Innovative Funding Models During COVID-19
A report from AcademyHealth supplements an earlier Paradigm Project Horizon Scan published in 2019 that examined innovative alternatives to peer review as the basis for allocating research funds. Since then, the COVID-19 crisis has brought into sharp focus the importance of research and scientific advancement in modern society. Facing a global pandemic, there is an urgent need to find solutions through research, not just to vaccines and treatments to address COVID-19 directly, but also wider investigations to address broader challenges faced by society. The 2019 report is updated to add a review of a range of different approaches used to support research related to COVID-19: public engagement and crowdfunding; flexibility in use of funding and resources; adapting application and decision processes to ‘fast-track’ funding; coordination and access; and prizes. The scale and speed of the changes in approach and openness to new funding routes is unprecedented and presents an opportunity for change and learning. It also is worth noting that at present there is little evidence on the effectiveness of these different approaches. Over the longer term, it will be important to evaluate how well these novel mechanisms performed in directing funding quickly and appropriately to learn what works. The report can be obtained here.
Senior Report: America’s Health Rankings
A nearly 60% increase in the population of older adults in the next 30 years is projected, according to the United Health Foundation's latest Senior Report, which measures the state of the physical, mental, and social health of older adults in the U.S. The analysis, which largely included data from 2019, finds that there will be nearly 86 million individuals aged 65 and older by the year 2050, up from 54 million in 2019. Even before the pandemic upended their health, this population was experiencing worsening health outcomes, including a nearly 40% increase in drug-related deaths since 2014 and an 11% increase in frequent mental distress from 2016-2019. At the same time, care for this group also improved in some areas in recent years, including increases in geriatric providers, flu vaccination rates, and exercise rates. The report can be obtained here.
Grant Review Feedback: Appropriateness And Usefulness
An article published earlier this year in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics indicates that the primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide constructive feedback to applicants for their resubmissions. Little is known, however, about whether review feedback achieves this goal. For example, although not listed as a core value of the NIH peer review system, reviewer feedback to applicants for the purposes of improving investigator grantsmanship and the overall quality of applications is an important, if secondary, purpose of grant peer review. The paper presents a multi-methods analysis of responses from grant applicants regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of peer review feedback they received from grant submissions. Overall, 56–60% of applicants determined the feedback to be appropriate (fair, well-written, and well-informed), although their judgments were more favorable if their recent application was funded. Importantly, independent of funding success, women found the feedback better written than men, and more white applicants found the feedback to be fair than non-white applicants. Also, perceptions of a variety of biases were specifically reported in respondents’ feedback. Fewer than 40% of applicants found the feedback to be very useful in informing their research and improving grantsmanship and future submissions. Further, negative perceptions of the appropriateness of review feedback were positively correlated with more negative perceptions of feedback usefulness. Importantly, respondents suggested that highly competitive funding pay-lines and poor inter-panel reliability limited the usefulness of review feedback. Overall, these results suggest that more effort is needed to ensure that appropriate and useful feedback is provided to all applicants, bolstering the equity of the review process and likely improving the quality of resubmitted proposals. The paper can be obtained here.