you must maintain an active SAM registration
with current info at all times during the active award.
So please note, we are planning to make these awards
by mid-September.
So when you check that registration,
we're very hopeful that you're going to be successful.
Please make sure that that registration is active
beyond September or that you make it a priority
to get that registration updated once you get
your application submitted.
If you have not complied with these requirements,
we may determine that you're not qualified to receive an award,
and we may use that determination as a basis
for making an award to another applicant.
And it has happened in the past
where we have to go down the ranking
and select the next application because someone
does not have an active SAM registration.
If you are successful and receive an award,
all of your first-year sub-award recipients
must have a DUNS number at the time you make a sub-award.
Now we will review funding restrictions.
So all of your costs must be allowable,
allocable and reasonable
and a necessity of your direct expenses on this grant.
You may also charge indirect charges to a grant
if you are successful, in accordance with HHS regulations
and current policy effective at the time of the award.
So your current requirements can be found online
at 45 CFR Part 75, which are
the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles
and Audit Requirements for HHS Grants.
The indirect costs that may be included are discussed
at 45 CFR Part 75 in Section 414.
You have two methods that you can use
for your indirect cost rate, and one is
a negotiated indirect rate with the department
or your cognizant [ph.] agency
if you have a different agency from which you receive
significant federal funds.
You may also use a de minimis rate of 10%.
But you must select which approach you are using
and let us know that in your budget narrative.
The other funding restriction that comes into play
on an annual basis is a salary limitation.
This year's limitation is $187,000.
That is the rate at which an individual
is charged to a grant, not the amount.
There are tables in the funding opportunity announcement
that explain that to you,
so please make sure that when you are developing
your budget under this announcement
that you look at how those calculations are done.
If you overcharge someone in your budget narrative,
those funds will be deducted from the amount requested
should you be successful.
We will not give them to you for other purposes.
Now we're going to review the application
disqualification criteria.
For all of these, if you do not meet these requirements,
your application will receive no further consideration.
So as we've mentioned several times, you must submit
electronically via Grants.gov
by 5:00 PM Eastern Time on August 1st,
unless an exemption has been granted
two business days prior to the deadline.
Only an applicant's last successfully submitted
application that's received will be reviewed.
So as I mentioned, if you update your application
because you find mistakes, we will only review
the last application.
Your project narrative must be double-spaced
on the equivalent of 8.5 by 11-inch page size
with one-inch margins on all sides
and a font size not less than 12 points.
Your project narrative must not exceed 70 pages.
Your total application, including project narrative
plus appendices, must not exceed 100 pages.
That means that if you use all 70 pages
for your project narrative, you have 30 for your appendices.
You only use 65 pages for your narrative,
you have 35 for your appendices.
Additionally, your proposed budget does not exceed
the maximum indicated in the range of awards.
And finally, your application meets
the application responsiveness criteria
that Violet reviewed earlier.
And for your convenience, we've [gap in audio].
So I won't go through all of these again,
but please make sure that you review them carefully
so that you know all of these criteria
for which we're going to judge your application
if we make it eligible for the application
or if we disqualify it.
If your application lacks supporting documentation
that's not included in these disqualification criteria,
the responsiveness criteria,
we will include it in the competition.
It will not be disqualified.
But it may not do very well when the committee scores it
or the federal staff review your application.
So please make sure that you've gone through
the entire funding opportunity announcement,
that you have included all of the required elements,
the required documentation,
and especially go through those responsiveness criteria
and disqualification criteria
before you hit that submit button.
That's the best way to make sure
that you have an application in the competition.
Next slide.
Now we get to what
the application competition will be like.
All of the eligible applications --
so those that do not get disqualified --
will be reviewed and scored by a panel of independent reviewers
with technical expertise in the applicable fields,
according to the criteria listed in the program announcement.
So those scoring criteria that Violet reviewed with the points,
that is what the objective review committee
will be using to review your application.
The objective review committee process
is formal and confidential.
The Office of Grants Management and Office of Minority Health
staff is available for the panel for questions
and to ensure the process is consistent and fair,
but we do not participate in the discussion and scoring.
After that objective review process,
then the applications are also reviewed
by the Office of Grants Management staff
for administrative and business compliance
and by the Office of Minority Health staff
for programmatic compliance.
In addition to the reviews, the following additional
considerations will be used to make decisions.
