USAMRDC/Defense Health Agency Broad Agency Announcement for Extramural Medical Research:

Below is a brief summary. Please check the full solicitation before applying (link in resources section).

Overview of the Funding Opportunity

This is the USAMRDC/Defense Health Agency Broad Agency Announcement for Extramural Medical Research, funding opportunity number HT942523SBAA1. It's continuously open for a full five-year window, October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2027, so there's no application deadline in the usual sense. Instead, organizations submit a pre-proposal through eBRAP at any time, and if invited, follow with a full proposal/application. This is one of the largest standing military medical research vehicles in the federal system, and it funds applied research, preclinical research, clinical research, and clinical trials across nine program areas ranging from infectious disease to psychological health to traumatic brain injury.

Program Areas of Interest

The BAA covers nine research portfolios:

• Military Infectious Diseases

  • This portfolio covers the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious diseases that threaten deployed forces, including combat-associated wound infections and multidrug-resistant organisms that show up more often as casualties move through prolonged care. DHA is organizing this work around three capability buckets: preventing infections before they start, diagnosing them fast in far-forward settings, and treating both initial infections and resistant strains across the full continuum of care. Companies with diagnostics, prophylactics, or wound-care technology aimed at combat environments are a strong fit here.

• Combat Casualty Care

  • This is the broadest and most technology-forward portfolio in the BAA. It spans point-of-need trauma care, resuscitation, complex injury and organ support, forward surgical care, wound and burn recovery, transport physiology, en route care, virtual health and monitoring, scalable triage, and autonomous systems. DHA is specifically calling out AI-enabled decision support, telemedicine platforms, and autonomous or robotic evacuation and care technology as capability gaps, which makes this the natural landing spot for medtech and defensetech companies building anything that helps stabilize, monitor, or move a casualty when evacuation is delayed or contested.

• Traumatic Brain Injury

  • This program funds diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of TBI across the full severity spectrum, from mild concussion to penetrating injury, including blast overpressure and polytrauma cases. Focus areas include noninvasive far-forward assessment tools, fluid-based biomarkers, minimally invasive intracranial access, and return-to-duty validation. Any TBI-related clinical research funded here that includes 50 or more subjects has to be shared through the DOD-NIH FITBIR data system, so companies should budget for that requirement. Training, chronic TBI management, neurodegenerative disease, and spinal cord injury are explicitly out of scope.

• Psychological Health

  • This portfolio funds research that assesses, protects, and optimizes the psychological readiness of Service Members, their families, and the broader military community. It's organized around seven capability areas: objective assessment tools, countermeasures tailored to military community needs, prevention strategies against emerging threats, better models of care for both early intervention and tailored treatment, return-to-duty guidelines, and tools that help Service Members and units build psychological readiness. It's intentionally broad across clinical conditions rather than tied to one specific diagnosis.

• Sensory Systems

  • This program covers pain, ocular, auditory, and vestibular injuries and illnesses tied to military service. The capability requirements focus on mechanistic characterization of injury, better assessment and diagnostic tools, point-of-injury stabilization, and treatment development, with named focus areas in pain control and anesthesia, temporary corneal repair, and auditory injury assessment. Chronic pain, regenerative or transplant approaches, and anything overlapping with TBI are out of scope.

• Musculoskeletal Injury

  • This portfolio funds prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal injuries, with the goal of reducing injury risk and speeding safe return to duty. Priority areas include rehabilitation interventions and technologies usable in pre-hospital settings, therapeutics that accelerate recovery, and broader musculoskeletal health preservation. Spinal cord injury treatment is excluded.

• Environmental Exposures

  • This program addresses health threats from extreme heat and cold, high altitude, military diving, toxic exposures, aviation medicine, and vibration or acceleration, across basic, applied, and advanced technology development research. Weaponized CBRN, blast injury, infectious disease, and noise are handled elsewhere in the BAA and are out of scope here. This is a narrower portfolio but a real fit for companies with environmental monitoring or countermeasure technology relevant to operational medicine.

• Directed Energy/Radiation Health

  • This portfolio splits into two lanes. Directed energy research looks at distinguishing a harmless "bioeffect" from an actual adverse health effect following radiofrequency, optical, or acoustic exposure, with an eye toward informing safety standards and clinical guidelines. Radiation health research covers pre-exposure prophylaxis, biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment, and characterization of radiation injury mechanisms, including combined injuries where radiation exposure overlaps with trauma like hemorrhage or burns.

• DOD Working Dogs

  • This is the only portfolio focused on military working dogs rather than human Service Members. It funds research into canine musculoskeletal injury prevention, wound recovery and therapeutics, and pain management, including breed and genetics-based risk factors and return-to-duty protocols for MWDs. It's a small niche but a real one, and it's worth flagging for any client with veterinary or animal health technology.

