Grants for Lunch: Recycling your Grant Proposal

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Grants for LunchRecycling your Grant Proposal

• William J Calhoun MD FACP FCCP FAAAAI
• Sealy and Smith Distinguished Professor of
  Internal Medicine
• Director Division of Allergy, Pulmonary,
• Immunology, Critical Care, and Sleep APICS

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Topics

• Grant strategy avoiding the need to recycle!
• Grant review process what you need to know
• Reading the critique (pink sheets), and reading
  between the lines
• Composing your response

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Grant Strategy - 1

• Keys to NIH grant success
• Outstanding science
• Make sure your ideas are up-to-date
• Novelty gets you some points
• Scientific rigor is essential

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Grant Strategy - 2

• Keys to NIH grant success
• Clear written presentation
• Specific Aims page is the centerpoint
• Start with Aims
• Develop crisp, specifically testable hypothesis
• Refine Aims
• Keep Aims structurally simple
• Background must highlight the holes in current
  knowledge (which your grant will fill)
• Strong and relevant preliminary data
• Feasibility
• Proof-of-concept
• Methodology description
• Time line
• Overall strategies
• Specific methodologic details
• Statistics
• Organize Make the reviewers job easy

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Grant Strategy - 3

• Perseverance

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Grant Strategy Dos and Donts

• Do
• Involve a senior investigator early in the
  process
• Get the adminstrative and budget information
  completed early!
• Get critical feedback often during the process
• Read your own grant as if you were a
  disinterested reviewer
• Avoid typographical errors and misspellings
• Use figures and tables appropriately to augment
  the text
• Write a story
• Make the reviewers job easy!

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Grant Strategy Donts

• Dont
• Use fine print
• Include superfluous data
• Abuse appendices
• Go it alone
• Presume too much
• Forget statistical analysis, power and sample
  size calculations?

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Grant Review Process

• The Review Branch
• Role of the Executive Secretary
• The Study Section
• Process
• Scores
• Unscoring
• Critiques
• The Council

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The Critique

• Scored or Unscored
• Priority Score
• Critiques
• Reviewers 1, 2 (?3)
• Summary Statement
• Reading between the lines interpreting the code
  words

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Now, the ball is in your court!

• Appeal / Advice
• Was the critique fair?
• Was there factual error in the critique?
• Submission Approach
• Respond/amend (three strike rule)
• New application

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Revise, or Start Over (1) ?

• Critique of first submission
• Is the overall critique favorable or unfavorable?
• Are there signals of lack of enthusiasm in the
  critique?
• What is the priority score, or was it unscored?
• Can you substantively address the points raised
  in the critique with additional background, or
  additional preliminary data?
• Are the criticisms structural (investigators,
  environment, resources), scientific (experimental
  design, statistical analysis,etc), or
  philosophical?
• How does your mentor / senior collaborator
  interpret the tone of the critique?
• Default position is to revise and resubmit!

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Revise, or Start Over (2) ?

• Critique of second submission
• All points of first submission are relevant
• Was the second round of critique consistent, or
  inconsistent, with the first round?
• Are there recurring concerns?
• Does the tone of the critique invite, or
  discourage resubmission?
• Default position is to Revise

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Composing Your Response - 1

• Response to Critique 3 Pages
• Tone
• Respectfulness, without obsequiousness
• Common desire for the best science
• Give the reviewer the benefit of the doubt
• Use areas of difference of opinion as an
  opportunity to reinforce your views
• Depersonalize!
• Structure
• Point-by-point, reviewer-by-reviewer (generally
  best)
• Thematic response

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Composing Your Response - 2

• Content of Response
• Scientific concerns
• Strong new data are the best
• Alternative interpretations
• Alternative methodologies
• Alternative scientific strategy
• Structural concerns address with specific
  changes
• YOU!
• Collaborators
• Environment
• Resources
• Philosophical Concerns!

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Composing Your Response - 3

• Differentiate new and old content in the body of
  the grant
• Dont use underlining, shadowing, or bolding!
• Dont use color (NIH duplicates with BW
  photocopiers)
• Consider use of alternative font (serif /
  san-serif)
• Consider use of margin highlights
• Make the reviewers job easy
• Make sure that ALL new material in the body of
  the grant is referenced in the 3 page response
• Judicious duplication of important material is OK
• Conveys responsiveness and collegiality to the
  reviewers
• Make the reviewers job easy

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Composing Your Response - 4

• Take advantage of new material
• New preliminary data
• New publications
• New ideas
• Consistent with original extensions
• Inconsistent with original refining
• New collaborators
• New institutional resources
• Integrate new material seamlessly with existing
  grant application
• Recognize that THIRD SUBMISSION is an up or down
  vote!