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Writing Grant Proposals in Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, and Biostatistics
Lisa Chasan-Taber
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eBook - ePub
Writing Grant Proposals in Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, and Biostatistics
Lisa Chasan-Taber
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About This Book
Competition for research funds in epidemiology, preventive medicine and biostatistics is highly competitive and at the same time, the grant application and review process at such agencies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has undergone substantial revisions. Writing Grant Proposals in Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, and Biostatistics, Second Edition targets effective grant proposal writing in this highly competitive and evolving environment.
Covering all aspects of the proposal writing process, the updated second edition:
•Includes new chapters on Fellowship Grants and Career Development Awards designed for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty
•Provides strategies to highlight the "overall impact" of the grant, one of the most important aspects determining NIH funding in a new chapter on Significance and Innovation
•Provides step-by-step guidelines for grant structure and style alongside broader strategies for developing a research funding portfolio
•Explains how to avoid common errors and pitfalls, supplying critical dos and don'ts that aid in writing solid grant proposals
•Illustrates key concepts with extensive examples from successfully funded proposals
Written by an established NIH reviewer with inside knowledge and an impressive track record of funding, Writing Grant Proposals in Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, and Biostatistics, Second Edition is an essential cookbook of the appropriate ingredients needed to construct a winning grant proposal. The text is not only relevant for early-stage investigators including graduate students, medical students/residents, and postdoctoral fellows, but also valuable for more experienced faculty, clinicians, epidemiologists, and other health professionals who cannot seem to break the barrier to obtain NIH-funded research.
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1 Ten Top Tips for Successful Grant Proposal Writing
DOI: 10.1201/9781003155140-1
If I were asked to distill my grant proposal writing advice down to the ten most important tips, the following would be my list. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career faculty hear a lot about grant-writing ‘pitfalls to avoid’ and common mistakes that can be made. Instead, I believe it’s more useful to focus on tips for successful grant-writing.
1.1 Tip #1: Start Small but Have a Big Vision
It is critical to have a big vision. Each small grant—be it a seed grant, a postdoctoral fellowship, or an early-career award—should be viewed as providing preliminary data for one or two of the specific aims of your ultimate larger grant. Typically, large grants are funded by the NIH R01 mechanism. Chapter 3, “Identifying a Topic and Conducting the Literature Search,” provides step-by-step strategies for identifying research gaps, critical for success in grantsmanship.
Therefore, early on in the process, with the help of a mentor, try to envision your ultimate large project. For example, let’s assume that a typical large grant (i.e., an NIH R01) contains three to five specific aims. Once you are able to envision these aims, your next steps become clear: Step by step, you start biting off small chunks of this larger grant through writing small grants designed to support one or two of these ultimate aims. These small grants should not be designed to provide the definitive answer to these aims but instead to show that the aims are feasible and/or provide preliminary data in their support. These small grants will be limited by smaller sample sizes and budgets, but will be able to show proof of principle—that you can pull it off (see Tip #5: Show That You Can Pull It Off). This approach pays off as grant review panels often see a large grant as the culmination of a growing body of work progressing from small seed grants to larger and larger awards in a cumulative fashion. Chapter 10, “Pilot Grants: Reproducibility and Validity Studies,” provides examples of validation studies, typical for a first pilot grant.
Finding a mentor
A key factor in developing a vision of your ultimate large grant will be the advice of your mentor(s). If you do not currently have a mentor, ask your department chair if they can assign you one. It is also usually considered acceptable to seek out your own mentor. Indeed, many early-career faculty will assemble a mentorship team, each member of which can provide guidance in different career aspect (i.e., a teaching mentor, a research mentor, and a work–life balance mentor). Consider both on-site and off-site faculty as potential mentors.
In this age of virtual communication, I often find that I communicate more with my off-site mentors than with those directly down the hall. You can use web-based resources such as Research Gate (https://www.researchgate.net/) and NIH RePORTER (https://reporter.nih.gov/) to help locate a potential mentor by searching on your topic and identifying a list of principal investigator (PI) names. Then view their NIH grant-funding track record. Ask yourself if their pathway matches up with your grantmaking goals—if so, they are likely a good choice of mentor. In contrast, PIs who have not received a large NIH grant, as indicated by NIH RePORTER, may not be the best choice.
1.2 Tip #2: Focus on Small Grants Targeted to Early-Career Investigators
Early-career faculty want to be successful and are often tempted to make a big impact by quickly landing a big grant even in the absence of a track record of smaller grant funding. Others are under pressure from their institutions and department chairs to immediately apply for a large grant (e.g., an NIH R01). In my experience as an NIH review panel member, this approach is almost certainly destined to fail. As noted in Tip #1: Start Small but Have a Big Vision, review panels often see a large grant as the culmination of a growing body of work. They want to see evidence of this stairway to success, and it’s your job to demonstrate that you have been on this stairway. You do this by showing your successful procurement and management of previous smaller grants, as well as the translation of these grants into publications. A desirable grant-funding history starts from small seed grants progressing to larger and larger awards in a cumulative fashion (Figure 1.1). Chapter 4, “Choosing the Right Funding Source,” provides example plans for a steady trajectory of grants from small to large.
