Behavioral and Social Genomics of Aging Opportunities in the Health and Retirement Study (R01) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH funding opportunity PA 11-318, titled "Behavioral and Social Genomics of Aging Opportunities in the Health and Retirement Study (R01)," invites researchers to use newly released genetic data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to better understand aging in the United States. HRS is a long-running, nationally representative longitudinal study of adults age 50 and older (and their spouses) that follows participants over time and collects a broad range of information on health, economic status, family structure, behaviors, and psychosocial factors. A key strength of the cohort is its size (more than 20,000 people) and its intentional oversampling of African American and Hispanic American participants, which improves the ability to study aging-related outcomes and disparities across populations.

The central scientific opportunity comes from genome-wide genotype data being generated for roughly 20,000 HRS participants using the Illumina HumanOmni 2.5 Quad chip. These genome-wide scans were supported by American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds, with a staged public release plan through dbGaP: genotype data for the first approximately 13,000 individuals anticipated in Fall 2011, and the remainder expected by the end of 2012. The FOA is aimed at encouraging investigators to take advantage of this new genetic layer and integrate it with the rich behavioral, social, and psychological measures already in HRS. In practical terms, the announcement is pushing for research that does not treat genetics in isolation, but instead connects genetic variation with lived experience, social context, behavior, and the environments that shape health trajectories in later life.

The program’s emphasis is on advancing understanding of how genetic, behavioral, and psychosocial factors jointly influence the health and well-being of older Americans. That includes studying why some people maintain function and quality of life into older ages while others experience faster decline, as well as examining how social experiences and behaviors may amplify, buffer, or otherwise interact with genetic predispositions. Because HRS is longitudinal, applicants can pursue questions about change over time, not just cross-sectional snapshots, such as how gene-associated risks express differently across the aging process, how life events relate to later outcomes, and how social or behavioral interventions might plausibly modify pathways tied to genetic risk. The design also lends itself to studying heterogeneity in aging, including subgroup differences and potential mechanisms behind health disparities.

Mechanistically, the FOA is well-suited to gene-environment and gene-behavior questions, including work on how socioeconomic status, stress exposure, social relationships, health behaviors, and psychological traits relate to disease risk and resilience when considered alongside genomic variation. It is also a natural fit for studies of complex, multifactorial outcomes common in aging research, such as cognitive aging, disability, multimorbidity, mental health, and mortality, particularly when paired with behavioral and social determinants. The announcement encourages using the new genotypes to deepen inference about pathways and interactions, leveraging HRS measures that go beyond medical diagnoses to include real-world functioning, economic security, and social conditions that matter for older adults’ well-being.

From an administrative standpoint, this is an NIH discretionary grant opportunity using the R01 research project grant mechanism, listed under CFDA 93.866 (Aging Research). Cost sharing or matching is not required. The opportunity was posted and created on August 22, 2011, with an original and current closing date of September 7, 2014, and an archive date of October 8, 2014. The sponsoring agency is the National Institutes of Health.

Eligibility is broad and includes public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations (including those with and without 501(c)(3) status), small businesses, for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), and a range of government entities such as state governments, county and city/township governments, special district governments, and independent school districts. Tribal governments and tribal organizations are included, as are public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities. The FOA also explicitly includes additional eligible applicants such as HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian serving institutions, regional organizations, faith-based or community-based organizations, and eligible federal agencies. Importantly, non-U.S. entities (foreign institutions) may apply, non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are eligible, and foreign components are allowed under NIH policy, which signals an openness to international expertise as long as the work aligns with NIH rules and the use of HRS/dbGaP data requirements.

In short, PA 11-318 is designed to accelerate research at the intersection of genomics and the behavioral and social sciences of aging by exploiting a major new resource: genome-wide genotype data linked to the exceptionally rich, longitudinal phenotypic and contextual data in the HRS. Applicants are essentially being asked to use this combined dataset to generate clearer, more integrated explanations of how genes and life circumstances together shape health and well-being in later life, including across diverse U.S. populations.

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