JACKSON, WI — Floor23 Digital is administering the Advancing the Inclusion of People with Disabilities in Clinical Research Challenge on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of the Director. The total prize purse from NIH for this Challenge is $1,000,000.
The Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI) within the NIH Office of the Director announced the Challenge. Through its Disability Health Research Program (DHRP), DPCPSI leads the strategic coordination of disability health research across NIH. In partnership with the National Cancer Institute, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institute of Nursing Research, and NIH Office of Disease Prevention, DPCPSI seeks to identify, recognize, and disseminate exemplary approaches to promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities in clinical research.
About the Challenge
More than one in four people in the United States has a disability, and nearly all Americans will experience disability at some point in their lives. Despite constituting a large portion of the American population, people with disabilities are often implicitly or explicitly excluded from being participants in clinical research without adequate scientific justification. When people with disabilities are appropriately included, clinical research is strengthened. People with disabilities experience many of the conditions under study, often at higher rates than people without disabilities, and their participation produces evidence that better reflects the populations that new interventions are intended to serve.
As the goal of the Challenge is broad adoption of exemplary approaches, submissions should include documents suitable for public dissemination, such as best practice resources, study protocols, standard operating procedures, toolkits, and training materials. In addition to receiving cash prizes, winners will have their materials publicly disseminated by NIH as models for investigators, institutions, sponsors, and institutional review boards across the clinical research enterprise.
Prizes
The total prize purse for the Challenge is $1,000,000. NIH anticipates awarding cash prizes of $50,000 for up to twenty winners. In addition to cash awards, prize-winning resources will be publicly amplified and disseminated by NIH for use by researchers and research institutions.
Key Dates
- Challenge Launch: September 28, 2026
- Submissions accepted through: January 15, 2027
- Winners announced: Spring 2027
How to Enter
Register and submit at disabilityinresearch.org.
About Floor23 Digital
Floor23 Digital LLC is a Woman-Owned Small Business that designs and administers federal prize competitions and open innovation challenges for agencies including NIH and NASA, powered by its proprietary Innobear challenge management platform.
