HRSA anticipates posting several grant announcements in the next few months. The first announcement is expected to be posted December 5, 2012 by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau for the “Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Target Issue Grant” program. Funding is estimated to be for $2,100,000 with the application due March 5, 2013.
The EMSC Program crosses many settings of care delivery. These settings can include pre-hospital environment, emergency department visits, tertiary care, rehabilitation, and care in outpatient settings. The goal of the EMSC program is to ensure optimal emergency care for ill and injured children within the continuum of the existing Emergency Medical Care System (EMSS).
The grant funding will help to improve pediatric emergency care by improving the science and evidence base, by providing national models for quality improvement or systems development, and providing national resources to improve care delivery.
Another HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau grant announcement scheduled to be posted November 5, 2012 will involve funding for “Community-Based Integrated Service Systems” involving state and local governments.
The Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) program improves quality by developing local infrastructures to coordinate services and the resources needed by the children and families to achieve favorable outcomes. The anticipated request for proposals will help to develop the next phase of the ECCS program. The funding will be for $7,800,000 and the due date for proposals is anticipated to be December 4, 2012.
The third HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau grant announcement due to be posted November 5, 2012 is titled “Developing Integrated Child Health Information Systems: Working with Immunization Information Systems to Establish a Child Health Profile in the Public Domain”. The estimated funding is $450,000 and the application due date is anticipated to be February 2, 2013.
This grant program is open to state, local governments, nonprofits, and for profit organizations, small businesses, Indian tribes, and faith-based and community-based organizations.
This grant program will involve several projects. Project 1 will be to develop the technological capacity for maternal and child healthcare coordination across public and private healthcare domains. Support will be provided to develop bidirectional health information exchange between state-level immunization information systems as well as other public health entities and state level HIEs. Project 2 will help states to implement a web-based electronic birth records system.
In addition to the three forecasted announcements, HRSA issued a pre-solicitation (13-250-SOL-00005) entitled “HRSA Evaluation Studies Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ)” on October 17th. The overall purpose of the pre-solicitation is to assist HRSA with evaluation activities.
The types of activities are organized into three Domains with specific tasks.
- Domain 1 may involve assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of HRSA supported programs, outcomes, performance, and polices
- Domain 2 may involve describing how to strengthen the capacity for health and public health related evaluation both within HRSA and among programs and grantees. In addition, technical assistance and training may be needed to build evaluation capacity among HRSA programs and staff
- Assessing and developing evaluation-related IT data systems both within HRSA and among HRSA’s programs and grantees
- Developing professionally-validated data linking algorithms to support program evaluation
- Developing IT capacity to support evaluation-related activities among small and medium sized public health organizations
