NIH Paylines

What's a payline, you ask? At NIH, your grant is ranked as a percentile (based on what is known as the priority score which I won't discuss in this post but you can wonk out here). What is considered a good percentile may deviate from a FUNDABLE percentile, and at the individual institute level there's a great deal of variation. However, generally speaking a good percentile these days is around a 10 (i.e. 10th percentile, meaning your proposal is in the top 10 percent of all grants reviewed by that study section that cycle. Bask in its awesomeness.) You should feel good about that score. However, it's the payline that determines whether you get funded, and this keeps dropping. In some institutes, the payline is set at the 6th percentile so even though you might have a super-awesome score, you are not going to hit the NIH jackpot this time around.

Or maybe you will: my R03 placed in the 10th percentile on first submission and we were told by many folks in the know to be cautiously optimistic. And we were until they set the payline that year at the *9th* percentile. I'm not even kidding. So imagine our delight and relief when several months later we learned that the payline had been reset to the 13th percentile and we were in! That's not very common, but it can happen, and sometimes you can speak to your program officer about the likelihood of this (after you receive your score and do some homework on recent paylines.)

This site compiles recent data on percentiles and paylines across the institutes. Most institutes have reported their Fiscal Year 2012 funding strategies and paylines, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has already reported its FY13 payline (6th percentile! eeeek). For you early career people, there is a teensy weensy silver lining, and that is you are scored more generously than more established researchers (e.g. already a PI on an NIH grant) so you might get funded at a slightly higher percentile. For example, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) set its regular 2012 payline at the 10th percentile and at the 13th for New and Early Stage Investigators, a potentially game-changing differential. (Do you qualify?) Typically, you need to be within 10 years of your terminal degree and not have been a PI on an R01 (R03s and R21s are fine). So if you've been contemplating developing an R01, keep an eye on the clock so that you don't lose those extra points.

Loan Repayment from NIH

I've written about this before, but it bears constant repeating that you can get the NIH to repay up to $70,000 in student loans. How? By doing research that fits within the following categories:

Pediatric Research
Health Disparities Research
Contraception and Infertility Research

As a graduate of a state school that offered me little in the way of funding (the long term consequences of which I was too naive to consider when I started my graduate studies), I owe a LOT of money. But lucky for me as a comparative primatologist who is interested in pregnancy and developmental programming, I can make a case for one of these awards. This time around I will be drawing on my research on the developmental origins of pregnancy loss in adult female marmosets to apply for funds from the Contraception and Infertility Research division. These are competitive awards but the relatively good news is that funding rates are decent, hovering around 35%.

Applications are due November 15. Get cracking.

Promoting diversity in the sciences workforce

Limited competition - check with your institution.

Department of Health and Human Services - NIMHD Science Education Initiative (R25)RFA-MD-11-004 - This program supports educational, mentoring, and/or career development programs for individuals from underrepresented or health disparity populations to facilitate the development of a nationwide cohort of scientists and a multi-disciplinary national pool of health disparities investigators with necessary skills to conduct health disparities research in a diverse range of settings. It also supports public education and outreach on health-related research projects to a variety of audiences are appropriate science education activities.

Good NIH Study Section for Biological Anthropologists

When contemplating a grant submission to NIH, the process can seem so complex and the health focus so narrow that a biological anthropologist may decide this isn't the funding agency for her. However, the pots of money are vast compared to what we can get elsewhere, so it's worth learning more about you NIH options. One thing you should know is that when you submit a large grant (i.e. an R01) and sometimes the smaller grants (R03, R21, this varies so check), it goes first to the Center for Scientific Review. This is where its scientific merit is first evaluated, where you get your score, and where it is first decided whether your grant is fundable (i.e. if they don't discuss your grant at all, you're not getting a score, and thus, no money). If it gets a good enough score, then it could be sent to the particular center of your preference (e.g. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) where it goes through some more review and, one hopes, approval for funding. But it has to go through CSR first.

