Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) amended their resubmission policy and will now accept only a single amendment to the original grant application. As this could have a considerable impact on grant proposals and research funding by the NIH, the Healthy Turtle turns to Dr. Dushanka V. Kleinman, Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs, for a better understanding of this policy change:
Healthy Turtle: Why did the NIH make this policy change?
Dr. Dushanka V. Kleinman: The action taken by NIH is one of the outcomes of an intensive review of the NIH peer review system aimed at making improvements to this critical process. The intent of this specific policy change is to shorten the time to award for meritorious research, decrease the burden on reviewers by reducing number of grant applications submitted for review and ideally stimulate an increase in the quality of original submissions. The full report can be accessed at on this site:
HT: What are the implications of this policy change?
Dr. Kleinman: Technically speaking, this reduces the number of resubmissions of the original submission from two to one for NIH grant proposals. The objective as stated in the NIH Notice is to reduce the time from original submission to award for meritorious proposals. For our faculty this means that they will have one chance, versus two, to address comments from grant reviewers. For the NIH reviewers it means they may see a reduction the number of grant proposals for review and an anticipated increase in the quality of original submissions.
HT: How will this affect professors and researchers here at the SPH?
Dr. Kleinman: We will need to be more strategic and deliberate in the preparation of original proposals given the reduced number of resubmissions. This translates to taking the time for grant application preparation and review before submission. Researchers benefit from the comments of reviewers and revisions addressing these comments enhanced the chances of an award. Data reveal that the overall success rate for grant proposals increases with every resubmission.
HT: Do you think this change in policy can prevent delays in funding for meritorious science, as the notice contends?
Dr. Kleinman: This is a good question, and it depends on the factors that contribute to the decline in award rates for original submissions and that of the initial resubmission. These factors may be due to reviewer, investigator and NIH program staff issues. We can control only investigator issues and need to do what we can to increase the quality and responsiveness of the proposals we submit.
Some of the ways we do this include using our close proximity to NIH to meet with program directors in advance of grant proposal preparation and submission to ascertain how well our research questions “fit” the “gaps” in their research portfolio and strategic plans. We can also take advantage of external reviews of our research narrative prior to submission. Expediting the funding of meritorious science may then occur, but only time will tell.
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Dr. Dushanka V. Kleinman, DDS, MScD is the Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs. She is a dentist and a board certified specialist in dental public health.
For more on the NIH decision, visit www.nih.gov.
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