Butler Hospital

Butler Hospital, a division of Care New England Health System, is a tax-exempt psychiatric hospital based in Providence, Rhode Island that acts as a recipient on federal research grants from the National Institutes of Health, primarily in the mental health, aging, and substance-abuse research domains. The hospital operates as both a prime grant recipient (57% of recent awards) and sub-recipient (43%), with no federal contract prime awardees in its footprint but substantial clinical research infrastructure supporting NIH-funded studies.

Butler Hospital's recent federal grant portfolio centers on mental health research and clinical trials. As a prime recipient, the hospital has received recent NIH awards including a $165,987 NIMH project grant for the SAFER project (Structuring Appropriate and Feasible Evaluations of Risk), addressing suicide risk management protocols for research involving high-risk college populations, effective May 2026 through April 2028 under CFDA 93.242 (Mental Health Research Grants). Other representative prime grants include an NIA project grant for peer narrative video interventions for chronic pain in older adults (effective September 2024 through August 2027), an NCCIH-funded investigation into yoga-based interventions for adolescent depression (effective September 2024 through December 2027), and a $4 million Healthcare Systems Bureau congressional appropriation for construction of a 25-bed short-stay psychiatric unit (September 2023 through September 2026). Butler also received NIDA funding for studies of cannabis use during the perinatal period, e-cigarette switching in methadone-maintained smokers, and behavioral interventions for substance-use disorders.

NIH dominates Butler Hospital's customer concentration. The National Institute on Aging accounts for 51 awards, the National Institute of Mental Health for 41 awards, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse for 21 awards — together representing 77% of recent awards. The National Institutes of Health broadly contributes 45 additional awards beyond the named institutes. The Veterans Health Administration's Veterans Integrated Service Network 1 holds three awards with $308 thousand combined potential value, representing the largest concentration by dollar magnitude, though this is atypical for Butler's NIH-dominated profile. Combined obligated dollars across all awards total $244.4 million against a combined potential value of $312 thousand, reflecting mature, invoiced research agreements rather than projected awards.

Activity has grown substantially year over year — fifteen awards in 2022 to forty-nine in 2024 — with eleven awards reaching ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months and therefore facing recompete. Butler's sub-recipient role spans a diverse set of research partners. Recent sub-awards include participation in the SAFER project under Brown University as prime (EMA protocol development and assessment), the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) trials under Washington University as sponsor (site investigator and clinical assessment responsibilities for multiple drug arms), the Alzheimer's Clinical Trials Consortium under USC as prime, and the CADASIL Consortium under the University of Wisconsin System (recruitment and biomarker collection for vascular dementia research). Butler sub-recipients contribute ecological momentary assessment protocol expertise, clinical trial site management, research staff supervision, and safety officer functions across primarily NIMH- and NIA-funded research.

Founded in 1844, Butler Hospital is the state's only nonprofit, free-standing psychiatric hospital and the major affiliated teaching hospital for psychiatry and behavioral health at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School. The hospital employs approximately 1,000 full-time and part-time clinical and non-clinical staff and serves as the flagship facility and base training site for Brown's general psychiatry residency program. Butler's research footprint reflects its clinical infrastructure and academic partnerships, concentrating on outcomes research, behavioral health intervention development, suicide prevention, substance-use disorders, and aging-related mental health conditions.