And for this announcement, that will be
geographic distribution, as well as distribution
among the three ECI focus areas.
That means that perhaps if the 10 best applications
are all in the serious mental illness area,
some of those may be skipped over
to get to the obesity priority area.
The director, Office of Minority Health,
will make the funding decisions.
But please note, we are not obligated to make
any federal award as a result of this announcement.
Only the grants officer can bind the federal government
to the expenditure of funds,
so unless you get a notice of award
that tells you you've been successful,
you do not have a grant, so you need to wait
and find out if you get one of those notices of award.
If you receive communications to negotiate an award
or request additional or clarifying information,
this does not mean you will receive an award.
It only means that your application is still
under consideration.
We may find in the review that an application
is pretty good, but lacking in some areas,
and we may have to call multiple applicants
to get additional or clarifying information
in order to make award decisions.
All award decisions, including level of funding
if an award is made, are final, and you may not appeal.
A relatively new step in the process
of reviewing grant applications
is the review of risk posed by an applicant.
Even if the Office of Minority Health
selects you for funding, under the new regulations,
that is now a recommendation for funding,
and your application will then go to a review of the risks.
So before issuing any award,
we will be reviewing all applications
and applicant organizations for a risk-based approach,
and we may consider many items in regard to
your organization when doing this --
an applicant organization's financial stability,
the quality of management systems
and ability to meet the management standards prescribed
in 45 CFR Part 75,
your history of performance.
So this includes your timeliness of compliance
with applicable reporting requirements,
conformance to terms and conditions
of previous federal awards
and other aspects of your performance.
This also includes any reports and findings
from audits that are performed,
either under the Single Audit Act
or perhaps by an inspector general
or any other entity that may have audited your performance.
And finally, the applicant's ability
to effectively implement statutory, regulatory
or other requirements imposed on non-federal entities.
We are obligated to review any reports on your organization
in the government-wide performance reporting system.
At this point, that system is called FAPIIS.
If you are also a contractor, that system includes
performance information related to contracts
that we must also take into consideration.
For those of you who are successful,
we will notify you of a selection, the award amount
and the project and budget periods
through the issuance of a notice of award.
This will include any conditions on your award,
and most of those, many of the standard terms and conditions
are included in the funding opportunity announcement,
but it may also include some special terms and conditions
based on the review of your specific application.
So this will include all of the standard terms,
the reporting requirements, as well as your contact information
for your assigned grant specialist
in the Office of Grants Management
and your project officer in the Office of Minority Health.
The Office of Grants Management is the official contact
for the grantee.
All official communication related to the grant
is between OGM and the successful applicant.
So now I will summarize and review some tips for you.
These are based on many, many reviews
of thousands of applications over the years
that we've found tend to trip up applicants
and have them not even get into the competition
and definitely be successful.
So please be clear, complete and concise
in your project description.
Follow and address exactly what is requested
in the funding opportunity announcement.
Don't make the reviewer search for the required information.
Generally, the easier the application is to review,
the better the score.
Clearly identify the sections of the application
and indicate which component is being addressed.
The project narrative must include all the required
information within the page limits.
Do not use the appendices to expand the page limit.
Make your goals and objectives SMART.
That's specific, measurable, achievable,
realistic and time-framed.
Your activities presented in the work plan
should relate directly to the proposed goals and objectives.
The program work plan, evaluation plan
and budget should provide a complete picture
of how you will address the service area needs,
as well as address the purpose and expectations
in the announcement.
Your staffing should be appropriate and reasonable for
the goals, objectives and activities
of the proposed project.
You should be complete in describing what staff will do,
the expertise required and the percent of time
they will be assigned to the project.
Your budget should include adequate funds
to carry out the proposed work plan, evaluation plan
and administrative responsibilities of the project.
The budget should be reasonable
and relate directly to the goals and objectives.
So just because we've set a high range
doesn't mean you go for the highest.
What you have in your budget request, your proposed budget,
should reflect what you've proposed
in the rest of the application.
Do not request more funds than are available
as listed in the announcement.
This amount is inclusive of indirect costs.
I know we've already had some early questions about that.
So that maximum amount that you can request
includes your indirect costs.
Your operating budget should be complete
and include your federal funds and any non-federal funds,
projected program income from fees
or third-party payers or other contributing funds.