There are certainly some exceptions to this rule. For example, you may be an early-career faculty member within a research team that already has a track record in your area. If so, consider serving as a coinvestigator on a grant led by one of your more senior colleagues while launching your own independent research. Including senior researchers as co-PIs can help shore up the “research team.” For example, their preliminary data become the team’s preliminary data in your application.
Alternatively, you may take advantage of more senior expertise by writing a multiple PI (MPI) proposal. The MPI approach requires that each PI brings substantive expertise to complementary components of the proposal. In other words, the goal is to encourage collaboration among equals when that is the most appropriate way to address a scientific problem. Therefore, care should be taken with the MPI approach as these grants are not designed to be mentored grants such as Fellowship Grants or Career Development Awards (see Chapter 18, “Fellowship Grants,” and Chapter 19, “Career Development Awards”).
Ultimately, however, as described in Chapter 20, “Review Process,” and Chapter 21, “Resubmission of the Grant Proposal,” one of the key criteria upon which a grant is scored is the expertise of the PI. When you are submitting an application as the sole PI, the reviewers will be looking for your track record in managing a large grant and translating that work into publications. So, remember not to go-it-alone with a big grant submission too early.
Therefore, starting early in your career and capitalizing upon the advantages of having an “early-career faculty status” has never been as important as it is now.
1.2.1 Early-Career Awards and Postdoctoral Granting Mechanisms Provide the Highest Chances for Success
These mechanisms typically do not require significant preliminary data. Instead, funding decisions rely most heavily on your promise and potential as a candidate: your training to date, your mentors, and the importance of your topic.
This potential is indicated by three items:
- Your education to date (including prior publications and project-related experience)
- The mentors with which you have surrounded yourself
- The public health importance of your topic
Another key advantage of these funding mechanisms is that, unlike larger grant awards, you will be competing against a smaller pool of people, all of whom are at a comparable stage in their careers. This avoids the risk of competing against senior investigators who already have established track records. As a senior investigator once said to me, “Avoid competing against the ‘big boys and girls’ as long as you can!” Remember that this advantage will quickly be over after several years pass by and you find yourself no longer eligible for these awards—so seize this opportunity while it lasts.
Therefore, if you are a graduate student, seek out grant mechanisms designed for graduate students such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) predoctoral (F31) and postdoctoral (F32) fellowship awards (see Chapter 18, “Fellowship Grants”). If you are an early-career faculty member, look for grants designed for early-career faculty members such as the K series awards (see Chapter 19, “Career Development Awards”). These may also include small seed money grants provided by your university (e.g., Faculty Research Grants) or foundation grants targeted for career development (e.g., the American Diabetes Association Junior Faculty Development Award and the Minority Junior Faculty Development Award, the American Heart Association Career Development Award, the March of Dimes Starter Scholar Research Award). Chapter 4, “Choosing the Right Funding Source,” provides an in-depth discussion of how to locate these opportunities.
At the same time, always be on the lookout for opportunities to collaborate as a coinvestigator on applications where the principal investigator (PI) is a senior, established investigator. These grants will require a somewhat reduced effort on your part (in comparison to being PI). In addition, because ongoing projects were underway before you joined, you can also anticipate an earlier payoff in terms of published manuscripts. Joining an established research project also provides you with the opportunity to apply for an NIH Research Supplement (i.e., funds added to an existing grant to increase the participation of scientists from underrepresented groups in health-related research that builds upon the aims of these ongoing grants).
All this being said, developing your own independent line of research is important. Indeed, one criterion for tenure and promotion at many research institutes is movement away from the area of your dissertation work and development of independence in your own research aims. If the work of your departmental colleagues does not relate to your area, then other collegial relationships and sources of grant data can be found in many locations—be they across campus or even across the state or country.
1.2.2 Putting Tips #1 and #2 into Action: An Example
By way of example, let’s say your overall vision is to understand the impact of diet on psychosocial status. You meet with your mentor and decide that an interesting and novel topic for an ultimate large grant application would be to study the impact of vitamin D on risk of depression. You sketch out a plan for an R01 to conduct a large prospective study of vitamin D intake and risk of depression (Figure 1.2).
The next step is to work together to outline potential specific aims (Figure 1.3). Each of these specific aims is going to serve as the topic of a smaller gran...