FY 2022 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices | O BJS 2022 171263

Opportunity Information: Apply for O BJS 2022 171263

The FY 2022 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices opportunity is a discretionary cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), focused on administering the 2023 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices (CMEC). The broader context BJS highlights for this work is supporting priorities such as civil rights and racial equity, improving access to justice, strengthening community safety, protecting the public from evolving threats, supporting victims and justice-involved individuals, and building trust between law enforcement and communities. Within that larger mission, this project is essentially a nationwide data collection effort designed to produce an updated, comprehensive picture of how publicly funded medical examiner and coroner offices operate and what resources and practices they use to conduct medicolegal death investigations.

The core purpose of the CMEC is to collect updated information on all eligible public medical examiner and coroner (ME/C) offices responsible for medicolegal death investigation (MDI), with particular emphasis on operational capacity and practice. The census is meant to capture practical, system-level details such as office workload, staffing levels and roles, training requirements and training access, and the policies and procedures offices use to perform death investigations. By taking a census approach rather than sampling, BJS is aiming for a complete enumeration of the relevant offices, which is important for producing reliable national and jurisdiction-level statistics and for understanding variation across regions and types of office structures.

The selected recipient is expected to carry out the project end-to-end, with responsibilities that fall into four major workstreams. First, the recipient must develop an up-to-date, reliable survey instrument that can be administered in multiple modes, meaning it should be designed so offices can respond through more than one method (for example, web-based submission with supplemental options such as telephone or paper follow-up). Second, the recipient must update and validate the existing roster or "frame" of ME/C offices to ensure the census truly covers every eligible publicly funded office, which typically involves verifying office contact information, confirming jurisdictional coverage, identifying newly created or reorganized entities, and removing ineligible or duplicative entries. Third, the recipient must field the census for the 2023 reference year and make reasonable, documented efforts to maximize participation, since high response rates are essential for a census to represent the field accurately and to minimize missing data that can weaken analysis. Fourth, the recipient must deliver interim and final datasets that are clean, accurate, and usable, which implies structured data processing, quality assurance checks, consistent coding, resolution of inconsistencies, and delivery of files and documentation that meet BJS expectations for statistical products.

Administratively, this opportunity is offered as a cooperative agreement, which generally indicates substantial federal involvement during the project period compared with a standard grant. In practice, that typically means BJS will be engaged on key decisions and deliverables, such as approving the survey content, monitoring progress on frame updates and response rates, and reviewing data quality and documentation prior to final acceptance. The funding activity category is Information and Statistics, and the listed CFDA numbers are 16.037 and 16.734, reflecting its placement within DOJ statistical and justice information programs. The opportunity anticipated a single award, with an award ceiling of $1,000,000, signaling that one organization would be selected to manage the full national effort.

Eligibility is broad and includes public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations with or without 501(c)(3) status (as long as they are not institutions of higher education for the nonprofit categories specified), for-profit organizations other than small businesses, and small businesses. This range suggests BJS is open to a variety of capable research, survey, and statistical organizations, including academic survey centers, research institutes, and specialized data collection contractors, as long as they can demonstrate the technical capacity to design and field a national multi-mode census, manage large-scale respondent outreach, and produce high-quality statistical datasets on schedule.

Key dates and identifiers included in the source information are: Funding Opportunity Title "FY 2022 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices," Funding Opportunity Number "O-BJS-2022-171263," creation date April 15, 2022, and an original closing date of June 7, 2022. Overall, the grant supports the infrastructure of justice and public safety statistics by ensuring BJS has current, standardized national data on the operational realities of ME/C offices, which are a critical part of the death investigation system and can influence broader public health and public safety understanding of mortality trends and investigative capacity.

• The Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics in the information and statistics sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "FY 2022 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.037, 16.734.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 15, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 07, 2022. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses.

Apply for O BJS 2022 171263

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