Dr. Sean Altekruse: I'd like to spend a few minutes talking with you about the types of
funding opportunities that exists and the good news is there are funding opportunities
available.
Drilling down a little beyond that what's important to recognize is that there's a need
to find an opportunity that aligns with your research interests or your career stage and
NIH and CDC and FDA are not the only funding sources out there.
So and really it's all about timing.
So this is just an overview slide I'll go into this in more detail.
The bottom line being that there are very broadly focused sort of ombudsman funding
opportunities that you can apply to or and there are more specific funding opportunities
that might be issued by a single institute such as a funding opportunity from the National
Institute on Child and Human Development to use existing data and stored biospecimens.
There is a joint funding opportunity of not only several NIH institutes but also the FDA
Center for Tobacco Products on tobacco and health.
There is an end National Institute on Aging funding opportunity to address using secondary
data analysis in the life course.
Similarly the National Cancer [Institute] and the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute
have sort of topic-focused notices as does the National Eye Institute.
Now some funding opportunities are uniquely tailored to early stage investigators or based
on scope the amount of funding available can vary.
So this is just a to make sure that no one thinks that this funding source is the multiagency
steering committee for MDAC and TLMS.
You'll have to find funding through established mechanisms.
And the purpose of this investigation is just to orient people to the types of funding sources
that are out there.
So in general I think it's important to realize that the sponsor institutes and agencies consider
it to be a win when a funding award is issued for these research resources, MDAC, TLMS,
NLMS and so we're not solely focused on our research mission.
We'd like to see this resource used for an array of health related research.
In addition as is with the case with the tobacco resource the TLMS institute's interests often
overlap within - and that's one more reason why we're always happy to see it being used
for informative health research.
Where things start to get interesting is that some institutes support a variety of mechanisms
including the parent R01 grant, R21 and R03 grants, and others are restricted to a subset
of mechanisms.
I have some examples here.
My advice is to use the Internet to look at the institute-specific websites about their
- that outline their relevant interests and identify the program officers who can help
answer any questions you might have and one example is provided here but that exists across
many different institutes.
So in the timing of everything category it's really important to realize that some of these
opportunities either have expired or will expire and new ones are always emerging.
So if you simply look at the Internet without looking at the expiration date and the receipt
dates you may find some legacy announcements that are no longer really available.
I would also recommend that you talk to program officers in the institute that you think might
be a good funding source as well as your mentors and colleagues about opportunities that might
be available at the time of your application.
Also want to mention that not all projects need to be funded.
As Sean Coady was saying earlier the MDAC and TLMS and NLMS provide a very good way
to do research with robust data at no specific cost for access to the data.
However funding can be a very useful milestone professionally and career wise.
So if you are going to use to apply to a funding opportunity please know the receipt date,
the award and funding calendar and to make sure that you find one that aligns with your
needs.
So the various types of awards that are out there can address secondary data analysis
needs as small grants to pay for a level of effort or in some instances very large grants
may be needed because these are big data that could be aligned with other resources or done
collaboratively with data from other nations for example.
So you've got to find the grant that matches with the level of funding as well that you're
looking for.
And this is for people who haven't written grant applications before but it's really
critically important to follow all of the instructions about page limits, to complete
all sections, to use the proper formats and writing style.
There's a grantsmanship or grantspersonship, excuse me, that's involved with this process.
It's a good opportunity to learn those skills.
You'll also have to justify exceeding any budget cap that might be specified and be
sure to submit by the receipt date.
So I'm just going to go through for most of the rest of this brief presentation some of
the opportunities that are out there.
So there's small research grants, the parent grant is funded by many institutes.
This is an example and you can see the application dates listed below.
Some have already passed and there are future application dates in October of this year
and February and October of next year for example.
In addition I mentioned that there's some specific research interests and a good example
of that is the use of secondary data for analysis of existing data on tobacco use and that's
funded by both the US Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products and by several
NIH institutes listed here.
In addition the National Cancer Institute have some funding opportunities of their own
that may better meet your interests.
And then there are small grants for secondary analyses by NICHB, NHLBI and the National
Eye Institute just as examples.
There are other potential mechanisms for funding research using this resource that I'd just
like to briefly mention.
One good example is the National Center for Health Statistics which is a sponsor of this
resource that we're talking about today has a postdoctoral research program and it's online
described in great detail.
And once again timing is important.
The start dates for this year may have already been identified and it may be next year before
this is available.
But please go to the site and look it up and contact the program officer.
It's listed on the announcement.
Some of our other sister agencies in Health and Human Services also fund secondary data
analysis including HRSA and the Administration for Children and Families Early Care and Education,
a data analysis opportunities NIOSH.
And NIH isn't the sole source of funding out there.
So the United Kingdom for example has some secondary data analysis grants that provide
a substantial amount of funding so for larger grants.
I just give that as an example.
So just to review there are many, many types of funding sources by topic area, by career
stage and by the dollar value that's needed to complete the analysis.
So a successful application is made more likely by finding the right research interest, paying
good attention to the award calendar and developing a really well-written application.
This is often - this grantsmanship skill is an acquired skill and it helps to talk with
colleagues.
That is all I have at this point but if I can be of assistance please use email to contact
me and I will try my best to put you in contact with people who can help you with your interests.
Thank you very much.