Comprehensive Cross-Cutting Prevention Opportunity to Decrease Harmful Behaviors and Increase Service Member Readiness and Performance

The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) is excited to post this announcement for a Request for Project Proposals (RPP) focused on optimizing health promotion via prevention initiatives for the military that provide education and skills, protective environments, and healthy climates and relationships in efforts to prevent various forms of violent, abusive, or harmful behaviors. This RPP focuses on three cross-cutting prevention topic areas: (1) FOCUS AREA #1: Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) (2) FOCUS AREA #2: Measurement and assessment (3) FOCUS AREA #3: Effective primary prevention programming Proposed work must be relevant to active duty Service Members and/or military beneficiaries, and ultimately impact the greater needs of the American public. BACKGROUND U.S. military personnel and their families face many challenges that threaten the readiness and resiliency of the force. The goal of this MTEC funding opportunity is to focus on preventive approaches and interventions designed to positively impact multiple outcomes including: Suicide ideation and behaviors and non-suicidal self-injury Sexual violence (sexual harassment and assault) Harassment (e.g., gender and racial discrimination, retaliation) Domestic abuse (intimate partner violence) Alcohol and substance use, misuse, and disorders Psychological health issues Currently, prevention initiatives targeting suicide, sexual violence, harassment, domestic abuse, alcohol and substance use, and psychological health issues, remain a top priority for the Department of Defense (DOD). Recent research highlights the interconnected relationships between common risk and protective factors and harmful behaviors, providing increasing evidence for the use of cross-cutting approaches to target shared risk and protective factors to simultaneously prevent multiple harmful behaviors and positively impact a broad array of outcomes. Critical gaps in research remain and must be addressed to improve the application of cross-cutting prevention within a military context. Research is needed to identify which programs and strategies have the strongest cross-cutting impacts on short, intermediate, and long-term outcomes. Although there is evidence for prevention effects on a broad array of behaviors for children and youth, violence prevention and psychological health, more research is needed to build a body of prevention evidence for adults and for military contexts. In addition, it is critical to take into account the unique life events, military career cycle, and organizational structure of the military. Examples include deployments, permanent changes of station (PCS), and the impact of combat, including combat-related traumatic brain injuries (TBI), psychosocial health, behaviors, relationships, and influence of teams and leaders. Preventive intervention approaches at multiple levels of social ecology (i.e., individual, relationship, community, and society) are critical to having a population-level impact on harmful behaviors. Therefore, the DOD seeks multi-level comprehensive prevention approaches that use multiple, cohesive approaches across social ecology to promote healthy behaviors and prevent unhealthy and unsafe behaviors, as well as to increase protective and reduce risk factors associated with experiencing or engaging in violent, harmful, or abusive behaviors. This MTEC opportunity focuses on three cross-cutting prevention topic areas: (1) community based participatory research, (2) measurement and assessment, and (3) effective primary prevention programming. Populations of Interest for this RPP Active duty, National Guard, Reserves, Military Service Academy Service Members, and/or Reserve Officers Training Corps Transitioning Service Members (i.e., Service Members preparing to enter or exit military service and Reserve/National Guard Service Members transitioning into or out of Active duty service/orders) Any dependents of the aforementioned Populations not of interest for this RPP Retired or Veteran status personnel FOCUS AREAS OF INTEREST The MTEC mechanism allows for and encourages collaboration between the Government sponsors/stakeholders as well as between awardees to accelerate development of solutions and maximize the benefit to Service Members and their Families. Offerors should be prepared to work collaboratively with other applicants or Government sponsors and subject matter experts to ensure application of projects to a military environment. Awardees will interact with Department of Defense and Service level offices (e.g., stakeholders, customers, end-users, and/or DOD partners). Awardees should be prepared to leverage metrics and outcomes identified by stakeholders across Military Services, to avoid duplication or trying to retrofit a metrics solution for systems that do not - talk to each other. Given the cross-cutting objective of this MTEC RPP, Offerors must address at least one of the following focus areas, but are strongly encouraged to consider addressing more than one focus area. FOCUS AREA #1 Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) - Use