Announcements

Dr. Helene Langevin, M.D., NCCIH Director

A New Year’s Message from NCCIH’s Director: Helene Langevin, M.D.

It is my great pleasure to welcome the New Year as the director of NCCIH and to share some thoughts on my personal vision for the Center. It has been my longstanding conviction that integrative health care is more than just the sum of conventional and complementary health approaches. When combined, these approaches can provide a frontier of new insights into the physiology of health and the pathophysiology underlying diseases and disorders.

HEAL Initiative Funding Opportunities for Behavioral Research

Dave Clark, Dr.P.H.

January 07, 2019

In April 2018, NIH launched the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term^SM) Initiative, an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. As several of our colleagues have discussed on the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) Research Blog, we are participating in several HEAL funding opportunity announcements (FOAs). This blog post briefly describes four of these announcements that relate to behavioral research.

Massage May Provide Short-Term Improvement of Knee Osteoarthritis Symptoms

A weekly session of massage therapy may provide short-term benefits for people with osteoarthritis of the knee, including reduced pain and stiffness and improved function, according to a new NCCIH-funded study. The study, which was done at locations in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Connecticut, was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Clinical Digest: Massage Therapy for Health

December 2018 Issue

A lot of the scientific research on the clinical effects of massage therapy for various conditions has been carried out, but some of the research hasn’t been of high quality, and the mechanisms by which massage therapy has its effects are unclear. Research suggests that massage therapy may help relieve several kinds of pain, but in most instances, the evidence is not strong, and massage may provide only short-term relief. Massage may be helpful for anxiety and depression in people with fibromyalgia, cancer, or HIV/AIDS. Massage therapy may help premature infants gain weight, but it has not been clearly shown to have benefits for full-term infants.

Resources for Researchers

NIH HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-termSM) Initiative - Technical Assistance Webinars on January 10 and 14, February 7

Learn more about funding opportunities related to HEAL and find out about upcoming technical assistance webinars.

January 10 Webinar: HEAL Initiative: Pragmatic and Implementation Studies for the Management of Pain to Reduce Opioid Prescribing (PRISM) (UG3/UH3, Clinical Trials Optional) - Technical Assistance Videocast

January 14 Webinar: HEAL Initiative: Behavioral Research to Improve MAT (BRIM): Behavioral and Social Interventions to Improve Adherence to Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorders (R61/R33 Clinical Trial Optional) - Technical Assistance Videocast

February 7 Webinar: HEAL Initiative: Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial of Acupuncture for Management of Chronic Low Back Pain in Older Adults (UG3/UH3 Clinical Trial Required) - Technical Assistance Videocast

Preapplication Webinar for Music and Health Funding Opportunities

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) will host an hour-long pre-application webinar for three new music and health funding opportunities:

Promoting Research on Music and Health: Fundamentals and Applications (R01 Clinical Trials Optional) - RFA-NS-19-008
Promoting Research on Music and Health: Fundamentals and Applications (R21 Clinical Trials Optional) - RFA-NS-19-009
Promoting Research on Music and Health: Phased Innovation Award for Music Interventions (R61/R33, Clinical Trial Optional) RFA-AT-19-001

Webinar speakers will provide pre-application technical assistance and convey important information to prospective grant applicants, including an overview of the research grant submission process; an in-depth discussion of the funding opportunity announcements; and what to expect in the peer-review process. The presentation will begin at 2:00 p.m. ET on January 14, 2019, followed by a 30-minute participant Q&A session at approximately 2:30 p.m. ET.

NOTE: If you would like to submit questions for the speakers prior to the webinar, please email them to: NCCIHwebinarQ@mail.nih.gov

New Funding Opportunities

Upcoming Events

Pain Lecture: General Anesthesia, Sleep, and Pain

January 10, 2019, 11 a.m.-12 noon ET; Building 35A, Room 1G600, NIH Main Campus, Bethesda, MD (in-person attendance only)

Natural Products and Pain: The search for novel nonopioid analgesics

February 6, 2019 from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. ET; NIH Main Campus - Natcher Bulding 45, Balcony B, 45 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892

In case you missed it...

NIH Director's Blog: Biomedical Research Highlighted in Science’s 2018 Breakthroughs

A Happy New Year to one and all! While many of us were busy wrapping presents, the journal Science announced its much-anticipated scientific breakthroughs of 2018. In case you missed the announcement, it was another banner year for the biomedical sciences.