NEWS RELEASE

Released: June 15, 2021

Defense Health Program
Department of Defense Combat Readiness - Medical Research Program
Anticipated Funding Opportunities for Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21)

The FY21 Defense Appropriations Act provides funding to the Department of Defense Combat Readiness – Medical Research Program (CRRP) to support military-relevant advanced technology and therapeutic research related to forward-deployable solutions that can promptly address life-threatening injuries, medical threats, and treatments for Service Members in current and future battlefield settings. The managing agent for the anticipated funding opportunity is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).

The FY21 congressional language for the CRRP considered research that would enable the Warfighter to better respond to serious injury, as well as solutions to mitigate the long-term effects of battlefield trauma. The CRRP is providing the information in this pre-announcement to allow investigators time to plan and develop ideas for submission to the anticipated FY21 funding opportunity. This pre-announcement should not be construed as an obligation by the government. The FY21 CRRP funding opportunity announcement and General Submission Instructions/General Application Instructions for the following award mechanism will be posted on the Grants.gov website. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when the funding opportunity announcement is released.

The FY21 CRRP will solicit research applications addressing at least one of the Focus Areas described below. The Focus Areas broadly describe current needs to ensure readiness for delivering front-line care in combat situations and for delivering medical damage control capability, assets, and lifesaving interventions to address the emerging needs of the Warfighter and Service medics during prolonged and en route care in austere and combat environments, including the acute and early management of combat-related trauma at the point of injury.

Applications submitted to the FY21 CRRP must address one or more of the following Focus Areas:

• Solutions to enhance Warfighter readiness, such as solutions to address:
  • Infectious diseases
  • Sleep disorders
  • Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Service-related post-traumatic arthritis

• Solutions to enhance combat care delivery throughout the far-forward environment, such as:
  • Telemedicine solutions that enable medical capabilities at far-forward battlespace locations worldwide
  • Medical simulation technology that supports sustainment of critical skills and medical decision-making
  • Freeze-dried plasma and platelets
  • Ruggedized oxygen generation systems
  • Solutions for the assessment of mild traumatic brain injury, to include portable devices

• Wound-care solutions for complex trauma and tissue regeneration that span the operational medical care continuum or roles of care (e.g., acute through chronic care), such as:
  • Multi-modal wound-care solutions that provide a combination of hemostasis, wound healing, infection prevention, and/or analgesia
  • Traumatic wound care to prevent sepsis
  • Repair and restoration of genitourinary injury and tissue damage

The Areas of Encouragement were identified as capability and knowledge gaps that are of high priority and programmatic relevance and can be found appended to the FY21 Rapid Development and Translational Research Award funding opportunity announcement. Investigators are strongly encouraged to propose research ideas that specifically address one of the FY21 Areas of Encouragement within each Focus Area (if applicable).