21-005724

Post Date/ Solicitation Issue Date

August 11, 2021 12:00 pm

Closing Response Date

August 21, 2021 1:00 pm

Proposed Award Date

August 24, 2021 12:00 pm

Project Title

NIMH Family Study

Contracting Office

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Small Business Size Standard

22,000,000

Estimated Period of Performance

for 9 months after award date

Delivery of Goods

n/a

Competition Status

Non-Competitive

Single-Sole Source Determination

The proposed vendor has been the lead collaborator on this study since its inception in 2005. He has developed, supervised, and oversaw the data management and analysis of EMA data in the family study. Dr. Swendsen will continue to assume the responsibilities in the scientific exploitation of the EMA component to this study as well as oversight of different team members in the development of data analytic plans and manuscript preparation.

This notice of proposed acquisition is posted as an intent to award a purchase order on a non-competitive basis to INTERNATIONAL BEHAVIORAL METHODS AND DEVELOPMENT located 221 Orangewood Drive, Healdsburg, California, 95448-4320.

Background/Description of Requirement

The NIMH Family Study is focused on mood disorders and its chief goals are to identify their diagnostic thresholds, subtypes, and boundaries with other disorders in order to identify the genetic and environmental risk factors for these conditions. The major research questions focus on the specificity of familial transmission of the mood disorder spectrum (i.e., symptoms, symptom clusters, subtypes) and the role of comorbidity with anxiety disorders and migraine in defining subtypes of mood disorders. Biologic factors underlying the major components of these disorders are studied in order to identify the core components of these conditions and familial endophenotypes that breed true in families, thereby more closely indexing the expression of underlying genes. The principal objective of the Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) component of this project is to apply new methodological techniques to overcoming barriers to the study of the inter-relationships between mood states and other regulatory systems including sleep, appetite, attention, and energy through the use of an ambulatory data collection procedure that is adapted to investigating discrete behaviors and symptom fluctuations over short time intervals. EMA minimizes retrospective recall biases and provides information concerning within-person variance in behaviors and symptoms that are necessary to identify causal factors separately from correlated variables. Specific Requirements: • Assist Dr. Merikangas in the transition of the current Android-based EMA system (developed by Dr. Swendsen) to multi-platform apps provided by other collaborators of the Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch. This transition will assure that current EMA question content remains identical in the new apps, as well as the assessment approach (identical scales, anchors, and wording) for each item. • Aid in the development of new EMA modules for the NIMH family study and collaborators in its larger research network that address study-specific topics. The first EMA module to be developed will provide assessment of suicidal ideation (SI) and self-harm, relying on the prior work of Dr. Swendsen on the topic and his validated protocol for the safe assessment of SI when using repeated assessments. • Aid in development of mobile cognitive tests to be administered through EMA that provide real-time assessments of executive performance, semantic memory, and episodic memory. These tests will be based in part on prototypes created by Dr. Swendsen and validated in diverse psychiatric samples, including mood disorders. • Implementation of EMA data analytic plans with the Principal Investigator in the development of publication strategies and priorities and supervise project staff in the exploitation of the EMA data and manuscript preparation (literature review, bias control, peer-review response, general public communication).