Request for Information (RFI)

Request for Information No.: 75N94027R00002

Title: EmbraceHEALTH Clinical Research Network (EmbraceHEALTH CRN)

Type: Research and Development (R&D) RFI

NAICS Code: 541715 — Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life

Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology)

Response Date: 4:00PM (Eastern) Tuesday, November 17, 2026.

Primary Point of Contact: Jordan Neal, Contract Specialist – jordan.neal@nih.gov

Secondary Point of Contact: Gannon White, Contracting Officer – gannon.white@nih.gov

Description:

This is a Request for Information (RFI) for Research and Development (R&D) open to all interested organizations, regardless of business size. This is NOT a solicitation for capability statements, proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The purpose of this notice is to obtain input from industry to inform requirement development and acquisition planning for the proposed research services described in the attached draft Statement of Work (SOW). The anticipated North

American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 541715 — Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology).

This RFI is for market research and planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Government. Interested organizations are encouraged to review the attached draft SOW and respond to the information requests outlined in this notice. The Government anticipates issuing a solicitation for this requirement at a later date under a separate announcement. Issuance of this notice does not obligate the Government to issue a solicitation or award a contract.

Background and Project Requirements:

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) within the National

Institutes of Health (NIH) seeks input on the proposed establishment and operation of Research

Consortia (RCs) within the EmbraceHEALTH Clinical Research Network (EmbraceHEALTH

CRN). The envisioned network would conduct solutions-oriented clinical, behavioral, and health services research to improve clinically meaningful and measurable health outcomes to reduce health disparities.

The EmbraceHEALTH CRN would comprise multiple Research Consortia and a Research

Coordinating Center (CC), with participating research and health care settings in rural and urban areas across the United States and its territories. Consortia would bring together academic institutions, health care settings, and other organizations providing ambulatory care, including mailto:jordan.neal@nih.gov mailto:gannon.white@nih.gov family medicine, general internal medicine, general pediatrics, and medical subspecialties with a chronic ambulatory care component. Partnerships of particular interest include academic health centers serving patients from low-income backgrounds or low-resourced communities, community health care settings linked to safety net hospitals, and Federally Qualified Health

Centers.

The contemplated consortia would need organizational capacity, health care partnerships, and research infrastructure to recruit scientifically meaningful proportions of patients from populations and communities experiencing health disparities, including individuals from low-income backgrounds, low-resourced communities, and those with public health insurance

(Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP) or no insurance. Recruitment and data collection would support sound analyses by age, sex, and racial/ethnic group.

Research is anticipated to be conducted on a task order basis, prioritizing rigorous, hypothesis-driven interventional studies addressing chronic, acute, urgent, and emerging health needs.

Potential designs include randomized controlled trials, cluster randomized trials, pragmatic trials, comparative effectiveness research, implementation research, hybrid effectiveness-implementation trials, adaptive trials, and other designs appropriate to individual study objectives.

Future studies could examine associated risk factors, biomarkers, genetics/omics, and epigenetics/omics. Additional areas of exploration could include data science and super intelligence (SI) research involving causal inference, machine learning, longitudinal data, and implementation science. These efforts would seek to determine which interventions work, for whom, under what circumstances, and at what point in a patient’s care trajectory.

Technology-based studies are also of interest, particularly those supporting patient self-reported data, interaction with clinicians and the health care system, home-based biospecimen collection, remote monitoring, treatment, and self-management.

Findings could inform the implementation or revision of clinical practices, guide further research on implementation or scaling up, and generate hypotheses for future studies.

Anticipated Period of Performance:

The anticipated ordering period of each resultant Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract is approximately five years. Research activities and respective performance periods will be conducted and specified on a task order basis.

Draft Statement of Work (SOW) Feedback

Respondents are encouraged to provide comments and recommendations on the draft SOW, including opportunities to clarify requirements, improve performance outcomes, identify potential challenges, and recommend alternative or commercially available approaches.

Commercial Availability of Services

Based on preliminary market research, the Government anticipates that the contemplated research services may be noncommercial in nature. However, interested respondents are encouraged to identify comparable services available in the commercial marketplace. If so, describe which portions of the requirement could be met commercially and which would require customization, integration, or specialized development. Provide supporting information, including customary pricing practices and potential firm-fixed-price arrangements, if available. The Government seeks information regarding the commercial availability of the contemplated research services.

Respondents are encouraged to identify comparable services available in the commercial marketplace and describe which portions of the requirement could be met commercially and which would require study-specific customization, integration, or specialized development, considering the varying research designs, study sizes, durations, and complexity.

Respondents are encouraged to provide supporting information, including examples of comparable services offered to nongovernmental customers, customary commercial pricing practices, and potential firm-fixed-price arrangements, if available.

General Information

All interested organizations, regardless of business size, are encouraged to respond to this RFI.

Respondents may address the proposed requirement in its entirety, or in portions, and should identify the areas addressed in their response. The primary purpose of this RFI is to obtain industry feedback on the draft Statement of Work (SOW), assess the commercial availability of the contemplated services, and identify potential alternative approaches. Respondents may provide relevant experience or examples of comparable services to support their feedback;

however, formal capability statements are not required.

Responses must include the company name, Unique Entity ID from SAM.gov, physical address, and technical and administrative points of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses.

Respondents shall identify their business size status under the anticipated NAICS code.

Respondents will not receive individualized feedback.

Information Submission Instructions:

All responses to this RFI must be submitted electronically via email to Jordan Neal, Contract

Specialist, at Jordan.neal@nih.gov and Gannon White, Contracting Officer, at gannon.white@nih.gov, in either MS Word or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), by

Tuesday, November 17 at 4:00pm EST.

Please reference Notice Number “75N94027R00002” on all correspondence. All information furnished must be in writing. Questions must be in writing and emailed to the Contracting Officer and Contract Specialist.

Disclaimer and Important Notes:

This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work.

Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback regarding any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a solicitation may be published in SAM.gov. However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation. Any determination regarding competition will be made by the Government.

Confidentiality:

Responses to this notice should not include proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information.