NIH now revamping its entire grant proposal structure

For the last several years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been slowly and methodically overhauling its grant-review system. And this year it?s the social and behavioral sciences? turn to see their grant-review panels restructured.

The seeds of change stemmed from the need to integrate into the main NIH review system those grant applications going to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

Most NIH grant applications go to a central review office?the Center for Scientific Review (CSR)?where more than 120 study sections review grants for all the institutes. When NIMH, NIAAA and NIDA joined NIH in 1992, they struck a deal to retain their own internal grant-review mechanisms temporarily, with the understanding that eventually they?d integrate into CSR (see timeline on page 22).

Now that the time for integration has come, NIH is taking the opportunity to revamp its entire grant-proposal review structure, much of which hasn?t changed in 20 years, says Virginia Cain, PhD, special assistant to the director of NIH?s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). For NIMH and NIDA, NIH is re-creating the study sections for whole study areas instead of forcing the institutes into existing study sections. Last year, NIH reformulated its neuroscience review to encompass all the neuroscience research funded by NIMH and NIDA as well as the other NIH institutes.

(In 1996 NIAAA took a different route than NIMH and NIDA, folding most of its grant review directly into existing CSR study sections.)

Led by CSR Director Ellie Ehrenfeld, PhD, NIH is taking these reformulations slowly, getting input from the scientific community and testing each change to ensure that quality review is maintained.

Even after the new behavioral and social science study sections are in place, NIH will monitor the review process, just as it?s doing with the new neuroscience study sections, which reviewed their first round of grant applications in June, says Anita Miller Sostek, PhD, chief of CSR?s biobehavioral and social sciences initial review group.

?Beth Azar