CBPR/participatory action research to enhance the military community relevance of research and to develop, assess, and sustain cross-cutting prevention that is culturally grounded in the military community(-ies). CBPR is defined as scientific inquiry conducted in a community with researchers and community members as partners. Community-partnered approaches to research offer the potential to generate better-informed hypotheses, develop more effective interventions, and enhance the translation of the research results into practice. Specifically involving members of local military communities in cross-cutting prevention research may improve the quality, impact, and applicability of the research to the military. Offerors are encouraged to: Identify cross-cutting risk and protective factors of greatest importance and relevance to military community members across multiple levels of social ecology model with a focus on community-level risk and protective factors; Investigate how military communities and civilian communities interact to influence the behavioral health, help-seeking behaviors, and access to services by Service Members and their families, including intimate partners; Collaborate with leadership (e.g., Commanders and Senior Leaders) to develop programs and implementation strategies that garner leadership buy-in and empowerment, and enhance structural, cultural and environmental relevance, and norms setting that promotes a culture of help-seeking, de-stigmatizes the receipt of behavioral health services, and enables participation in prevention programs; Collaborate with leadership (e.g., Senior Enlisted Advisors, Commanders, Command Triads) to develop culturally responsive programs or interventions that have positive valence, promote norms for respect, and reduce multiple forms of workplace mistreatment; Define the leadership behaviors required to develop, strengthen, or foster climates of mutual respect, identify contextual factors that promote or inhibit the demonstration of these behaviors; Identify and assess strategies to improve the community climate, environments, policies, resources and programs in order to address the community-identified priorities; and Identify and assess strategies to improve program utilization and access. FOCUS AREA #2 Measurement and Assessment: Novel methodologies to efficiently identify and/or collect short-, medium-, and long-term indicators of effectiveness of cross-cutting prevention programming. Common measurement is important across programs with diverse prevention objectives to better identify which promising programs have the best cross-cutting outcomes. Furthermore, cross-cutting prevention research is challenged by the need to potentially measure multiple outcomes, leading to multiple statistical tests and decreased study power. Development of an integrated cross-cutting measurement strategy and identification and validation of cross-cutting prevention outcome metrics can improve the science of cross-cutting prevention, while providing military-relevant measures and methods for evaluating program effectiveness. Proposed projects should advance the measurement and methodology for cross-cutting prevention research, including but not limited to: Develop and test an efficient, low-burden (monetary and/or time) solution for assessing cross-cutting prevention effort effectiveness that can be seamlessly integrated into workflow/efforts (e.g., a very brief set of common data elements (CDEs)/questions, leverage existing already collected data sources, and/or enhance existing records/data collected) and provide information to inform a feedback loop for continuous quality improvement; Develop and test tailored or timed interventions that might be initiated at key transitions such as when Service Members arrive at new units or deploy; Develop and validate streamlined CDEs for research into cross-cutting prevention, including measures at all levels of social ecology and with an emphasis on specifying military-specific risk and protective factors; Develop and validate new measures or measurement models for measuring impact across multiple behavioral health outcomes, e.g. development and validation of a prevention index and/or psychometric testing of novel measures and measurement models. As appropriate, the index measure(s) should leverage already collected data sources; Identify and validate common upstream risk and protective factors relevant to prevention of multiple behavioral outcomes; and Leverage existing data to develop and test analytic methods, strategies, or tools for assessing cross-cutting outcomes. FOCUS AREA #3 Effective Primary Prevention Programming: Develop and/or adapt and test primary prevention (addressing individual, relationship, team, leader, community, and/or systems-level aspects) programming for the military context. To advance cross-cutting prevention we must identify programs with the strongest cross-cutting impacts. This may require developing and testing new prevention programs and models that are developed with cross-cutting outcomes in mind, or alternately adapting and/or testing existing programs from one field of prevention for efficacy and effectiveness in positively