The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to advance system-level approaches to improve patient safety by improving healthcare worker safety and well-being. Patient safety cannot be fully achieved without healthcare worker safety and well-being. This NOFO will contribute to AHRQ s goal of reinvigorating the patient safety movement by adding fresh perspectives and insights of healthcare professionals to efforts to improve patient safety.

Patient safety requires a foundation of safe and healthy healthcare workers. Healthcare workers' well-being depends, in part, on their ability to provide high-quality, safe care, and to have control and empowerment to impact the systems that affect this ability. Healthcare delivery systems can support or limit the ability of healthcare workers to provide such care, and healthcare workers have unique insights into the capabilities and hazards of healthcare delivery systems, along with varying opportunities to improve them.

Healthcare delivery involves dynamic interactions between various groups of healthcare workers (e.g., actions of hospital healthcare workers may impact emergency department healthcare workers) as well as interactions between different types of healthcare providers, and different organizational or administrative levels. AHRQ encourages grant applications that are designed to improve the interrelated systems and processes embedded in healthcare delivery in various healthcare settings (e.g., ambulatory, prehospital, emergency, various inpatient services, post-acute or long-term care, including medical, surgical, and mental health care settings) in order to support healthcare worker safety and well-being, and, ultimately, patient safety. Grant applications must include licensed healthcare professionals (e.g., physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, therapists) affiliated with eligible organizations as PIs, Co-PIs, Senior and/or Key Personnel in the application's proposed development and implementation activities.