Even though there's not a matching
or cost-sharing requirement with this application,
if you are proposing to include those,
you need to make sure that they are included
in your proposed budget.
And remember, electronic submission is required.
Do not wait until the last minute
to begin your SAM registration or update your registration,
and do not wait until the last minute
to begin the electronic submission.
Problems could and do arise.
And that completes that section of our presentation.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much, Alice.
And now we'll begin our question-and-answer segment
of our technical assistance webinar.
This afternoon, we are joined by a panel of experts
from across the Department of Health and Human Services,
and they include representatives from the Office
of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
We have Dr. Christopher Jones
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We have Dr. Brook Belay, Dr. Diane Harris,
Dr. Sarah Sliwa.
From the Health Resources and Services Administration,
we're joined this afternoon by Ms. Melissa Ryan.
And from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency,
we have Dr. Campopiano.
Dr. Mobley has also joined us this afternoon.
And so we welcome your questions.
If you have not already submitted your questions,
please submit your questions for consideration
for this afternoon's session.
Also, in terms of staff from the Office of Minority Health
and the Office of Grants Management who will participate
in this section, Violet Woo,
who is our program point of contact,
and also we have Alice Bettencourt
from the Office of Grants Management,
and we are joined also by our evaluation officer,
Dr. Diane Rezinski [ph.].
Okay, so first question I have is actually
for Alice Bettencourt, and that is,
"If you would, Alice, explain for the audience,
what is an indirect cost rate,
and how does one actually go about determining
whether or not they have one,
and in the case of an organization without
an indirect cost rate, what is the advice or guidance
that you would give on their submission?"
ALICE: Organizations can obtain a negotiated indirect cost rate
from the Division of Cost Allocation
at the HHS Program Support Center.
The information on how to contact them is published
in the funding opportunity announcement.
It is a rather lengthy process to go through
to substantiate your indirect costs.
If you are on the programmatic or service side
of your organization and you're not sure if you have one,
please check with your administrative or budget office
to determine if you have one.
We are obligated to honor that negotiated rate,
if it is approved and active.
If you have never had an approved rate,
you are now allowed under updates to the regulations
a couple years ago to use what we call
the de minimis indirect rate, which is 10%,
and that is, as I said, only if you have never
had an approved, negotiated indirect rate.
If you do not want to use that de minimis rate,
then all charges must be direct charges to the grant, and
you must be able to substantiate that in your budget.
SONSIERE: Thank you. Our next question's
for our program contact, Ms. Violet Woo.
If you would clarify the number of collaborative partners
that are required for the ECI initiative.
VIOLET: As mentioned in the funding opportunity,
this program requires at least two partners,
which includes the application organization.
Together, collaboratively amongst those partners,
you need to accomplish the goals and objectives
that you have planned in your application
to improve the health services and status of the community.
SONSIERE: Thank you.
The next question is for Denise at SAMHSA,
and the question is specific to --
if you would, can you tell us if screening and improving
the treatment of serious mental illness
would fall under the strategies for addressing
serious mental illness
according to the SAMHSA guidance for SMI?
And do we have Dr. Mobley?
DR. MOBLEY: Yes. Can you repeat the question?
SONSIERE: Absolutely. If you would tell us
whether or not programs that are planning
to include screening and linkage to care and treatment
for clients or persons who are diagnosed with SMIs --
would that be considered an allowable activity
as we're talking about prevention and providing
care and treatment for persons who are diagnosed
with SMI, serious mental illness?
DR. MOBLEY: Yes.
SONSIERE: All right. The next question is for our
HRSA point of contact, and that is,
if you would, if you'd tell us, how can
an interested applicant locate the information --
that is, obtain the HPSA score --
how can they locate this information online?
MELISSA: This is Melissa Ryan,
and the easiest way in terms of finding out --
as Violet highlighted, you can go in
and find out what your actual score is through the HPSA Find.
In order to find out how an individual HPSA scored
on the various criteria -- because
there are multiple criteria that go into a HPSA score
-- you can find out what those criteria are
on our shortage designation website for HRSA.
There is a HRSA website for shortage designation
that explains what criteria go into the score.
And then to find out how any single individual HPSA
actually gets scored and how it performs
on each of those individual criteria,
the best place to go would be to contact
your state primary care office,
and the contacts for your state primary care office
are also on HRSA's shortage designation website.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you very much.
