Implementing Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Healthcare Systems Providing Women's Health Services | CDC RFA DD18 1802

Opportunity Information: Apply for CDC RFA DD18 1802

The CDC Notice of Funding Opportunity (CDC RFA DD18-1802) titled "Implementing Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Healthcare Systems Providing Women's Health Services" is a discretionary cooperative agreement aimed at reducing risky alcohol use among women of childbearing age by helping healthcare systems build alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI) into routine care. The core idea is to move beyond one-off screenings and instead embed SBI into the way clinics operate day to day, especially in settings that deliver women's health services and primary care. The opportunity frames risky alcohol use as a major, preventable driver of harm, linking it not only to immediate risks like motor vehicle crashes and intimate partner violence, but also to long-term health impacts including hypertension, liver disease, and certain cancers. It also explicitly highlights the connection to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, underscoring the importance of reaching women before and during pregnancy and in other reproductive health contexts.

The NOFO emphasizes that healthcare professionals are in a strong position to identify risky drinking early and intervene because they regularly see patients whose acute or chronic conditions may be caused or worsened by alcohol. Rather than focusing only on individual clinician behavior, the funding prioritizes system-level implementation, meaning applicants are expected to design clinic workflows, infrastructure, and organizational supports that make SBI easier to deliver consistently and at scale. Key implementation components include creating and rolling out a training and technical assistance plan so providers and staff know how to screen, provide brief interventions, and handle next steps. Applicants are also expected to develop and implement standard SBI protocols in primary care clinics, ensuring that screening tools, brief counseling approaches, and referral pathways are clear, repeatable, and aligned with routine clinical operations.

A major theme is adopting system-level strategies that increase uptake and consistency, particularly through electronic health record (EHR) integration and performance metrics. In practice, this can mean building validated alcohol screening questions into intake workflows, adding clinical decision supports or prompts for brief intervention, standardizing documentation fields, and creating reports that let leadership track screening rates and follow-up actions across sites or provider groups. Performance metrics are positioned as a way to support accountability and quality improvement, helping systems see where implementation is working and where it is stalling.

The NOFO also requires a strong evaluation plan focused on both feasibility and impact of the system-level approach. This is not just an academic evaluation; it is meant to produce practical evidence about what it takes to implement SBI in real-world women's health settings, what barriers arise, and what solutions are effective. Alongside evaluation, the opportunity calls for a dissemination plan so that promising models, lessons learned, and workable implementation strategies can be shared beyond the funded sites. Finally, applicants must propose a sustainability plan describing how the health system will maintain SBI practices after the funding period, which typically involves long-term workflow integration, staff training processes that survive turnover, ongoing data monitoring, and leadership commitment.

Expected performance outcomes are concrete and implementation-oriented. Awardees are expected to document provider and clinic readiness to conduct alcohol SBI, identify implementation barriers and propose solutions, and track clinic-level SBI data to show whether screening and brief intervention are actually being delivered. They are also expected to assess the use and effectiveness of system-level strategies such as EHR changes and performance measurement, which ties back to the program's emphasis on making SBI a standard, reliable part of care rather than an optional add-on.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD). It is listed under CFDA 93.073. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning a broad range of entities could apply, subject to any additional eligibility details in the full announcement. The award ceiling is $400,000, with an expected total of three awards. The NOFO was created March 16, 2018, with an original application due date of May 16, 2018, and electronic submissions due by 5:00 p.m. ET on the deadline date.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control - NCBDDD in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Implementing Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Healthcare Systems Providing Women's Health Services" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.073.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 16, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 16, 2018 Electronically submitted applications must be submitted no later than 500 p.m., ET, on the listed application due date.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $400,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 3 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for CDC RFA DD18 1802

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