NIDDK Early Research Partnership Engagement Challenge

Here is the information from the NIH:

"NIDDK Early Research Partnership Engagement Challenge

Subject of the Challenge: The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) supports research that improves understanding, prevention, and treatment of diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases; digestive and liver diseases; nutritional disorders; obesity; and kidney, urologic, and hematologic diseases. Many populations across the United States—especially people living in rural, medically underserved, and low-resource communities—experience a high burden of these conditions but remain underrepresented in research. This gap limits the reach, relevance, and impact of NIDDK-supported science.

Community engagement—connecting people by geography, identity, or shared circumstances to collaboratively address health issues—builds mutual trust and understanding. Early engagement during research planning improves feasibility, sustainability, impact, and health outcomes for all populations. A key barrier is that many traditional NIDDK research grant mechanisms do not support robust community and partner engagement during the earliest stages of research planning, including before grant submission. Yet early engagement is essential to building trust, identifying shared priorities, improving feasibility and sustainability, and ensuring that research addresses real-world needs. Strong partnerships formed at the planning stage can improve implementation, translation, and dissemination, ultimately increasing research impact.

With NIDDK, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) is a co-sponsor and co-funder of this Challenge; this partnership demonstrates NIH’s commitment to improve the health for all people and all communities by fostering meaningful community engagement, expanding participation in research, and supporting sustainable partnerships that make research more responsive to the priorities and needs of populations affected by some of the most common, chronic, costly and consequential diseases in the country.  To address this need, this Challenge seeks meaningful, actionable, innovative, and practical strategies to foster early community engagement and build new academic-community partnerships for future research aligned with the NIDDK mission. The goal is to incentivize the co-development of research ideas that could lead to future community-engaged studies focused on prevention or treatment of conditions within NIDDK’s mission areas. Phase 1 would be open to all teams that register no later than November 30, 2026. Phase 2 would be limited to winners of Phase 1.

Dates:

• Challenge Launch: September 1, 2026
• Registration Period: October 1, 2026 – November 30, 2026
• Phase 1 Submission Period: December 1, 2026 – May 2027
• Phase 1 Judging: June 2027
• Phase 1 Winners Announced: June 2027
• Phase 2 Submission Period: June 2027 – May 2028
• Phase 2 Judging: June 2028
• Phase 2 Winners Announced: July 2028"