DOD Peer Reviewed Alzheimer’s, Transforming Care Award | HT9425 23 PRARP TCA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT9425 23 PRARP TCA

The Department of Defense, through the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA), offered the FY23 Peer Reviewed Alzheimers Research Program (PRARP) Transforming Care Award (TCA) under funding opportunity HT9425-23-PRARP-TCA. This opportunity is designed to fund research and development projects that directly address the day-to-day realities of living with Alzheimers disease and Alzheimers disease related dementias (AD/ADRD). The focus is not on clinical or physician-delivered medical treatments, but on the broader care environment that surrounds the person with dementia and the people who support them, including care partners and caregivers, as well as the wider ripple effects on families and communities.

A central requirement of the Transforming Care Award is that proposed projects must be person-centered. In practice, that means the work should start from the lived experience and practical needs of the individual with AD/ADRD and/or their caregiver, rather than being driven primarily by theory or clinical endpoints. The program is looking for research that produces usable answers and solutions in areas that can improve quality of life, reduce burden and stress, and strengthen support systems for care partners. Another defining feature is the expectation of near-immediate benefit for the intended population, so proposals should be oriented toward interventions, tools, training, support models, or community-based approaches that can make a tangible difference in the short term rather than far in the future.

The award also emphasizes outcomes and implementation. Applicants are expected to clearly define what success looks like, specify measurable outcomes, and lay out a feasible pathway to real-world use. That includes describing how an approach could scale beyond a pilot setting and how it could be implemented at the community level for broader adoption. The opportunity explicitly calls for planning around manualization, meaning projects should produce materials, protocols, or structured guidance that can be shared and replicated, and they should include a plan for feeding results back into relevant communities, including research audiences, people with lived experience, and care communities. A milestone meeting is required, reinforcing that the sponsor expects active project management and progress toward deliverables rather than open-ended exploration.

From a competitiveness standpoint, the DoD is not looking for incremental steps. Projects must represent a non-incremental advance in the dementia care field, and applicants must provide preliminary data to support feasibility and justify the proposed direction. At the same time, certain types of work are ruled out: studies that use animal models are not allowed under this mechanism, consistent with the program being centered on human care experiences and practical care solutions rather than biomedical model development.

Administratively, the opportunity was categorized as discretionary and supports awards via grants and/or cooperative agreements under CFDA 12.420. Eligibility was listed as unrestricted, meaning proposals could come from a wide range of entity types, subject to any additional clarifications in the full announcement. The posting date was March 27, 2023, with an original closing date of July 10, 2023. The announcement indicated an expectation of about four awards, and the award ceiling was listed as 0 in the source data, which typically signals that applicants must rely on the detailed funding guidance in the full solicitation rather than treating the ceiling field as a meaningful cap.

In short, this grant opportunity targets practical, scalable, person-centered dementia care research with strong community collaboration, clear and measurable outcomes, and a realistic plan to turn findings into usable, shareable care practices. It prioritizes real-world impact for people living with AD/ADRD and their caregivers, requires preliminary evidence of feasibility, and excludes animal-model work in favor of research grounded in the human and community care landscape.

• 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, Transforming Care 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 Mar 27, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 10, 2023. (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 4 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.

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