impacting other key outcomes. For example, proposed studies may: Develop and/or adapt and test comprehensive cross-cutting prevention programs for use in the military to address factors across multiple levels of social ecology, including interdependence of factors across levels; Investigate appropriate and critical periods/periods of transition/time points for effective prevention program implementation; Pilot implementation of community models for implementing multiple strategies simultaneously or sequentially from the DODI 6400.09 & evaluate cross-cutting effectiveness; Develop, test, and improve interventions for use in the military that address developmental and social determinants of health (e.g., poverty; prevention of adverse childhood experiences among military children; housing, food and financial security especially during transition to civilian life); Develop and test workplace civility interventions that focus on the promotion of norms for mutual respect and the reduction of multiple forms of related negative behaviors (i.e., incivility, sexual harassment, and sexual assault); and Consider the use of sociometric research to tailor cross-cutting prevention programs to the needs of a population and/or individuals fitting certain characteristics measured via peer-nominations or self-nominations. POTENTIAL FOLLOW-ON TASKS There is potential for award of one or more follow-on tasks based on the success of any resultant Research Project Awards (subject to change depending upon Government review of work completed). Note that any potential follow on work is expected to be awarded non-competitively to resultant project awardees. Such follow-on work may include (but is not limited to) the following: Developing, testing and further refining prototypes and prototype methods for disseminating and implementing prototypes. POTENTIAL FUNDING AVAILABILITY AND POP The U.S. Government (USG) currently has available a total of approximately $11.3 million (M) for anticipated awards to be made during FY2021. The estimated total available funding per Focus Area is as follows (subject to realignment dependent on quality of submissions): 1) FOCUS AREA #1: Community Based Participatory Research ~ $4.7M 2) FOCUS AREA #2: Measurement and Assessment ~ $1.9M 3) FOCUS AREA #3: Effective Primary Prevention Programming ~ $4.7M MTEC anticipates that multiple awards (approximately 6 awards) will be made to qualified Offerors to accomplish the statement of work. It is possible that a single Offeror could receive an award for more than one Focus Area. The anticipated Period of Performance is expected to be up to 36 months for all focus areas. ACQUISITION STRATEGY This RPP will be conducted using a two-staged approach. In Stage 1, current MTEC members are invited to submit White Papers using the format contained in the RPP. The USG will evaluate White Papers submitted and will select White Papers that best meet their current priorities using the criteria specified in the RPP. Offerors whose solution is selected for further consideration based on White Paper evaluation will be invited to submit a proposal in Stage 2. Notification letters will contain specific Stage 2 proposal submission requirements. MTEC The MTEC mission is to assist the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) by providing cutting-edge technologies and supporting effective materiel life cycle management to transition medical solutions to industry that protect, treat, and optimize Warfighters health and performance across the full spectrum of military operations. MTEC is a biomedical technology consortium collaborating with multiple government agencies under a 10-year renewable Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), Agreement No. W81XWH-15-9-0001, with the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). MTEC is currently recruiting a broad and diverse membership that includes representatives from large businesses, small businesses, - nontraditional government contractors, academic research institutions, and not-for-profit organizations. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION White Papers are due no later than February 11, 2021 at 12:00pm Eastern Time. The RPP is posted to the MTEC website (mtec-sc.org) and this notice is posted to notify interested parties. MTEC membership is required for the submission of a White Paper in response to this MTEC RPP. Offerors submitting White Papers as the prime contractor must be MTEC members of good standing by February 6, 2021. To join MTEC, please visit http://mtec-sc.org/how-to-join/ A Proposers Conference via webinar will be held for interested parties to have their questions answered by the USG DoD after the RPP is posted. MTEC Members will be notified when the Proposers Conference is scheduled. POINTS OF CONTACT Please direct your inquiries and correspondence to the following contacts: Questions concerning contractual, cost or pricing related to this RPP should be directed to the MTEC Contracts Administrator at contact@example.gov Technical and membership questions - Dr. Lauren Palestrini, MTEC Director of Research, contact@example.gov Administrative questions - Ms. Kathy Zolman, MTEC Director of Program Operations, contact@example.gov