To help fulfill its role as the nation’s health protection agency, HHS’s CDC conducts and supports research, including prevention research. Prevention research includes applied public health research that develops and evaluates health promotion and disease prevention and control strategies that are community- and population-based. Through legislation enacted in 1984, Congress authorized, and CDC later established, the PRC program to fund health promotion and disease- prevention research. The legislation mandated that the PRCs to be funded be located at academic health centers capable of providing a multidisciplinary faculty with expertise in public health, relationships with professionals in other relevant fields, graduate training and demonstrated curricula in disease prevention, and a capability for residency training in public health or preventive medicine. The PRCs, the first of which were funded in 1986, also serve as demonstration sites for the use of new and innovative applied public health research and activities for disease prevention and health promotion. The PRC program is administered by CDC’s NCCDPHP. CDC makes its PRC awards through a competitive process; there are currently 26 PRCs, located in 24 states, funded for fiscal years 2014 through 2019. Funded PRCs are able to compete for SIPs, which were created by CDC in 1993 to provide supplemental funding to the PRCs to design, test, and disseminate effective applied public health prevention research strategies. According to CDC, eligibility for SIPs is limited to PRCs because the centers are “uniquely positioned to oversee, coordinate, and perform applied public health research that promotes the field of health promotion and disease prevention research due to their established relationships with multidisciplinary faculty and community partners.” Subject matter experts (SME) within CDC sponsoring units propose potential SIPs each year, depending on unit needs—e.g., particular research gaps that have been identified—and available funding. After being approved by the leadership of the sponsoring unit, the sponsoring units’ proposals are reviewed internally by NCCDPHP and others before being included in a SIP FOA. The SIP FOA is assembled by NCCDPHP’s extramural research group, and when complete, is posted publicly on the grants.gov website. SIP applications are subject to an external peer review process, as well as a secondary internal review by CDC officials. SIP awards are generally made on the last day of the fiscal year. Sponsoring units fund both individual SIPs, which are awarded to one or more PRCs to work independently on a particular research topic, and thematic network SIPs, which are awarded to multiple PRCs to work collaboratively on a research agenda related to a specific health issue, such as cancer prevention or brain health. In fiscal years 2014, 2015, and 2016, CDC announced the availability of 51 SIPs—of which 43 were funded. The 43 funded SIPs resulted in a total of 76 awards to 22 of the 26 PRCs. (See appendix 1 for detailed information on the SIPs awarded in fiscal years 2014 through 2016, including information on SIPs awarded by sponsoring unit, SIP funding by PRC, and a complete listing of all SIPs awarded during this period.) CDC publicly discloses information on SIP awards on its website. Specifically, CDC has a PRC project database on its website that, as of July 2017, included information on SIPs from fiscal years1999 through 2015, as well as other information related to the PRCs. The project database includes the SIP number, project title, principal investigator, PRC funded, and the CDC sponsoring unit. It does not include the amount of the funding. In general, CDC officials we spoke with told us they will choose the SIP mechanism when seeking to fund prevention research that is community- based and would benefit from having access to a multidisciplinary group of researchers. Specifically, CDC officials from most of the sponsoring units we spoke to told us that they use the SIP mechanism when community participation is important to the research. For example, one sponsoring unit used a SIP for the development and testing of an integrated comprehensive communication strategy to promote vaccination for the human papilloma virus in the United States. The SIP was focused on developing strategies that engaged local or regional health systems, community-based organizations, and state health departments as key community partners, in order to enhance the acceptability of the vaccination among parents with vaccine-eligible children and to increase the likelihood that a provider would recommend the vaccination. CDC officials from one sponsoring unit also told us they use the SIP mechanism when they need to engage community leaders and members of the public in order to answer the research questions. For example, CDC used the SIP mechanism to fund a research project focused on enhancing the knowledge, skills, and capacity of community health advocates and leaders from community-based organizations, with the goal to provide participants with the skills necessary to assess local community health needs in order to improve community health. According to CDC, an important aspect of the research was the evaluation of whether there was an increase in the skills and leadership capacities of participants and their influence on local improvements in their communities. In addition, CDC officials told us that they choose the SIP mechanism to conduct research when seeking to access researchers who have established partnerships with diverse population groups across the country. PRCs are located across the United States and are expected to have cultivated relationships with their local communities. For example, one sponsoring unit used a SIP to fund research on the barriers to colorectal cancer screening among South Central Asian immigrants, primarily Indians and Pakistanis, who have been shown to have low screening rates. The purpose of the research was to inform the development of culturally relevant strategies to increase colorectal screening. As such, to be awarded the SIP, a PRC had to demonstrate that it had established relationships within the South Central Asian community and an ability to recruit from these populations. In contrast, CDC officials explained that they would not choose the SIP mechanism if the desired research would be better suited for an entity other than an academic health center. For example: Officials from one sponsoring unit told us that a different mechanism was used for a project testing obesity prevention and management strategies because the project required working directly with health care service providers in the community, such as federally qualified health centers. Officials from another sponsoring unit chose not to use a SIP for a project to evaluate vaccine impact on recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (a disease in which tumors grow in the respiratory tract). This research was being conducted by the providers who care for the patients, as opposed to academic researchers. CDC officials provided examples of other instances when they would not use a SIP, and instead choose another mechanism to support the desired research. Specifically, officials from one sponsoring unit told us that when conducting a research project related to cervical cancer, they did the work through a contract in order to allow the SME to direct the research protocol, which included collaboration with organizations that maintained cancer data, as well as the deliverables and timeline for completion of the work. Sponsoring unit officials also told us that they will not choose the SIP mechanism when the research they want to fund is not focused on public health prevention, such as when the research is clinical or laboratory based, or when the timing of the research does not align with the PRC funding cycle (e.g., a longitudinal study or a study that would cross two PRC funding cycles). CDC officials told us that CDC SMEs’ relationships and collaboration with experts in the field—including federal and nonfederal experts—help inform the development of the research funding opportunities made available through SIPs, as well as other mechanisms. In our prior work, we found that interagency collaboration, which can include information sharing and communication among federal experts, may reduce the likelihood of unnecessary duplication. According to officials from all of the sponsoring units we spoke with, SMEs have developed collaborative relationships with federal and nonfederal experts in their fields; these relationships develop through SMEs’ participation in workgroups, advisory committees, and joint projects, as well as through informal interactions at in-person meetings and conferences. (See table 1 for examples of the workgroups and advisory committees in which CDC SMEs participate.) These interactions, as well as the SME’s review of the scientific and nonscientific literature, are used to determine gaps in knowledge and inform the research proposed to be funded through SIPs or other mechanisms. CDC SMEs’ collaboration with federal and nonfederal experts may lead to the development of specific research projects that are funded through a SIP. For example: SMEs from one sponsoring unit identified a series of research gaps that existed within skin cancer prevention while working on the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Skin Cancer Report with multiple federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Cancer Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of the Surgeon General. CDC developed a SIP to address one of these gaps— assessing the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about skin cancer in order to develop and test communication strategies for skin cancer prevention, specifically for adults aged 18 to 49. SMEs from another sponsoring unit participate in the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking with 15 federal partners, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, and NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. According to CDC, this group meets regularly to discuss their work and efforts to address prevention of underage drinking. Based on this collaboration and the review of other resources, including research projects and reports by committee members, CDC SMEs determined there was a gap in knowledge related to monitoring youth exposure to alcohol marketing on the Internet, and developed and awarded a SIP in 2014 to address this issue.