Researchers
Federal Funding Opportunities
CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities Funding Opportunities https://www.cdc.gov/funding/index.html
Find information about funding opportunities in CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD). Information about new funding opportunities throughout CDC can be found on the CDC Grants and Cooperative Agreements webpage.
Grants.gov https://www.grants.gov/
Grants.gov helps organizations find and apply for more than $400 billion in federal grants electronically. It is the single access point for more than 1,000 grant programs offered by all federal grant-making agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services is the managing partner for Grants.gov.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grants and Funding https://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm
Find grants and funding opportunities from NIH. You can also use NIH’s new tool, the RePORT Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) query tool to learn about currently funded projects related to ASDs. This new tool replaces CRISP (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects), but keeps all of the features of CRISP, including a searchable database of projects at colleges , hospitals, and other research facilities that are funded by NIH and other government agencies. The new RePORTER tool also has additional search tools, hit lists that can be sorted and downloaded to Excel, NIH funding for each project (expenditures), and the publications and patents that have acknowledged support from each project (results). RePORTER also provides links to PubMed Central , PubMed , and the US Patent & Trademark Office Patent Full Text and Image Database for more information on research results.
Public and Restricted-Use Data Sets
Autism Genetics Initiative Data Archive https://www.nimhgenetics.org/
The Human Genetics Initiative, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is a national resource of clinical data and biomaterials collected from people with autism and other mental disorders. The data and biomaterials in the Autism Genetics Initiative were collected as part of a genetic linkage study done in 1995–2001. Families in the initiative have at least two affected siblings or more distant relatives. Available data include age, sex, family structure, diagnostic interview data and status, and nonverbal IQ data. Data and biomaterials (cell lines and DNA samples) are available to qualified investigators who study the genetics of autism.
Autism Genetics Resource Exchange https://www.nimhgenetics.org/
The Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) is a resource for the study of autism genetics. Clinical data and genetic material on more than 700 families are freely available for analysis by members of the scientific community. The goal of AGRE is to speed up progress in identifying the genetic underpinnings of autism and autism spectrum disorders by making this information available to the scientific community.
ClinicalTrials.gov https://clinicaltrials.gov/
ClinicalTrials.gov provides free and easy access to information on clinical studies for a wide range of diseases and conditions, including autism. Trials found on the website may be federally or privately funded.
Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health https://www.childhealthdata.org/
The Data Resource Center makes it easy to find key findings on the health and health care of children, youth, and families. It is sponsored by the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau and is led by the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, based at the Oregon Health & Science University.
National Center for Education Statistics https://nces.ed.gov/
The National Center for Education Statistics, located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data about education.
National Center for Health Statistics https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has accurate, relevant, and timely statistics to guide actions and policies to improve the health of Americans. The NCHS State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey has in-depth state and local area data that can be used to help meet various program and policy needs.
National Database for Autism Research https://nda.nih.gov/
The National Database for Autism Research, being developed by the National Institutes of Health, will provide a national resource to support and speed up research in autism. It is a collection of information systems supporting the full range of autism research activities, including genomic, imaging, laboratory, clinical, and behavioral data sources. It provides the core technology for a data warehouse, a data-entry system, and a centralized source for common measures and their documentation. It will support large-scale, multi-site projects as well as pilot studies and basic science investigations.
Human Subjects’ Protection
The Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Part 46, (https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/45-cfr-46/index.html) is the official federal policy about the protection of human subjects in research studies. You can find more human subjects resources on the CDC human subjects research website (https://www.cdc.gov/os/integrity/hrpo/index.htm) . The site includes checklists for writing research protocols and informed consent forms, descriptions of additional protections required if certain groups (such as children and pregnant women) will be research subjects, guidelines for defining public health research versus non-research, and general resources on human subjects issues. The site supports CDC staff and staff on CDC-funded projects to ensure compliance with federal policy on human subjects’ protection.
Additional Resources of Interest
NIH Loan Repayment Programs https://www.lrp.nih.gov//
The National Institutes of Health offers several loan repayment programs for researchers. NIH Loan Repayment Programs are a vital component of our nation’s efforts to attract health professionals to careers in clinical, pediatric, health disparity, or contraceptive and infertility research.