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The NIH Loan Repayment Program (LRP) Notices for FY 2026 have been published. Although organized around broad research areas, the LRPs were never intended to directly fund research projects. Rather, LRP awards are based on an applicant’s potential to build and sustain a research career and repay eligible student loans.

In return for loan repayments, LRP awardees are legally bound to a service obligation to conduct qualifying research supported by a domestic nonprofit or U.S. government (federal, state, or local) entity for 50 percent of their time (at least 20 hours per week based on a 40-hour week) for two years. NIH makes quarterly loan repayments concurrent with the awardees’ satisfaction of their service obligation. All research needs to fall within NHGRI’s mission.

This is an excellent program supported by the NIH to ease the burden of student loan debt while working in research; NIH spends ~$50M per year on this program.

The application deadline for an FY 2026 Extramural LRP award will be on Thursday, November 20, 2025.  See below for links to the notices.

NOT-OD-25-091 – Clinical Research (LRP-CR)

• Clinical research is defined as patient-oriented research conducted with human subjects, or research on the causes and consequences of disease in human populations involving material of human origin (such as tissue specimens and cognitive phenomena) for which an investigator or colleague directly interacts with human subjects in an outpatient or inpatient setting to clarify a problem in human physiology, pathophysiology or disease, epidemiologic or behavioral studies, outcomes or health services research, or developing new technologies, therapeutic interventions, or clinical trials.

NOT-OD-25-092 – Pediatric Research (LRP-PR)

NOT-OD-25-093 – Health Disparities Research (LRP-HDR)

NOT-OD-25-094 – Research in Emerging Areas Critical to Human Health (LRP-REACH)

• NHGRI is using the LRP-REACH to focus on MS and PhD-level genetic counselors: https://www.lrp.nih.gov/reach-priority-statements
• NHGRI is the only IC including genetic counselors

NOT-OD-25-095 – Clinical Researchers from Disadvantaged Backgrounds (LRP-CRDB)

NOT-OD-25-096 – Contraception & Infertility Research (LRP-CIR)