Office of Research
Healthy Aging
Healthy ageing is fundamental for long-lived societies to thrive. As more individuals live longer lives, our focus must shift to developing the benefits these additional years can bring. This requires prioritizing health span and functional ability over lifespan, and recognizing that reaching advanced age with good health, autonomy, meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose is what makes a life well lived.
This opportunity takes a complex systems approach: supporting research on how modifiable environmental and contextual factors interact to shape functional ability in later life. The aim is to enable people to remain healthy, to contribute to society, and to pursue what matters to them for as long as possible.
We seek research projects that:
- Go beyond single-cause thinking. Study how environmental and contextual factors interact to shape functional ability in later life.
- Show the interaction, not just the factor. Capture pathways of risk and resilience, and identify which features are modifiable enough to act on.
- Match method to ambition. Use systems thinking in established designs, or complex-systems methods directly and translate findings into scalable, context-sensitive solutions.
An application requires 2 project partners (PI and Co-PI) from different institutions. The PI needs to be from an academic research institution. Other partners or collaborators can be non-academic stakeholders.
Application Instructions
Please submit as one combined pdf labeled with PI’s Lastname, Firstname:
- A one‐page letter of intent with a description of proposed aims and approach.
- If the final application requires a statement of broader impacts, please summarize your plans to address the specific requirements on an additional page.
- CV (not biosketch) of the PI including past grant funding.
to limitedsubs@uw.edu by 5:00 PM Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Late pre-proposals will not be considered. Proposals are due to the sponsor 11/24/2026 so you will need to have your materials in to the Office of Sponsored Programs by 11/13/2026 if given the go‐ahead by the Limited Submissions review committee.
Inquiries and Contact Information
Investigators who identify a grant, award or fellowship program that restricts the number of applications that can be submitted from an Institution should immediately contact their Chairperson, Associate Dean for Research (or Dean, if no ADR) and the Office of Research (see below) if they intend to prepare a response. Failure to do so, or to meet the deadlines for submission of pre-proposal, will preclude submission of the application through the Office of Sponsored Programs.
For general inquiries, or to request a listing of a limited submission opportunity that should be but is not already listed, please email us at limitedsubs@uw.edu.