CARE RESEARCH

to review a specific one-off funding opportunity announcement. The names of all the study section members are publicly available, and you should spend a moment looking over the names of your peers who will review your grant. You may request that a specific member not be assigned to your grant, and you may request that a person with a specific expertise be among the reviews, though you may not suggest that person by name. So, if your proposal needs a pediatric radiologist to understand it, request that the study section include such a person on the review. The CSR will strive to find that person and appoint him or her as an ad hoc member, ensuring that your proposal gets the review that it deserves.

Sometimes, institutes appoint their own review panel. These are not managed by the CSR, although they follow the same rules. For example, if you propose a clinical trial to be funded by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, it will be reviewed by an NINDS-appointed review panel of your peers. These instituteappointed study sections can often only be appointed after the grants have been received, because there may be conflicts of interest that are only apparent once the PIs have been identified. This is one of the reasons that there can be a delay of several weeks between your submission and when it is reviewed; however, most of the study sections meet on specific standing dates and their members are often appointed for 12 months of service.

Now that you understand how your proposal is assigned to a study section, in our next column we will explain what happens during a study section meeting.

About The Author

Dr. Brown is the director of the Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR) where he leads efforts to coordinate emergency care research funding opportunities across NIH. Additionally, Jeremy is the primary contact for the NINDS Exploratory and Efficacy FOAs and serves as NIH's representative in government-wide efforts to improve emergency care throughout the country. He is also the medical officer for the SIREN emergency care research network which is supported by both NINDS and NHLBI. Jeremy.brown@nih.gov