Frequently Asked Questions on Open Funding Opportunities
EPA-OCSPP-OPP-2024-005, -006, and –007
EPA has published three new funding opportunities to support pesticide safety education for farmworkers, training for health care providers to better address pesticide-related illness, and technical assistance to support managing these grants. A total of almost $10 million will be awarded to at least four grantees to carry out this work over five years. For more information, please see Pesticide Cooperative Agreements.
- How are these agreements different than previous EPA pesticide safety cooperative agreements?
- Are governments (such as state governments) or Institutes of Higher education (such as universities) eligible to apply for the Pesticides Health Care Initiative?
- Can organizations outside the U.S. apply for the Farmworker Training and Education Program?
1. How are these agreements different than previous EPA pesticide safety cooperative agreements?
Historically, EPA has funded programs to do the following:
- Train healthcare providers on the prevention, recognition, treatment, and management of pesticide illness;
- Give the required annual Worker Protection Standard pesticide safety trainings to farmworkers and create training materials;
- Create national pesticide educational resources.
More recently, the educational resources grant has included a smaller-scale subaward program to support community-based pesticide safety projects.
These Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) place more emphasis on tailoring pesticide safety trainings, materials, and outreach to farmworkers’ educational needs, taking culture, language, and reading levels into account. They also seek to meaningfully involve communities in projects that affect them. For example, materials created under one of the Farmworker Training and Education program agreements must be piloted with farmworkers, while the Pesticides Health Care Initiative requires a partnership with a local organization to put resources and trainings into practice.
Unlike previous agreements, eligibility for these NOFOs is also more limited, with a greater emphasis on nonprofits and community-based organizations. Please see the NOFOs for the eligibility criteria, as they differ for each program.
2. Are governments (such as state governments) or Institutes of Higher education (such as universities) eligible to apply for the Pesticides Health Care Initiative?
Government entities and institutes of higher education are not eligible to apply as the lead applicant. However, they are eligible to apply as part of a coalition application. The lead applicant in the coalition must be a nonprofit organization with demonstrated experience in providing training or technical assistance to health care providers who serve farmworker populations.
3. Can organizations outside the U.S. apply for the Farmworker Training and Education Program?
There is no threshold eligibility criterion specifically prohibiting organizations outside the U.S. from applying. However, the goals and objectives of the Farmworker Training and Education Program all support a regulation applicable only in the U.S. (the Worker Protection Standard). Any applicant must have a plan to fulfill the goals and objectives in support of U.S. regulations.