Funder: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Due Dates (Anticipated): May 2027 (Letter of Intent) | July 2027 (Full Proposal)
Funding Amounts: Up to $500,000 per project for up to 36 months; up to $8 million total
Summary: Supports community-rooted, action-oriented research that advances health equity through structural and systems change.
Key Information: Requires an established community–research partnership of at least two years and a community-based organization co-PI.
Description
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Equity Research for Action (HERA) program supports community-rooted research that turns evidence into actionable solutions for health equity. This call focuses on research responding to policy shifts and administrative actions, identifying root causes of structural discrimination, challenging harmful narratives, and disrupting misinformation and disinformation. Projects must address at least one of RWJF’s seven Prioritized Systems and inform systems change rather than primarily document disparities.
HERA emphasizes equitable partnerships in which communities help shape research questions, methods, interpretation, and action. It welcomes quantitative, qualitative, Indigenous, narrative, community-generated, and practice-based evidence suited to the research questions. National coordinating centers at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and Morehouse School of Medicine help develop and administer the program.
