The National Cancer Institute has opened RFA-CA-27-007, NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Community Sites (UG1 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). NCORP Community Sites are healthcare systems, consortia of healthcare systems, or consortia of community hospitals, oncology practices, public hospitals, and other healthcare centers that enroll participants in NCI cancer control, prevention, treatment, imaging, and care-delivery research conducted through NCORP and the National Clinical Trials Network.
Deadline: September 18, 2026 at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. The opportunity opened August 18, 2026 and expires September 19, 2026.
Funding: NCI intends to commit $73 million in FY2027 for up to 50 awards across the NCORP Community Sites and Academic Community Sites competitions. Budgets are not formally capped but must reflect actual project needs and should be based on projected annual participant accrual plus the infrastructure required to support accrual at affiliate sites. Applicants should request a six-year project period. Cost sharing is not required.
Eligibility and prime-applicant controls: Although the standard organization-type table includes higher education institutions, nonprofits, for-profits, governments, Tribal entities, school districts, housing authorities, and other organization classes, the NOFO imposes a controlling additional requirement: the prime applicant must be a healthcare-providing entity such as a consortium of community hospitals and/or oncology practices or an integrated care system. NCI-designated Cancer Centers and other academic centers are not eligible under this Community Sites NOFO. NCTN Lead Academic Participating Site awardees are also excluded, and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and military treatment facilities cannot serve as the prime. Foreign organizations and foreign components are not allowed.
Program readiness: Community Sites must have the governance, clinical-research infrastructure, affiliate structure, regulatory and quality-assurance capability, patient data protections, trial-selection processes, and participant-accrual capacity needed to operate as part of the national NCORP network. Adult or combined adult/pediatric sites are expected to meet or exceed 70 new unique patient/participant accruals annually, and pediatric sites 50, distributed across the required research categories. Sites must also be capable of participation and accrual to NCTN treatment trials.
Submission controls: Applications must follow the NIH Research (R) Application Guide and the NOFO-specific UG1 instructions and are submitted electronically through NIH ASSIST, an institutional system-to-system solution through Grants.gov, or Grants.gov Workspace and tracked in eRA Commons. Required registrations must be complete before submission. The application includes detailed site and affiliate information, recent accrual history, research and leadership structure, regulatory and quality-assurance capability, budget justification tied to projected accrual, and NOFO-specific attachments and tables.
Atlas fit: This is a high-value healthcare and cancer-research opportunity, but Dr. Miltie should not be treated as an eligible direct prime merely because for-profit organizations appear in the generic organization table. The controlling additional eligibility requirement calls for a qualifying healthcare-providing Community Site entity with substantial oncology research infrastructure and accrual history. Preferred posture: Partner-Led / Eligible Healthcare System or Oncology Consortium. Route immediately to applicable state cancer centers, oncology networks, community hospitals, integrated health systems, and qualified research consortia. Any Dr. Miltie role should be evaluated only as a legitimate partner, subrecipient, or vendor role permitted by the prime applicant and NOFO.