Thread
Just the end of last year, NIH published RFI on the change of its review process (grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-23-034.html ). Today, partially as a response to that, we are publishing a policy memo on enabling faster funding timelines within @NIH and its institutes: www.dayoneproject.org/ideas/enabling-faster-funding-timelines-in-the-national-institutes-of-health/ 0/n
If you are not constantly challenged with examples from WW2, where National Defense Research Committee was authorizing grants for the first proximity fuse, radars, amphibious trucks, and seeds of the Manhattan Project in <<week, it's not obvious how slow we currently are. 1/n
Clearly, over the past few years, Fast Grants, @impetusgrants, or @reprogrants didn’t “break” science (to say the least), so can we bring parts of it to governmental science funding? 2/n
The main challenge for writing this was figuring out who carries responsibility for implementing 'new funding' changes. We spent something like several months in convos with people from different parts of government, all pointing fingers to the opposite side of their agency. 3/n
We even stumbled into [redacted] institute director who didn’t know their institute had the authority to launch their own grant programs… NIH is huge & changes are hard to navigate even for insiders. 4/n
A brief NIH-101: Congress decides the allocations to all the federal programs (e.g. how much for aging). Institute makes funding decisions based on grant review, with 2 review places - the CSR and study section within each institute (3 deadlines/year, each 9-18 months) 5/n
So which part of this process makes NIH ‘slow’? All the committees have to be pre-organized. The volume of proposals is massive. There is a 3 months gap from receiving to assigning to peer review. After peer review, app waits for advisory council which meets 3 times a year... 6/n
...And then goes to institutes to make funding decisions. Clearly, the cycle deadline determines the timeline, so can't we just change the cycle? 7/n
Structurally, 3x/year cycle is not changeable by individual institutes. An administrative supplement request is the only exception for an existing grant with an unforeseen need - which isn’t a lot of money & works on a by-case basis. 8/n
The only case where people really have tried to go systematically faster is with clinical trials. (Off-note: National Institute of Aging didn’t have any efforts to accelerate clinical trials. We definitely need to see a lot of work there! ) 9/n
Do we need ‘new’ money to come in? Budget lobbying in Congress takes time, so it is not our first-choice strategy for sure. Some other mechanisms available for new grants in government: contracts (not faster & must be competed for), and Others Transactions Authority or OTA. 10/n
OTA is interesting because that's exactly what @NIH used to launch their fast funding during COVID (imo, RADx program was a huge success). And all of the Institutes have this authority, so there is some room to launch experimental governmental grants. 11/n
How about changes to existing programs? Individual institutes do not have the authority to do it (i.e., it won’t be enough just to lobby the National Institute of Aging alone). Congress also has no role in this. 12/n
It has to be changed across all of @NIH - that is, the changes should be carried out by the NIH director, possibly with advisory committees. 13/n
Timelines aside, how do we also change the peer review? Can institutes decide to change their peer review, without needing global reform? That largely depends on the type of application (clinical trials, large projects/center grants, etc.) 14/n
The main ones, R01s and R21s, go through CSR, so individual institutes likewise do not have the authority to change them - the reform should come from the NIH director. 15/n
What does it leave us with? With enough advocacy & work with NIH director / CSR, there is a chance to implement global changes. While the system is quite rigid and nothing has been changed in a long while, we have been definitely noticing some movement over the last year 16/n
For individual institute-level experimentation, OTA is the first go-to. Possibly something for @TheA4li and the policy-inclined metascience folks to explore, especially for NIA. We definitely can't be leaving the aging field at the current pace of science funding :) 17/n
More policy details in the memo! Huge thanks to @tylercowen @heidilwilliams_ who provided advice during the process. And huge huge thanks to @FAScientists @Day1Project team who worked with me through this. 18/n
