Alzheimer’s Research Program Transforming Care Award (FY26)
The Defense Health Agency’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs has opened the FY26 Alzheimer’s Research Program Transforming Care Award. The mechanism supports clinical research and clinical trials evaluating interventions, innovations and solutions across dementia care for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and their care partners. Roughly $5.4 million is available to fund approximately three awards in this round.
The programme is built around non-incremental research that delivers practical solutions for the AD/ADRD community and military health. Funded work is expected to improve quality of life, reduce caregiver burden and increase support for those living with a dementia diagnosis. Studies might address long-term care, aging in place, psychosocial wellness, navigating diagnosis and care paths for Service Members, Veterans and their Families, or evaluation of new interventions for individuals and their caregivers. Research addressing health disparities in AD/ADRD is encouraged, as are studies leveraging existing cohorts or datasets and cohorts of people aged 65 and under.
Several requirements shape what fits. Preliminary data are required. A draft research manual must be submitted to support consistency and replicability. Community collaboration is required for any research prospectively enrolling human subjects, meaning shared ownership of the project between scientific investigators and community members, not consultation as an afterthought. Clinical trials are allowed, but trials solely testing pharmacological interventions are out of scope. Animal models are not permitted.
Funding and duration
Single PI applications are capped at $1.6 million total costs across the project. A Career Initiation or Transition Partnership Option allows two PIs to apply jointly, with a combined cap of $1.9 million across two separate awards. The maximum period of performance is four years. Indirect costs follow each organisation’s negotiated rate.
Eligibility
Applicants must hold an independent investigator position at an eligible organisation. Postdoctoral and clinical fellows do not qualify. Extramural and intramural Department of War organisations are eligible, including foreign and domestic, for-profit and nonprofit entities. Under the CIT Partnership Option, at least one investigator must meet the Career Initiation criteria (three to seven years post-terminal degree, in a first independent role with limited support or publications) or Career Transition criteria (any level, new to military health, TBI or AD/ADRD fields). No individual may be named as PI on more than four TrCA applications.
Key dates
- Pre-application due: 22 June 2026, 5pm ET
- Invitations to submit full application: 10 August 2026
- Full application due: 24 September 2026, 11:59pm ET
- Peer review: December 2026
- Programmatic review: February 2027
Pre-applications are submitted through eBRAP. Full applications go through Grants.gov for extramural organisations or eBRAP for intramural DOW organisations. SAM.gov, eBRAP and Grants.gov registrations all need to be active before submission, and registration alone can take several weeks. The full program announcement (HT942526AZRPTrCA) sits on the CDMRP website alongside the General Application Instructions, which must be read in parallel.
Visit funding web page
(https://cdmrp.health.mil/funding/azrp)
