Strengthening High Quality Laboratory Services Scale-Up for HIV Diagnosis, Care, Treatment and Monitoring in Malawi under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) | CDC RFA GH15 155102CONT16

Opportunity Information: Apply for CDC RFA GH15 155102CONT16

This funding opportunity, titled "Strengthening High Quality Laboratory Services Scale-Up for HIV Diagnosis, Care, Treatment and Monitoring in Malawi under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)," is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continuation cooperative agreement focused on improving and expanding laboratory services that support the full HIV care continuum in Malawi. In practical terms, the opportunity is meant to sustain and build on prior CDC-supported work that helps ensure people can be accurately diagnosed with HIV, enrolled into care, started and maintained on treatment, and routinely monitored using reliable laboratory testing systems. The emphasis on "high quality" signals that the work is not only about increasing access or volume of testing, but also about strengthening the systems, standards, and oversight needed so results are accurate, timely, and clinically useful.

A key point is that this is a continuation award, not an open competition. The announcement states that the funds are intended only for grantees previously awarded under the earlier funding opportunity CDC-RFA-GH15-1551, which has the same program focus and title. That means new applicants should not expect to be eligible to apply; instead, the CDC is extending support to existing partners already implementing this laboratory scale-up effort in Malawi. The opportunity category is explicitly listed as "Continuation," reinforcing that it is designed to maintain momentum from an existing project rather than launch a new one.

The mechanism is a cooperative agreement, which typically indicates substantial involvement from the CDC during implementation. In cooperative agreements, the recipient carries out day-to-day project activities, but the federal agency often provides technical direction, collaboration, and oversight. For a laboratory strengthening program, that can translate into coordinated planning with CDC experts, alignment with PEPFAR priorities, shared performance monitoring, and technical guidance on laboratory quality management, testing algorithms, and network optimization.

Administratively, the opportunity is categorized under the health funding activity area and is associated with CFDA number 93.067, a CDC assistance listing that commonly aligns with global HIV/AIDS activities supported under PEPFAR. The funding opportunity number is CDC RFA GH15 155102CONT16, indicating it is a continuation linked to the GH15-1551 solicitation and a continuation cycle identified by "CONT16." The agency is the CDC, and the announcement record shows an original closing date of 2015-12-06 with a creation date of 2015-10-06, which fits the continuation context: the formal notice exists to authorize continued funding to existing recipients rather than to solicit new applications over a long competitive period.

While the posted record does not provide a dollar amount (the award ceiling is listed as 0 and expected awards are not specified), the program description makes the intent clear: to continue financing work that scales up and strengthens laboratory services for HIV diagnosis, care, treatment, and monitoring in Malawi under PEPFAR. In a country program context, this kind of laboratory strengthening generally supports core HIV services such as HIV testing confirmation, early infant diagnosis, viral load monitoring for treatment effectiveness, quality assurance systems, laboratory workforce development, specimen referral networks, supply chain reliability for reagents and consumables, equipment maintenance, data systems for laboratory reporting, and adherence to quality standards that improve clinical decision-making. The listing does not spell out these components, but they are the typical operational areas implied by "strengthening high quality laboratory services" across diagnosis and monitoring, especially within a PEPFAR-supported national scale-up.

Overall, this opportunity is best understood as a CDC/PEPFAR continuation cooperative agreement to sustain and advance existing laboratory system improvements for HIV services in Malawi, restricted to prior awardees from the earlier GH15-1551 award and structured for ongoing collaboration between CDC and the recipient organizations to maintain quality, expand coverage, and support effective HIV treatment monitoring through dependable laboratory capacity.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Strengthening High Quality Laboratory Services Scale-Up for HIV Diagnosis, Care, Treatment and Monitoring in Malawi under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.067.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2015-10-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2015-12-06. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for CDC RFA GH15 155102CONT16

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