CSR is broken into many many many topical study sections, and you can specify a preference for a particular section. But do your homework! Even a section that ostensibly seems like a good topical fit may be so very narrowly focused on physiology or genetic mechanisms, for example, that your broader, perhaps evolutionary, biosocial, or epidemiological approach won't make sense or be valuable to them. You can actually see who is on that particular section and do a lit search, which could give you an idea of the focus or even potential bias. A study section that might be of particular interest is the Social Science and Population Studies Section. A lot of people aren't aware this section even exists but it has the potential to be a wonderful fit for much biological anthropology and biocultural research, especially that involving population-level or large sample analysis:
The Social Sciences and Population Studies (SSPS) Study Section reviews applications related to population processes, composition and distribution, their antecedents and consequences, and their inter-relationships with biological, social, cultural, economic, geographic, institutional, behavioral, developmental and biomedical factors and processes. This includes modeling, data collection and other studies of morbidity, mortality and health, population movement and distribution, reproduction, population aging and composition, economic factors, labor force and retirement, household and family structure, intergenerational relations, institutional structure, the genetic profiles of population members related to these variables, and biodemography in the U.S. and other countries. Most studies involve large population samples. Specific areas covered by SSPS:

Morbidity, mortality and health over the life course, including health disparities, functioning and disability, studies of perinatal, infant, child, adult and elderly health.

Reproductive health and behavior, including studies of pregnancy outcomes; contraceptive use and sexual behavior; fertility and infertility, birth spacing and timing; birth intentions; and family structure.

Population movement; including migration of people within and across national boundaries.

Population composition and changes in composition, such as population aging, household and family structure, economic status and inequality, and health status, and family relationships.

Health and labor economics and policy, including intergenerational exchanges and bequests, employment, labor force and retirement; labor force transitions, income security of population segments such as children or elderly persons.
Population and the environment.

Patterns of risk behavior, including substance use, behavior problems, and obesity.

Um, does that sound perfect or what?!? Currently, the SSPS study section roster lists economists, sociologists, epidemiologists, demographers, an MD and a couple of MPH's, and yes, even a biological anthropologist. If you have any questions about this section as a potential landing for your NIH proposal, you should contact the SSPS Scientific Review Officer (SRO), Bob Weller.

NIH announces R21 opportunity for funding in women's health research

The National Institutes of Health has recently announced an initiative to fund research in women's health issues, spanning most of the institutes and centers. The mechanism is an R21 which carries $275,000 in direct costs over two years. The R21 mechanism generally supports novel, high risk-high reward research.

"The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), issued by the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) and co-sponsoring NIH institutes and centers (ICs), is to promote innovative, interdisciplinary research that will advance new concepts in women’s health research and the study of sex/gender differences. Recent research reports have established the importance of studying issues specific to women, including the scientific and clinical importance of analyzing data separately for females and males. ORWH is particularly interested in encouraging extramural investigators to undertake new interdisciplinary research to advance studies on how sex and gender factors affect women's health; however, applications in all areas of women’s health and/or sex/gender research are invited."

NIH Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD)

NIH has announced an initiative to foster training for underrepresented students in the biomedical and behavioral sciences:

"Several reports from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as from the National Academies reveal the national need for a well-trained workforce in biomedical and behavioral sciences and the continuing importance of developing and maintaining a strong, vital scientific workforce whose diversity reflects that of our nation. It was also reported that as a nation, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, and Natives of US Pacific Islands have been found to be underrepresented (UR) in the biomedical and behavioral sciences...The goals of the IMSD program are to (a) increase the number of UR students that graduate from Ph.D. programs in the biomedical and behavioral sciences at institutions with research intensive environments; and (b) reduce the gap in the completion of Ph.D. degrees between UR and non-UR students in the biomedical and behavioral science departments of those institutions."

These awards are made to the institution to develop a training program. Only one award per institution will be made - check with your office of reseach to see if your institution is eligible.

Ain't we lucky we got 'em....Good times!

As I'm sure you do, I like to browse the greeting card section at Walgreens and select cards that would be perfect to send myself. Yesterday, I found one of those cards that breaks into song when you open it. It was a congratulations card and this was the song. What am I celebrating? The totally unexpected awesomeness of NIH deciding last Friday to fund a grant that was scored highly but missed the original payline. They changed the payline (the funding cutoff), and voila!, I now have money to go back to the Philippines and get some major science action. Whoo!

Good times, people!