Extending Existing Guidance for Preparing Applications During COVID-19 

For Spring 2022 due dates, NIH recently extended the guidance that while grant applications should not include contingency or recovery plans for problems resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, investigators may address effects due to the pandemic on productivity or other scoreable issues in the personal statement of the biosketch. Reviewers will be instructed to take these pandemic-related circumstances into account when assessing applicants’ productivity and other score-driving factors. If needed, NIH staff will request and assess plans to resolve specific problems arising from the COVID-19 pandemic prior to funding.

NIH also extended the special exception for post-submission material to applications submitted for the August/October 2022 Council rounds. For applications submitted for the August/October 2022 Council rounds (beginning with applications submitted for the January 25, 2022 due date), the NIH, AHRQ, and NIOSH will accept a one-page update with preliminary data as post-submission materials for applications submitted under all activity codes, ONLY if the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) used for submission allowed preliminary data in the application. One page of preliminary data will be accepted for single component applications or for each component of a multi-component application.

The deadline for submitting all post-submission materials, including preliminary data, will be 30 days before the study section meeting, unless specified otherwise in the FOA. Because applications for emergency competitive revisions and urgent competitive revisions undergo expedited review, post-submission materials will not be accepted for those applications.