Our next question is for our ASPI [ph.] point of contact.
That's Dr. Jones. If you would,
if you could share with us information regarding
current systems or programs that are in place
that have been effective in assisting with or turning around
the impact of the opioid epidemic at the local level.
DR. JONES: Well, there's a variety of different interventions
that are being implemented. I would say
the evidence base for many of them is still emerging.
Certainly from the treatment side,
we have strong evidence around medication-assisted treatment,
so buprenorphine, methadone, extended-release naltrexone,
for the treatment of opioid use disorder.
However, how that's being implemented in rural versus
suburban versus urban areas is still being evaluated.
Something that we can pass on to our OMH colleagues is
an analysis of the evidence that was done
by HHRQ last year to look at models
for providing medication-assisted treatment
and the evidence base for various models.
But things that come to mind [inaudible] hub and spoke model.
Massachusetts has looked at using nurse care managers
to work with physicians who are prescribing buprenorphine.
Project ECHO and the use of ECHO-type models
have also been identified as promising
evidence-based approaches.
So those are some on the treatment side.
Of course, on the naloxone side,
there's data from Massachusetts that would suggest
that higher community penetration of naloxone
has a protective effect for overdose,
and that was sort of a model that took a broad,
community-based approach to engaging individuals
who are using substances who are in treatment,
who are leaving the criminal justice system,
engage community volunteers and family members of
people who have family members who are using substances.
So there was sort of a broad reach in the public community,
but also in the first responder and police, fire community
as well.
On the more upstream side around prescribing,
changing prescribing practices, there's evidence
around prescription drug monitoring programs
and those types of things, but many of those
are more at the state-level policy lever [ph.].
So I think more in the treatment and naloxone space,
you tend to see evidence emerging around
community-based approaches.
SONSIERE: Thank you. And the next question
is actually for our subject matter experts at CDC,
and that is, if you would, can you identify
community models that will address food insecurity,
particularly for applicants that are considering
addressing childhood obesity?
Okay, not certain they're connected.
Let's move to the next question on our list.
In terms of childhood and adolescent obesity and their
focus, can you tell us if there is a site or resources where
an organization who is interested in applying
to address childhood obesity would be able to
locate evidence-based interventions, that is,
evidence-based interventions that are family-centered?
This question's for a CDC point of contact.
Can you tell us if there is a resource or a link to a site
where an interested organization may be able to locate
information regarding evidence-based interventions
that are family-centered?
DR. BELAY: This is Brook Belay from the MTL [ph.].
Can you hear me?
SONSIERE: Yes, I can.
DR. BELAY: Okay, yes. I think the key to family-centered
interventions would be that both the child or adolescent
and the parent are involved,
that they have joint sessions for the child and parent,
but also that they have separate sessions
for each of those involved as well.
I think the interventions need to meet criteria for intensity,
and I think when trying to think of a resource
for where some of those interventions might be described
more centrally, I think recent publications from
the American Academy of Pediatrics --
and I can send this reference out, if that's easier --
but the first author's last name is Wilsley.
That was published in Obesity last year.
That summarizes some of the evidence base thus far.
Of course, the USPSTF,
the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force,
has reviewed a number of those, and they're compiled there,
so you can pull up those references
based on those two citations.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you so much.
And if you would, for our audience members
who may not be as familiar with it,
can you tell us what the Community Preventative Services
Task Force Guide is?
DR. BELAY: Yeah. It's actually the
United States Preventative Services Task Force.
It's an independent body that usually aids the AHRQ,
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
on developing evidence-based statements of what works.
And so USPSTF most recently, in 2010,
published their evidence statement around
screening and referral to weight management programs
for children and adolescents around obesity
and found that to be effective specifically there,
their grading schema [inaudible] Grade B,
which is the second-highest thing you can achieve,
Grade A being the best, and at least as things stand now,
anything Grade B or higher would be considered
required for insurance to cover.
So the last item was, USPSTF has since revisited
that 2010 statement and released a public comment in 2016,
of which the final publication is forthcoming,
but it's expected to maintain that Grade B recommendation
for referral and screening,
and those weight management programs
are these family-centered weight management programs
that meet a certain level of intensity
within a six-month period,
and at a baseline, 26 hours of contact time
within a six-month period for the child or adolescent
seemed to be most effective.
