Research on Resilience - New Funding Opportunity

The term “resilience” has broad associations and conveys different meanings in different contexts. While the concept of resilience is receiving increased attention as a possible mechanism describing the absence of adverse consequences after exposure to a stressor, current research on resilience lacks a common framework that extends across multiple levels of analysis. Additionally, current research does not address predisposing factors, classes of adverse exposures, dynamic processes of adaptation, and potential environmental moderators that may be involved in resiliency. In response to these research gaps, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network (OppNet) and its participating Institutes, Centers, and Offices, including NCCIH, released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) this month:

Advancing Basic Behavioral and Social Research on Resilience: An Integrative Science Approach (UG3/UH3) – PAR-16-326

NIH seeks applications that will elucidate mechanisms and processes of resilience within a general framework that emphasizes its dynamics and interactions across both time and scale. All applications should use a framework with the following four features:

• Assessment of a baseline level prior to challenge
• Characterization of a specific challenge (acute or chronic)
• Post-challenge measures of outcomes that characterize the response over time, including responses across multiple domains (e.g., physiological, psychological)
• Predictors of outcomes, including predisposing factors at the individual and environmental levels.