Each portfolio has its own capability requirements and detailed Research Areas of Interest laid out in Appendix I, and applicants are expected to align tightly to those before writing a pre-proposal. A few areas stand out for dual-use technology companies: Combat Casualty Care explicitly calls out autonomous systems, AI-enabled clinical decision support, and virtual health/telemedicine platforms as capability gaps, and Traumatic Brain Injury calls for noninvasive diagnostic tools and fluid-based biomarkers. Environmental Exposures and Directed Energy/Radiation Health are narrower but still open to biotech and medtech companies with relevant countermeasure or biomarker technology.

Funding and Award Structure

There's no funding ceiling or floor specified. Budgets should scale to the complexity of the proposed work, and awards can take the form of a grant, cooperative agreement, procurement contract, or Other Transaction Agreement for research or prototypes, at the government's discretion. Assistance agreements can run up to 4 years, contracts up to 5 years, and no proposal will be funded more than 24 months after it's submitted. There's no cost-sharing requirement in the general case.

Eligibility

Eligibility is broad: for-profit, nonprofit, academic, and public/private organizations of any size can apply, including international entities, as long as they're extramural to DOD (FFRDCs and DOD intramural investigators are excluded from direct awards, though teaming and collaborator arrangements are allowed). Small businesses, including veteran-owned, HUBZone, and woman-owned firms, get preference for subaward participation. Awards go to organizations, not individuals, so the PI needs an eligible organizational home.

Submission Process

This is a two-step process. Step one is a pre-proposal/pre-application submitted through eBRAP.org at any time before the BAA closes. It has to describe a specific idea or project tied to one of the nine program areas above, no vague capability statements. If DHA likes it, the organization is invited to submit a full proposal through Grants.gov. Because this BAA never closes and reopens on a schedule, companies with a clear technical fit can move whenever they're ready rather than waiting on a cycle.

Why This Matters for BW&CO Clients

This BAA is a strong long-running fit for any client doing combat casualty care tech, TBI diagnostics or biomarkers, psychological health tools, sensory injury devices, or musculoskeletal recovery technology, especially companies with AI-enabled monitoring, autonomous care, or diagnostic platforms that map to the Combat Casualty Care and TBI focus areas. Because there's no deadline pressure, this is a good one to keep in the pipeline as a standing opportunity rather than a one-time push.

FAQs

Is there a deadline to apply for this BAA?
No. It's continuously open from October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2027. Organizations can submit a pre-proposal at any time before it closes.

How do I actually apply?
It's a two-step process. First you submit a pre-proposal/pre-application through eBRAP.org describing a specific project idea tied to one of the nine program areas. If DHA is interested, you're invited to submit a full proposal through Grants.gov.

How much funding is available, and is there a cap on award size?
There's no specified funding limit and no set number of awards. Budgets should be sized to the complexity of the proposed research, and the government funds proposals based on technical merit, program fit, and available funding, which varies year to year.

What kind of award will I get, a grant or a contract?
That's up to the government. Awards can be procurement contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or Other Transaction Agreements for research or prototypes. The choice depends on the nature of the work and the relationship the government wants with the recipient.

How long can the project run?
Assistance agreements (grants and cooperative agreements) can run up to 4 years. Contracts can run up to 5 years. Regardless of instrument type, no proposal will be considered for funding more than 24 months after it was submitted.

Is cost-sharing required?
No, not in the general case. There's no cost-sharing or matching requirement to be eligible, except in specific situations involving Other Transaction Agreements, where separate cost-sharing rules under 10 USC 4021/4022 or 32 CFR 37 apply.

Who's eligible to apply?
Any extramural organization: academic institutions, biotech and medtech companies, foundations, non-DOD government agencies, and research institutes, regardless of nationality. FFRDCs can't receive awards directly but can team with eligible organizations. DOD intramural investigators can't apply directly either, though they can participate as named collaborators with command authorization.

Do awards go to individuals or organizations?
Organizations only. A principal investigator has to be affiliated with an eligible organization to be part of a proposal.

Does this BAA fund clinical trials?
Yes. It supports applied research, preclinical research, clinical research, and clinical trials. Proposals involving a clinical trial have additional requirements laid out in Appendix II, including IRB-approved informed consent forms posted to a public federal website.

What happens if I want continuation or follow-on funding?
You'll need to submit a new pre-proposal and go through the invitation process again. Continuation funding isn't automatic.

Are there research areas that are explicitly out of scope?
Yes, and they vary by program. Examples include weaponized CBRN, blast, infectious disease, and noise under Environmental Exposures, chronic pain and regenerative/transplant work under Sensory Systems, and spinal cord injury under both TBI and Musculoskeletal Injury. Check Appendix I for the specific program you're targeting before writing a pre-proposal.

Where can I find the detailed research priorities for each program?
Appendix I of the BAA lists Research Areas of Interest for all nine portfolios in detail, and DHA strongly encourages applicants to review those before drafting anything.