The more intense, of course, the greater the outcome
in terms of weight reduction.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much.
The next question is for the OMH evaluation officer,
Dr. Diane Rezinski.
If you would, can you tell us whether or not
this particular FOA or funding opportunity announcement
will require a rigorous evaluation -- that is,
a design that would require a randomization procedure?
DR. REZINSKI: Thank you, Sonsiere.
The question is about a rigorous evaluation design
as defined as one that involves randomization.
On page 46 of the funding opportunity,
the requirement stipulates that the applicant
should show the extent to which the evaluation design
effectively controls for threats to validity
through experimental or quasi-experimental design,
but it does not require the use of randomization.
We encourage our grantees to propose the most rigorous
evaluation design that they are capable of
successfully executing in order for
the Office of Minority Health to assess the degree
to which the programs are having the intended effect
and to disseminate the results of these research
and demonstration projects to communities who need them.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much.
Our next question is specific to the budget,
and that is the use of [inaudible].
This question is for Ms. Alice Bettencourt.
If you would, can you tell me, if an applicant
proposes to include in their budget
the payment of stipends or incentive payment
for participation, that is, program participants --
if that is allowable?
ALICE: Yes, those types of payments are allowable,
and what you have to demonstrate in
both your project narrative as well as your budget narrative
is how those are also reasonable and allocable to the grant.
So there has to be a nexus between what you are proposing
to use as payment to a participant,
whether a stipend or an incentive payment, and those
might be to the children or youth or to the parents,
but there has to be a logical nexus.
They have to be reasonable, as well as
we would be looking from the business and administrative side
of your proposal at how you will be managing those.
They are -- I won't say prone, but they have a higher risk
compared to some of the other charges on a grant for abuse,
so we would be looking for you to have
an internal control plan in your project
for how you're going to monitor the use and the issuance of
those in relation to how they're being used in the program.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much.
The next question is for Ms. Violet Woo,
and also for Dr. Christopher Jones, and that is,
if you would just remind the audience again
of the types of activities that may be supported
for opioid abuse, and then also, if you could identify for us
-- and this part of the question's for Dr. Jones --
if there is a site that would include a list of
federally funded programs that are addressing opioid abuse.
VIOLET: And I'm sorry, are you asking about
the strategies for opioid abuse?
SONSIERE: Yes. So if you would, remind the audience
what are the required strategies for an organization
that's interested in submitting a competitive application
for opioid abuse.
VIOLET: Well, to qualify for opioid abuse,
you must meet the criteria which indicate counties
with at least 19.9% of persons living in poverty
as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau
or counties with violent crime in excess of
400 per 100,000 population,
and counties or states for which county or state data
indicates high non-fatal or fatal opioid overdose rates.
You also need -- if you're eligible based on that
eligibility criteria, you need to select Strategy A
and/or Strategy B as part of your program plan
if you selected the opioid abuse priority area.
Would you like me to summarize those two strategies?
SONSIERE: Yes, please.
VIOLET: Strategy A is preventing opioid abuse
by increasing access to treatment and recovery services
and overdose reversal capacity in rural and/or urban areas
by using strategies that employ evidence-based interventions,
including each of the following three items:
training and educating providers, pharmacists and
the public about opioid overdose prevention and reversal,
training primary care providers in screening and diagnosis
of opioid misuse and motivational interviewing
for other evidence-based techniques
to engage individuals in treatment,
including MAT, or medication-assisted treatment,
in the event of opioid overdose,
and three, the strategy should include the following partners:
local public health substance abuse abusers [ph.],
medical community, community-based prevention
and risk-reduction organizations, law enforcement
in states with Good Samaritan laws,
and may include faith-based organizations.
Strategy B is, identify and implement
the most successful strategies to reach, engage and retain
people who inject drugs in substance abuse treatments,
including but not limited to medication-assisted treatment,
psychosocial therapies and counseling
for opioid abuse disorder, including a focus
on reducing the transmission of viral hepatitis and HIV,
engaging opioid use disorder treatment
and providing overdose prevention education
and naloxone distribution in the community.
A summary of these choices is on pages 11 and 12
of your funding opportunity announcement.
SONSIERE: Thank you, Violet.
For Dr. Christopher Jones, if you could identify
either sites or additional information where
someone could locate a list of federally funded programs
and related federal documents.
