All About Grants at NIH

Letters of support are a valuable part of your grant application. They provide an opportunity for you to document the commitment and support of your institution and collaborators, the availability of required resources, and more. In this next installment of the NIH’s All About Grants podcast series, Cathleen Cooper, Ph.D., who directs the NIH’s Center for Scientific Review’s Division of Receipt and Referral, joins us to talk all about letters of support. Hear what information should be included in these letters, what should not, how they differ from other letters submitted as part of an application, and more.

Sexual harassment is a serious and long-standing issue within the biomedical research enterprise, and NIH is striving to be part of the solution. On this episode of the “All About Grants” podcast, we sit down with Dr. Jodi Black, Deputy Director for the NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, to discuss what institutions, investigators, and others in the research community should know about NIH’s policies and expectations for assuring a safe and harassment-free work environment.

Sexual harassment is a serious and long-standing issue within the biomedical research enterprise, and NIH is striving to be part of the solution. On this episode of the “All About Grants” podcast, we sit down with Dr. Jodi Black, Deputy Director for the NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, to discuss what institutions, investigators, and others in the research community should know about NIH’s policies and expectations for assuring a safe and harassment-free work environment.

Confidentiality is at the core of ensuring research ideas submitted in grant applications are protected. In this next installment of the NIH’s All About Grants podcast series, Sally Amero, Ph.D., NIH’s Review Policy Officer, discusses how NIH strives to maintain the highest levels of confidentiality and integrity in the peer review process. She highlights the core values of peer review, what reviewers agree to when serving on study sections, what may be discussed regarding study section meetings, and how applicants can learn more about the review of their application. Further, we delve into actions NIH may take when breaches in confidentiality occur.

You probably know the NIH RePORT suite of tools as a useful hub of information where you can find reports, data, and analyses of NIH-funded research and answers to the most commonly asked questions on the NIH budget and extramural research programs. But do you know RePORT can be a helpful tool as you are developing your grant application? In this next installment of the NIH’s All About Grants podcast series, Dr. Brian Haugen and Dr. Cindy Danielson from the NIH Office of Extramural Research join us to share their advice on applying these tools to help you throughout the grants process. We touch on areas such as figuring out who to contact at NIH to discuss your research ideas, seeing what research projects NIH has funded, and how to apply these tools to strengthen your grant application. RePORT attracts over 120,000 unique visitors each month, so tune in to see what the excitement is all about and learn how you too can strategically use its tools.

In this next installment of the “All About Grants” podcast series, small business innovators can learn more about programs geared towards women-owned companies or those led by socially or economically disadvantaged groups. Dr. Kory Hallett, a Program Director with the National Cancer Institute, and Ms. Stephanie Fertig, a Director of Small Business Programs with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, will highlight how NIH is taking steps towards diversifying the NIH small business programs. You will hear about who qualifies, tips for strengthening your application, and what goes on behind-the-scenes in a study section reviewing the merit of your application. They also share some good general food-for-thought that many other applicants may find helpful when trying to turn research ideas into words.

This podcast aims to help the extramural research community better understand the NIH’s Rigor and Transparency policy. Dr. Patricia Valdez, NIH’s Extramural Research Integrity Officer, describes how to address the key policy elements, including rigor of the prior research, rigorous experimental design, consideration of key biological variables, and authentication of key biological and/or chemical resources, in an application, how they are considered during peer review, and annual progress reporting following award.

Wondering how to knock that investor pitch out of the park? In this next installment of the “All About Grants” podcast series, small business innovators will get a front row seat to hear how to prepare for private investment. Dr. Ethel Ruben, NIH’s Entrepreneur-In-Residence, steps up to the plate and shares insights on who these investors are, how they decide on what innovations to invest in the biomedical commercial space, and some valuable tips and tricks to improve the accuracy of your investor pitch. Tune in to learn the ins and outs of private equity and how it can help you continue developing biomedical innovations post-NIH award and bring it home to the marketplace.

In 2017, as part of our on-going implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act, NIH announced the Inclusion Across the Lifespan policy. Effective January 29, 2019, NIH will begin considering age, along with sex/gender and race/ethnicity, in applications seeking NIH support that involve human participants. Ms. Dawn Corbit, NIH's Inclusion Policy Officer, discusses the policy in this podcast and how it affects how applicants and awardees may design their study. Through this policy, we can help ensure that the knowledge gained from NIH supported research will be applicable to the broad range of those affected by the condition under study, and have that knowledge be used to help make better informed medical decisions going forward.

For decades, NIH has required so called valid analysis, also known as stratified analysis, to explore how well interventions work across sex/gender and race/ethnicity for all applicable clinical trials. Last year, we amended this existing policy to require the findings from such stratified analyses on these variables be reported on ClinicalTrials.gov after an applicable NIH-Defined Phase III clinical trial has completed. Ms. Dawn Corbit, NIH's Inclusion Policy Officer, joins us on this podcast to discuss the revised policy and what it means for the extramural research community. By taking this step, we are encouraging findings from stratified analyses to be more readily available to the public as a means to better understand the effect that sex and race may have on health outcomes and physiologic conditions.