Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 23 182
The NIH funding opportunity "Accelerating Behavioral and Social Science through Ontology Development and Use: Research Network Projects" (PAR-23-182) is a cooperative agreement (U01; clinical trial not allowed) aimed at strengthening the semantic infrastructure that behavioral and social science researchers rely on to describe, measure, and compare complex human and social phenomena in health-related contexts. The core idea is to fund projects that either expand an existing ontology or build a new one that makes behavioral and social science research more interoperable, more computable, and easier to synthesize across studies, settings, populations, and disciplines. NIH is looking for ontology work that is clearly tied to real research pain points where progress is limited because key concepts are inconsistently defined, measured, labeled, or mapped across datasets and interventions.
Funded projects are expected to bring together multidisciplinary teams. That means domain experts from one or more behavioral or social science research (BSSR) areas (for example, health behavior, social determinants of health, implementation science, behavioral intervention development, or related fields) working side-by-side with people who have ontology, informatics, and computational expertise. The projects should not be general-purpose knowledge management exercises; they need to be anchored in health-relevant BSSR problems that are difficult to address without better semantic knowledge structures such as controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and ontologies. In other words, the ontology development is not the end goal by itself. It is the enabling layer that improves how research gets done, including study design, measurement harmonization, data integration, meta-analysis, and translation of evidence into practice.
A central requirement is that each project identifies one or more concrete BSSR use cases and spells out how the ontology resource or tool will be developed and tested in ways that measurably advance research capability or efficiency. A use case might involve harmonizing behavioral measures across multiple cohorts, aligning intervention components across trials to understand what actually drives outcomes, improving search and discovery of measures and constructs, enabling machine-readable representation of social exposures, or supporting reproducible linkage of behavioral and social variables with clinical and biological data. Whatever the use case, applicants are expected to show a credible pathway from ontology work to practical research improvement, not just a theoretical model of concepts.
NIH also emphasizes that the proposed terminology and structure should cover health-relevant content tied to constructs, measures, and/or intervention components. This points applicants toward ontologies that can support the full lifecycle of BSSR, including how constructs are operationalized, how instruments and items relate to those constructs, and how interventions are decomposed into components that can be compared and reused. Another explicit expectation is that resources and tools account for socio-behavioral cultural context in the vocabulary and ontology development process. Practically, this means the ontology should be sensitive to variation in meaning and measurement across cultures, communities, and contexts, and should avoid assuming that a single label or definition applies universally without qualification. It also implies attention to equity-relevant considerations such as representation of diverse populations, context-specific exposures, and culturally grounded constructs.
Because this is a cooperative agreement (U01), awardees will not work in isolation. Each funded project will pursue its own independent ontology development aims, but will also be expected to collaborate as part of a broader Behavioral and Social Science Ontology Development U01 Research Network. Network coordination and cross-project alignment will occur in collaboration with a separate Dissemination and Coordination Center (DCC; PAR-23-181). The intent is to avoid siloed ontologies that cannot talk to each other, and instead move toward shared practices, interoperability, dissemination pathways, and community uptake. A strong application therefore needs a realistic plan for dissemination and promoting use, since NIH is explicitly looking for resources and tools that are adopted, not just published.
From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity is run by the National Institutes of Health and categorized under discretionary funding. The award mechanism is a cooperative agreement, and the maximum award amount listed is $500,000 (award ceiling). Multiple NIH CFDA numbers are associated with the announcement (93.173, 93.213, 93.242, 93.307, 93.310, 93.350, 93.399, 93.866, 93.867, 93.879), which typically signals participation or interest from multiple NIH institutes or programs. The original closing date shown in the source information is 2023-10-03, and the NOFO creation date is 2023-05-24.
Eligibility is broad and includes many common applicant types such as state, county, and local governments; public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized tribal governments; tribal organizations; public housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status; for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); and small businesses. The NOFO also highlights additional eligible applicants, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, AANAPISIs, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, U.S. territories or possessions, regional organizations, non-federally recognized tribal governments, and foreign (non-U.S.) entities. Taken together, this indicates NIH is open to a wide range of institutions and is encouraging participation from organizations that may bring community-relevant expertise, culturally grounded knowledge, and diverse perspectives to ontology development.
In practical terms, a competitive project under this NOFO would likely look like a well-scoped ontology development and evaluation effort that starts from a pressing BSSR challenge, identifies a specific gap in existing semantic resources, builds or extends an ontology with clear governance and quality control, tests it in real workflows or datasets tied to the stated use cases, and then actively disseminates it through the network, the DCC, and broader research communities. The program is essentially investing in shared semantic building blocks that can make behavioral and social science research more cumulative, comparable, and computationally enabled, especially when integrating behavioral and social variables with the rest of the health research ecosystem.Apply for PAR 23 182
- The National Institutes of Health in the education, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Accelerating Behavioral and Social Science through Ontology Development and Use: Research Network Projects (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
- Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.173, 93.213, 93.242, 93.307, 93.310, 93.350, 93.399, 93.866, 93.867, 93.879.
- This funding opportunity was created on 2023-05-24.
- Applicants must submit their applications by 2023-10-03. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
- Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
- Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.
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