DR. JONES: Well, I would say unfortunately that
we don't have a central resource at this time.
We are working on consolidating that activity across HHS.
But I would say largely in the buckets
that are eligible for this funding,
I would defer to SAMHSA and SAMHSA colleagues
around the programs that are being funded in this space.
With respect to B, the people who inject drugs side,
certainly the CDC center that deals with HIV and hepatitis C
also has resources and has programs in funding
and programs that are out there currently.
So unfortunately, not a central place to go,
but both on the SAMHSA and the CDC website,
you could locate a variety of different programs
that are being funded. But I would ask,
if Melinda's on the call still,
she might have some specific places as well
within the SAMHSA website to point people to.
DR. CAMPOPIANO: This is Melinda Campopiano.
I'm on the call. And I just wanted to suggest
that people could check the SAMHSA.gov/Grants
and search for MATPDOA, and they can see some of
the recently funded activities at the state level there.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much for that.
The next question is for our program contact, Violet Woo.
If you would, can you tell me if publications are
included in terms of acceptable expenses for a budget?
That is, if an organization successfully competes
for this FOA, would the Office of Minority Health
allow them to include the expenses that
will be related to preparing for submission
for a peer-reviewed publication?
VIOLET: Yes, that is strongly encouraged if not required
by the Office of Minority Health for
this ECI cooperative agreement.
This is listed under the cooperative agreement criteria
that is listed in the funding opportunity,
on page 10, to be specific.
It's also included in the program narrative
as far as your dissemination,
so it could be during the development,
the framework of your plan,
as well as the preliminary results and the end results.
To note also, that could be included in your budget
for the expenditure, be it a peer-reviewed journal
or a presentation at a conference
or dissemination of some sort of this ECI project
that you had in your community,
which may have replication in other communities of dire need.
SONSIERE: Okay. And then follow-up response
by the Director of Grants Management, Alice Bettencourt.
ALICE: Yes, and to add to what Violet mentioned,
that is within the period of performance.
So you need to make sure that, in your proposal,
in your budget, you're outlining how you'll get that done
within the period of performance.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you very much.
The next question is specific in terms of
intended communities and who this program
is actually intended to serve
and whether or not it would include or perhaps exclude
certain segments of society.
This question is directed to Violet Woo
and also Alice Bettencourt.
"We noticed that the funding opportunity announcement
is from the Office of Minority Health,
and within our communities, we have populations that
are overwhelmingly represented in the opioid epidemic
that are non-minority. Can you tell us if we would
be able to apply for this funding opportunity announcement
considering our community would meet or exceed
the HPSA score of 16, also in terms of
the level of percentage of crime as well as
percentage of persons who are IDUs or injecting drug users?
Can you tell us if an applicant is required
to identify a community that is minority-only
to be served under this announcement?
VIOLET: This is Violet. As mentioned in
the funding opportunity, we are targeting
the racial and ethnic minorities and disadvantaged populations.
If you look at the glossary in the back
of the funding opportunity, it has the definition
of disadvantaged population there.
So therefore, "disadvantaged" refers to individuals
or populations who are either economically disadvantaged
or environmentally disadvantaged.
So it's in your purview to justify the target community
that is in dire need of the opioid abuse,
childhood and adolescent obesity
or serious mental illness strategies.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you. The next question:
Can you tell us if state- recognized tribes are eligible?
That is, eligible applicants under the ECI FOA?
VIOLET: Yes, and the eligible applicants
are listed in the funding opportunity, but yes,
state and federally recognized tribes are eligible.
SONSIERE: Okay, next question. Can you tell me
if an applicant may submit a competitive application
that includes more than one focus area?
VIOLET: No, one application can only have one focus area.
However, as Alice has mentioned also,
one applicant organization can submit
more than one application targeting a separate focus area.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you. Can you tell us
if the Office of Minority Health would allow an applicant
to utilize a community-based participatory research framework
in proposing either the serious mental illness
or the opioid abuse focus area as consideration
for their competitive application?
I'm going to open it up, but starting first
with Dr. Diane Rezinski, the evaluation officer.
DR. REZINSKI: Thank you, Sonsiere.
Yes, community-based participatory research
is an approach to engaging communities and researchers
in planning and executing programs designed to be
of benefit to the community that is being served.
