A Medical Device Daily

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported the release of $120 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for prevention and wellness programs for U.S. states and territories, building on the recent announcement of the $373 million funding opportunity for communities and tribes around the country.

In all, the comprehensive Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative will make $650 million available for public health efforts to address obesity, increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and decrease smoking.

The $120 million in cooperative agreements will be awarded to states and territories for three components: statewide policy and environmental change, tobacco cessation through quitlines and media campaigns, and special initiatives to create health-promoting policies and environments. For the first two components, dollar amounts awarded to each state and territory will be based on population size and number of smokers. For the third component, states will apply for special funds through a competitive process based on the potential health impact of the proposed activities. States and territories will have two years to complete their work. They will coordinate their efforts with other Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiatives in large cities, urban areas, small cities, rural areas, and tribal areas.

Funded projects will emphasize state-level policy and environmental changes that will help communities and schools support healthy choices. For example, states will make use of their collective purchasing power to improve the selection and availability of healthy foods in public venues.

The HHS also said that there would be $40 million in grants to 69 grantees in 41 states and the District of Columbia to help them find and enroll children who are uninsured but eligible for either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Recognizing that millions of children are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, but are therefore needlessly uninsured, the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) set aside $100 million for fiscal years 2009-2013 expressly to help find and enroll eligible children. Of the total outreach amount, $80 million will be given to states and other organizations, $10 million to Tribal organizations and $10 million for a national outreach effort. The awards are for a two year period ending December 31, 2011 which will then be followed by a second round of $40 million in new grants.

In other grants news:

• Expression Analysis (Durham, North Carolina) a provider of genomic services for clinical trials and research, reported a family of grants focused on one unifying purpose: To accelerate research into complex diseases and aid researchers in unlocking biological mysteries.

Dedicated to a deeper understanding of human health and disease, the grant will award four deserving researchers access to Expression Analysis' state-of-the-art services. Four grants will be awarded; two focusing on genome-wide association studies and two on follow-up to GWAS.

• Parabon NanoLabs (PNL; Reston Virginia), a manufacturer of nano-enabled products, reported its award of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant. The funds will be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the company's new single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) "SNP chip" to rapidly verify identity and kinship using DNA. The goal is to design a briefcase-size biometrics device that will process a DNA sample and determine identity or kinship with an accuracy of 99.99%, in under 45 minutes, at a cost of less than $50.

Parabon's immediate goal is to develop an easy-to-use, desktop biometric device that, in the future, can be further miniaturized to produce a handheld, high-speed biometric device. The initial device will be briefcase-sized, capable of being brought into the field as a single unit, but its modular design will allow for multiple DNA analyses to be conducted simultaneously, for situations where a higher throughput is necessary. SNPs are fundamentally conducive to miniaturization because they do not require the electrophoresis readout process that STRs require.

• Aphios (Woburn, Massachusetts) reported that it has been awarded a RC-1 Challenge grant (No. 1RC1HL102822-01) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institute of Health's (NIH) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to develop a generally-applicable pathogen inactivation technology for blood products.

The recent outbreaks of pandemic strains of the influenza virus such as the H1N1 swine flu, the worldwide AIDS epidemic and the periodic emergence of Ebola and SARS have highlighted a persistent concern in the health care community the need for effective pathogen inactivation and removal techniques for human blood plasma and plasma-derived products. There are also a number of emerging viruses such as West Nile and the H5N1 bird flu, and a number of potential bioterrorism pathogens such as B. anthracis, Yersinia pestis (plaque), Brucella and smallpox that are of concern to the safety of the human plasma supply chain. In addition to viruses and bacteria, parasites such as Babesia spp. and Plasmodium spp. are major threats of spreading diseases through transfusion.