Developing and Using a Concept Paper

This week, we held our Spring ORDE Book Club, focused on the 5th edition of Successful Grant Writing. We had a good discussion, and one thing that came up was the development and use of a concept paper for your research project.

Concept papers are one to two page overviews of a research project or idea that an investigator uses to vet and tailor their project to be a good fit for a particular funding agency. 

A concept paper can be used as a tool to allow a researcher to hone a particular research idea, but they also serve as a tool for marketing your research and networking with potential collaborators or Program Officers. You can keep concept papers on hand at conferences to give to folks you're interested in partnering with, or email them to a Program Officer to get a sense of the fit of your project for their directorate, study group, or program.

In our book, the authors recommend the following elements be included in you concept paper:

Problem statement/hypothesis: In one to two sentences what is your project intended to do?

Objectives: What are the key goals/outcomes you expect?

Methodology: Briefly describe what you'll do.

Budget: Optionally, include a broad budget, identifying where you'll use funding.

Key Personnel: Who is on your team?

This will give you a generalized concept paper that you can shop around at conferences to both POs and potential collaborators. However, as we discussed at our meeting, if you know what agency you plan to target for funding your project, it makes more sense to use the overview format that agency expects in their proposals. So, for example, if you plan to submit a proposal to the National Institutes of Health, write up a Specific Aims page. If you're going to the National Science Foundation, write up a Project Overview, including merit and broader impacts statements. Or, if you're going to the DOD, you might use a whitepaper format. The point is, when you're going to a particular agency, use the format that the PO is used to seeing when vetting your idea.

If you're not sure where you're planning to go for funding, or you're going to a foundation that does not have a clear format for the overview, the book's recommended format is a good way to go. As a bonus, creating a concept paper gets your idea on paper and pushes you to start thinking about what the project might look like ultimately.

Resources:
ORDE Book Club Video
How to Write a Concept Paper - Hanover Research

Structuring Paragraphs in Your Grant

Oftentimes, writers break to a new paragraph without a lot of thought. When you have a new idea, start a new paragraph is the guideline under which most of us operate. Yet, when we think about it from the reader's perspective, when a paragraph does not contain a complete thought or when a new paragraph makes a giant leap to a new subject without warning, our heads are left spinning!

So, as writers, there are a couple of things we can do to keep our readers from getting lost or frustrated. Using the mnemonic device MEAL, we can remember what should be in most paragraphs...

M - ain idea: This is your topic sentence; it sets up your reader to know what the paragraph is about

E - vidence: Of course, most main ideas need a little justification, so your evidence portion is a couple of sentences that back up your main idea.

A - nalysis: You're writing about this topic, because you have something to say about it, so what is your take on the main idea and the evidence you've cited?

L - ink or Last thought: This is a sentence or two where you conclude your thoughts and/or provide a linking sentence to the next paragraph.

Let's look at an example from an NIH award abstract:

Main  Evidence  Analysis  Link/Last thought

Excessive anxiety and fear leads to anxiety disorders, which impact many aspects of life, from the interpersonal to professional spheres. Although each anxiety disorder has different symptoms, they all share a core feature: mal-adaptive expression of high levels of anxiety. In our study, we will study how the brain suppresses anxiety. Prior studies showed the amygdala is largely responsible for generating high anxiety and fear, while the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) decreases these behaviors, possibly by inhibiting amygdala output. Indeed, in humans higher vmPFC activation correlates with lower amygdala activation and decreased anxiety. These data suggest the vmPFC-amygdala pathway may decrease anxiety and fear, but they rely on correlative measures, and can't directly test this hypothesis. We used optogenetics to directly test if the vmPFC-amygdala projection suppresses anxiety and fear. 

Remarkably, optogenetic activation of the vmPFC-amygdala pathway robustly inhibits innate anxiety and learned fear, while inhibition of this pathway increases anxiety.... 

As with any writing rule, there are exceptions and easily-readable paragraphs that leave out one component or another. Yet, when you pull all of the paragraphs together in a section, they should include all of the MEAL components pretty regularly.

In terms of paragraph organization, Otto Yang, in his book, Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant Application, offers a technique to better construct and organize your paragraphs.  For one section, take the first line of every paragraph and put them together to see if those lead sentences alone give you an understanding of the piece.  This is important especially for grant-writing where reviewers often skim the numerous proposals they review. Giving your reviewers clear sign posts at the start of a paragraph will be much appreciated.

