National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Contracts Operations Branch, 6701 Rockledge Drive, Room 6100, MSC 7902, Bethesda, MD 20892

A -- CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH STUDY-CONTINUATION OF MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY FOLLOW-UP POC Patricia Smith, Contracting Officer, 301-435-0345 E-MAIL: click here to contact the Contracting Officer via e-mail., ps44b@nih.gov. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute intends to negotiate on a non-competitive basis with the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, University of Pittsburgh, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, University of California, Davis, and University of Vermont for a six year extension of contracts for continuation of the Cardiovascular Health Study (the Coordinating center, the four Field Centers and the Central Blood Analysis Laboratory.) Authority: 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1) as set forth in FAR 6.302-1. Since 1988, these centers have recruited, examined and followed a cohort of 5,888 persons aged 65 and older residing in four U.S. communities (Hagerstown, MD, Pittsburgh, PA, Winston-Salem, NC, Sacramento, CA) in a study of risk factors for the development and progression of coronary heart disease and stroke in the elderly. The extension of these contracts will require full comparability with the on-going study, covering: semi-annual telephone surveillance with study participants, obtain and review hospital discharge lists and medical records to ascertain and validate all cardiovascular events occurring in cohort members, death investigations, including, but not limited to abstracting, physician questionnaires, interviews with proxies, diagnostic classification of clinical events, including standardized reviews and adjudications, laboratory analyses for identification of potential new risk factors including performance of new genetic assays and other laboratory tests from the populations of the CHS cohort, maintenance and monitoring of the blood sample repository, and analysis and publication of study data. The incumbent contractors have the unique capability to provide these required services to the NHLBI for continuation of this study. Interested respondents must submit written capability statements demonstrating their ability to perform this research effort on the same study participants. Responses providing insufficient information for evaluation will not be considered. This is not a Request For Proposals. See Note 22. (0063)

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