NIH Extramural Nexus

Last month I blogged about the participation of women in NIH extramural programs, and I promised more information when the paper that we prepared in collaboration with the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health came out, so here it is. You can read the full article  to delve into the analytical details, but I wanted to highlight a few of the important findings, primarily focusing on the R01 program.

The paper presents two studies. The first, a cross-sectional analysis from fiscal year 2008 data, compared women’s and men’s grant application, success, and funding rates for 17 award programs (plus T32 trainees) that represent a typical “career ladder.” As shown in the figure below, which summarizes data shown in the report, the proportion of women applicants compared to men generally decreased at more advanced career stages. Similar findings appeared in a 2007 National Academies report.

The report goes on to show small differences in the success rates or funding rates between women and men for most research programs. Looking specifically at the R01 program, the sexes had equal success rates (23%); however, women had small and what appear to be persistently lower funding rates than men (26% vs. 28%), presumably because men submit more applications per person than women. When we looked separately at new (type 1) applications, the sexes had nearly equal success and funding rates but there were differences with renewal (type 2) applications where men had higher funding rates.   Another bright spot is that women and men awardees both received the same percentage of requested direct costs (87.5%) and women actually received larger awards than men. 

The second part of the paper goes on to show that men were more likely to have more than one concurrent R01 awards than women. But, looking at all principal investigators with two, three, or four concurrent awards, the study shows that women attain these milestones when they are younger than men. Honing in on factors that may explain the  differences between male and female applicants, the paper shows that proportionately more women proposed human subjects research than men (~50% vs. ~30%), and they were equally successful on those applications. However, it was noted that many of these projects are less likely to be submitted for renewal. Also, women were less successful than men on applications that did not involve human subjects.

Our take… Overall, the authors showed that women have comparable success and funding rates to men for most award programs. And, women awardees, on average, received at least as much as men in direct costs requested per application. However, there remain areas that I think could benefit from improvement, including retaining more women in biomedical research as they climb the career ladder. Continuing to look critically at trends in funding will be important as we move forward.

I encourage you to take a look at the paper by Pohlhaus, J.R.; Jiang, H.; Wagner, R. M.; Schaffer, W. T.; Pinn, V. W., “Sex Differences in Application, Success, and Funding Rates for NIH Extramural Programs”  Academic Medicine 86 (6): 759 June, 2011.

I have heard recently from various groups in our community that there are increasing calls to action from animal rights activists. Everyone has the right to voice their opinions and to work for causes they believe in. Unfortunately, when the call to action involves intimidation, threats and violence it turns from voicing opinions to inciting acts of terrorism. Threatening the safety of scientists and students both at their home and at their institutions is terrorism and, plainly put, is intolerable.

NIH supports the judicious and ethical use of animals in research to develop life-saving treatments for many diseases affecting the public health. All animals used in federally-funded research are protected by laws, regulations and policies to ensure the smallest possible number of subjects and the greatest commitment to their humane care and use. Fulfilling these protections is a collaborative effort between NIH, federally-supported scientific investigators, and research institutions. I know that those of you who are federally-supported scientists and institutions, are committed to upholding the laws, regulations and policies that ensure the appropriate care and use of animals in your studies.   

Being prepared for the unexpected, whether it is from natural disasters or human-directed events, can help mitigate deleterious effects to both your animals and yourself. We have a variety of resources that you can use as you build your preparedness program. I hope you will take the time to prepare a plan but will never have the need to use it.

Update 5/13: The second graph and the table below are incorrect and have been updated in a new post.

 Meetings have taken me out of the office and made me a bit negligent in my blogging.  Let’s catch back up by discussing more about the distribution of NIH funding.   

There are many urban legends about NIH funding, only some of which have some basis in fact. For example, we often hear that there are many successful PIs who continuously add to their bounty by piling on more and more NIH awards. Is this true?

Take a look at the graph below to see, on average, how many NIH research project grants a PI holds in any given year.

                      Average Number of Competing and Non Competing RPG Awards per Contact PI per Year

In fact, on average, PIs only have between one and two awards at a time. It differs among PIs at different institution types but only slightly. However, if we take a look at the investigators who receive the most funding (the top 20% of the total pool), we see they averaged 2.2 grants in fiscal year 2009; although, a significant portion have three grants ongoing at any given time. 

It is important to point out that NIH makes funding decisions based on our vigorous review process and the alignment of proposed research with IC priorities. Thus the success of any applicant, and the number of grants she or he holds, is based on a competitive process that I believe these data well reflect. Having said that, these data point to the fact that NIH awards are generally distributed broadly among PIs and not concentrated among a few.

Updated 4/8/11

Here are the raw numbers used to create figure 2 above.