Although these techniques are helpful when you're writing, often they're more useful to apply when you are re-reading and revising.  You've already gotten your thoughts down and they seem to flow, but perhaps you'll realize in making revisions that your reader will have to read half-way through many of your paragraphs before they understand your main point.  In this case, it may serve you and your reader well to apply some paragraph revisions.

Resources:
Paragraphing with the MEAL Plan - Capella University
Paragraphs - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Writing Center

The NIMHD

The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIMHD’s mission is “to lead scientific research to improve minority health and health disparities” (Source: About NIMHD web page). To meet  this mission, the Institute supports external and internal research initiatives. NIMHD also serves as an information source for both the medical community and the US public.

 The Institute’s function dates back to 1990 and the formation of the Office of Minority Programs within the NIH Office of the Director. In 1993, it became the Office  of Minority Programs, and in 2000 was elevated to the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities became the official designation in 2010 as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Specific Interests

NIMHD has identified three research interest areas to advance minority health and address health disparities:   1) Clinical and Health Services Research, 2) Integrative Biological and Behavioral Research, and 3) Community Health and Population Sciences. The Institute has also developed a Research Framework Model incorporating factors to be considered when studying minority health and health disparities. This initial model has been modified for specific health disparity populations as well (see Dr. Manson’s edition specific to Native Americans).

Approach

NIMHD supports external research efforts, providing research funding to universities, medical institutions, non-profit, and for-profit organizations. NIMHD advertises specific interests using requests for applications (RFAs), program announcements, and general program descriptions. Internal research efforts are focused on three disease areas associated with significant health disparities: cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer.

 NIH just published the “Minority Health and Health Disparities Strategic Plan 2021-2025”, outlining a variety of specific goals including emphasizing health promotion, increasing intervention research, improving methodology research, training up the next generation of minority health and health disparities researchers, ensuring representation of minority and other health disparity populations in NIH-funded research, and many others.

Agency Organization

Within the structure of NIH, NIMHD has its own Director. The Director, with their leadership team, sets the vision for the Institute and deploys budget resources responsive to that vision. There are three programmatic divisions within the Institute beyond the Office of the Director:

·       Science Programs (including extramural research)

·       Data Management and Scientific Reporting

·       Intramural Research

 The National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NACMHD) provides guidance on the Institute’s research portfolio and serves in an advisory capacity for the Health and Human Services Secretary, NIH and NIMHD Directors on matters related to the Institute’s mission. The Council has 15 members as well as ex officio members and representatives from other federal agencies.

Resources:

Know Your Agency Brief: NIMHD

NIMHD Know Your Agency e-Seminar

NIMHD Strategic Plan

Submitting Clear and Compelling Publications

Yesterday we held our e-seminar on submitting clear and compelling publications, and as a group we came up with many great tips and strategies. Some of which I share below:

Choosing a journal:

The earlier you can choose a journal to target, the better. This is because, once you know what journal you want to submit to, you can write the article that best fits the journal's aims and scope as well as spend time seeing what their publications tend to look like, allowing you to craft a pub that best fits. When selecting a journal, consider review time, impact factor, as well as the audience you want to reach. Consider reaching out to the Editor before submitting if you have questions that aren't answered on the website or in the guidelines.

Considering audience:

The best writing is that written with the audience in the mind. So, before you put pen to paper, think about who will read it. What information will they be looking for and how do they plan to use it. What background will they have coming to your piece, and what do you need to fill them in on?

Writing tips:

There are many small things to keep in mind that can help improve your writing. Firstly, use active voice if your target journal allows it; it's simply easier to read than the passive alternative. Second, keep your sentences short; when they get to 3-4 lines long, you've probably got a couple sentences merged into one. Third switch up your word choice. I have a tendency to start using my favorite word of the day over and over again, and I don't catch it until I'm reading my draft out loud later on - that's when all the errors jump out!

Writing process:

Feeling out your writing process is half the battle to good writing. Start out by identifying when in your day you write best. Is it first thing in the morning or late at night? Try outlining your manuscript before you start writing. Identify what you want to convey in each section. What are your key points? What background information will your readers need? 

Leave yourself breadcrumbs. Don't button up all of your writing at the end of a writing session, because you'll sometimes find yourself at what feels like an insurmountable wall of a new section when you start writing the next day. Instead, start a new paragraph and stop before you've completed something where you're on a roll. It'll make it that much easier to get going in that next writing session.

Hopefully, these offer you some things to help improve your process of writing and publishing. Below are several resources for more tips and strategies, including our full seminar. Happy writing!

Resources:

e-Seminar: Submitting Clear and Compelling Publications - ORDE

Steven Pinker's 13 Rules for Good Writing

How to Get Published in an Academic Journal - The Guardian