I What Does NIH Look For in a Grant Application?
Because NIH is comprised of 24 different grant-awarding Institutes and Centers (ICs) which provide funding, there is no simple answer to this question. However, if you are talking to an NIH Program Official about your idea or potential research project, you are already on the right track to receiving NIH funding.
While NIH awards many grants specifically for research, we also provide grant opportunities that support research-related activities, including: construction, training, career development, conferences, resource grants and more. Specifically, we encourage projects that have the three following qualities:
- NIH looks for grant proposals of high scientific caliber that are relevant to public health needs and are within NIH Institute and Center (IC) priorities. ICs highlight their specific research priorities on their Web sites. Applicants are encouraged to contact the appropriate IC to discuss the relevancy and/or focus of the proposed research before submitting an application. NIH also has a number of broad NIH-wide initiatives that may be of interest.
- NIH strongly encourages investigator-initiated research across the spectrum of our mission. We issue hundreds of funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) in the form of Program Announcements (PAs) and requests for applications (RFAs) to stimulate research in particular areas of science. Some PAs, called “Parent Announcements,” span the breadth of the NIH mission in order to ensure we have a way to capture “unsolicited” applications that do not fall within the scope of targeted announcements. The majority of NIH applications are submitted in response to parent announcements.
- By law, NIH cannot support a project already funded or pay for research that has already been done. Projects must be unique. Although you may not send the same application to more than one Public Health Service (PHS) agency at the same time, you can apply to an organization outside the PHS with the same application. If the project gets funded by another organization, however, it cannot also be funded by NIH.
Parts of this column have been extracted from the “About Grants” section of the Office of Extramural Research’s Home Page.
Be sure to watch this space next month for new tips on great grant writing!
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