Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research Consortium (U01) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research Consortium (U01) (Funding Opportunity Number RFA HL 10 004) was a National Institutes of Health cooperative agreement funding opportunity led by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in partnership with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Its central aim was to support rigorous randomized controlled trials that test innovative, practical intervention strategies directly relevant to the childhood obesity epidemic. Rather than funding basic observational work, the program was built to generate high-quality evidence about what works to prevent unhealthy weight gain and to improve weight-related outcomes among children and adolescents, with an eye toward reducing long-term cardiovascular and other chronic disease risks.

A defining feature of this opportunity is its focus on both prevention and treatment, with clear operational definitions. For this program, prevention includes two related goals: stopping excess weight gain in children who are not overweight (primary prevention) and preventing additional weight gain among youth who are already overweight or obese. Treatment, in contrast, is aimed at youth who are obese or severely obese and is defined as reducing weight, which can include actual weight loss or maintaining weight while a child grows taller (so that weight status improves as height increases). In practice, this means applicants were expected to propose trials with measurable outcomes related to body weight or adiposity and to tailor the intervention approach to the risk level of the population being studied.

The FOA targeted key developmental periods where interventions may have strong and lasting impact, specifically young children, pre-adolescents, and adolescents. It encouraged novel interventions, signaling interest in approaches that go beyond traditional, single-setting programs. While the announcement text does not prescribe specific intervention modalities, its emphasis on innovation and immediate relevance to the epidemic points toward multi-level strategies that could include family, school, health care, community, or policy-linked components, so long as they can be tested through randomized designs and produce interpretable results.

This award used the cooperative agreement mechanism (U01), which generally indicates a more active partnership between NIH and awardees than a standard research grant. The overall program was explicitly designed to promote collaboration and coordination across funded institutions, encourage exchange of scientific information, and build partnerships with local, state, and national agencies. The FOA also ran in parallel with a separate companion announcement seeking a Research Coordinating Unit (RFA HL 10 005). Together, these pieces were intended to function as a consortium, meaning that individual trial sites would not operate in isolation; instead, they would contribute to a coordinated research effort with shared goals, harmonized methods where appropriate, and cross-site learning intended to accelerate progress in the field.

The opportunity welcomed applications from multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams, including established networks as well as new collaborations formed specifically to conduct these trials. The intent was to bring together expertise needed to address childhood obesity as a complex, multi-factor problem, which typically spans clinical medicine, nutrition, physical activity science, behavioral and social science, biostatistics, health services research, and community engagement. High-quality trial design and execution were central expectations, given the programmatic emphasis on randomized controlled trials and on generating evidence capable of informing practice and policy.

Eligibility was broad and inclusive across many organization types. Eligible applicants included public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations (including both 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3) entities), for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), state governments, federally recognized tribal governments, and other tribal organizations. The FOA also explicitly included organizations such as historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, faith-based and community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. There was no cost sharing or matching requirement, which lowered barriers to participation for organizations that might not be able to contribute significant non-federal funds.

In terms of administrative details, the FOA was posted February 2, 2009, with an original and current closing date of October 6, 2009, and an archive date of November 6, 2009. It was categorized under discretionary funding, using the cooperative agreement instrument, and aligned with the health-related activity categories reflected in the CFDA numbers 93.837 (Cardiovascular Diseases Research) and 93.865 (Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research). The full announcement and related materials were hosted on the NIH grants site, with support contacts routed through the NIH Office of Extramural Research webmaster for access or linking issues.

Overall, the grant opportunity was structured to build a coordinated national research effort capable of producing actionable evidence on preventing excess weight gain and improving weight outcomes among children and teens. By emphasizing randomized trials, collaboration across sites, and partnerships with public agencies and communities, the program sought to speed translation from research to real-world approaches that could reduce obesity-related illness and premature mortality later in life, especially cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions tied to childhood obesity.

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