We ask that as you're putting together your applications
that you work with the community-based organizations
in the application process and not after the fact,
because the proposed process outcomes logic models
that you would be proposing in the proposal
will be the ones that the Office of Minority Health
expects of the project, and so all of those decisions
and community engagement should be occurring on the front end
rather than post-award.
SONSIERE: Thank you so much. The next question
is specific to the opioid abuse. If you would,
can you tell us whether or not the Office of Minority Health
is expecting applicants to submit information
that is for the county level, for the state level
or the national in terms of being able to define
their need and disparity within their communities?
This question is directed to Violet Woo.
I would ask that, for those out there that are listening,
refer to the funding opportunity announcement,
starting at the bottom of page 10, Focus Areas,
the top of page 11, the first paragraph there
under opioid abuse.
VIOLET: As mentioned, and as we'll be reinforcing,
the eligibility criteria for applicant organizations
must meet being a county with more than
19.9% of persons living in poverty
as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau
or counties with violent crime rates in excess
of 400 per 100,000 population,
as well as be a county or state
with a high non-fatal/fatal opioid overdose rate.
If in this instance your county is below
that minimum threshold, if you have alternative data
such as you're a city within that county,
but your city rate may exceed that of the county,
you need to justify that as to why your specific city
or whatever zone it is you're targeting
exceeds that minimum threshold
for what we say in the FOA is below that minimum threshold.
Draw on justification, convincing, justify with data.
Up-to-date data could strengthen the quality and review
of that submitted application for that specific priority area.
DR. REZINSKI: May I give an example?
This is Diane Rezinski, the evaluation officer,
and I would like to give a concrete example
of what Violet Woo just described.
For example, Cook County is a county in the state of Illinois,
and if you look at the poverty level within Cook County
as a whole, it does not reach the poverty level of 19.9.
However, within census tracts in Cook County,
the poverty level far exceeds that 19.9.
So you would report Cook County data.
You would report Cook County homicide data.
You would report the opioid death and non-fatal rates
as they are available, and then you would take
local data for which you have documentation
and talk about the high rates of fatal and non-fatal abuse.
And this is true, I think, in general across our areas,
that if you are focusing on a population
for which there is a hotspot or an acute need,
we require the overall picture to be painted
so we know where the intervention sits,
and then we need to know the specifics within
the communities in which you're working.
SONSIERE: Thank you. The next question is specific to the
childhood/adolescent obesity, and actually, the question is
specific to the CDC obesity demonstration, and that is
-- we have a representative from CDC on the line --
if you could perhaps just very briefly tell us about
your current demonstration project
that is addressing childhood obesity
that's using a family-centered approach.
DR. BELAY: Hi, yes, this is Brook Belay from [inaudible].
I'd be happy to show the demonstration projects.
We call them [inaudible].
Right now, the currently funded grantees are
in Arizona and Massachusetts.
They are each looking at comprehensive counseling,
so that is including nutrition counseling
and physical activity counseling
through a variety of strategies
largely based on motivational interviewing and goal-setting
and then self-management.
But the healthcare system is there to support
the child and family through those efforts.
Each of the programs right now starts off, of course, with
screening and identification of children and families,
and then if they agree to be a part of the study
and they meet that readiness,
they're interested in engaging,
they do engage in counseling at the primary care office,
then they're also referred to
a comprehensive family weight management program,
and each site is doing it slightly differently.
In Arizona, they have a mix of some groups assisting them.
In Massachusetts, they're doing almost
an equivalence type of trial between
a healthy weight clinic where those intensity hours
are met within the confines of the clinic,
or they're being referred out and supported
through the local YMCA program there.
So that's, in a nutshell, what the programs are doing.
I'm happy to go into more detail.
SONSIERE: Okay, thank you so much.
And at this time, we're at the close of
our webinar this afternoon.
I'd like to thank you all for joining us today for the
Office of Minority Health Technical Assistance Webinar for
the Empowered Communities for a Healthier Nation Initiative
Competitive Funding Opportunity Announcement.
Please note the webinar slides will be posted to the
OMH web page with the program and grants points of contact.
We will also respond to your questions by email,
for the questions unfortunately we were unable
to get to during the course of our session this afternoon.
We wish you the best of luck on your submission
for your competitive application,
and have a wonderful afternoon. Goodbye.
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