My name is Rebecca Rogers, and I'm giving you the first of a series of lectures that the American Urogynecological Society has put together to help funding for their great idea. So the topic today is how to secure funding for your great idea. And I like this objection, but if you don't try, you definitely will not get funded with applying. I use it for another course that I teach, being able to state your ideas clearly. Lectures is not to teach you how to write, but clearly it's a really great idea, but I need some money to get myself started. It's always a good idea to look, and I made a little bit of an investment, they call the Research Allocation Committee, this is a funding mechanism through the institution, it's a small grant, $10,000 to $15,000, and its sole purpose is to help junior investing clinics through that as well. Then that would be referred to as intramural funding. Intramural funding is, they're looking for sites to recruit patients to a trial that's already been done. Some people have been able to generate some income from that kind of activity. I can say they may be interested in exploring another acting mechanisms available where they are not dictating the research, there's some kind of reporting to them. Remember, if you do get funding from industry, that you would have to, actual execution of the research or not. Both, obviously from NIH, and NIDDK, at least on the GYN base, they also receive funding from the National Institute of Aging, so through foundations, such as the Oggs Foundation, which provides grants to, and there's also funding mechanisms available through that. One way of trying to figure out what mechanisms might or might not be available at your institution is to look up foundations that might be interested in research independence, involving funding from something that is at the level of the NIH training grants, basically in those grants, they're awarded to the institution, something like that. There are mentored clinical scientist development awards, mental clinical research development awards, KOHs or K23s, and what that does provide a lot of funding to actually do the research. Typically, the R03 grants are a couple of years in duration, and somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000. The R21s are specifically designed to be exploratory and innovative, and maybe a little bit more if we have reached research independence. This summarizes, more or less, what I've gone over. And then the K32 is at the end of their fellowship training, have had, it is to pursue more training and research, and again, this is mostly for salary, with some small amount for the actual research-related costs. And traditionally, this has been focused on basic research, rather than clinical research, focused on clinical scientists. So these are the folks, less time is allowed. I think that that is not the resources on the NIH website. And I would encourage, for all of these, that you're going to include coursework, it should include specifics of an NPH, something like that. The mentorship has to be very strong, 75% research that you are actually spent the right time with the right resources to be able to achieve your goal. The R series, they can be both to unsolicited, so there is a regular schedule of time when the funding level, more of those grants get funded than if they're unsolicited research. And then there's LISTSERV, and you'll get the announcement, and foundations, and AHRQ, and the National Science Group. You kind of need to start poking around and seeing what you're going to develop as your niche. It's pretty lack of credibility in the reviewer's eyes, because your focus is too broad. You also need mentorship, and ways to do that, one way is to be involved in a program that like many folks who are trying to help junior investigators be more competitive. There may be mentors within your own department, there may be mentors within the institution, and there may be mentors outside your institution. So one thing I can say about my experience with AUGS and other societies that I'm a member of is that as a whole in urogynecology, most folks are pretty helpful if I ask for help. Certainly early in my career that was true, and I'd like to think that that continues. So talk to folks about if you have institutional support for your idea. So the key elements for developing a good idea is that you really need to understand this, you're dead in the water. So really this club or some way you can mature an idea without someone going, hey, you know, I really don't understand what you're getting to here. And accept that you're probably going to revise things more times than you thought humanly possible. You have to be passionate. It's really a great feeling to think, gosh, you know, this is something new that nobody else has thought of, and this is my contribution to our field. So a good idea is both, and some ideas die because it's just, you know, so what, or it's not really leading to new directions, to a grant, and this is a long, arduous process. You have to be responsive to that request. And they also, they're very bright, they should be, anybody should be in that alert. There are some, every so often, the AUGS has a white paper, so that leads with credibility to your idea. We talked about focus and, you know, if you do your work and you show up and you produce good stuff, people ask you again. But if you overcommit and can't make your deadlines and aren't responsive to emails and stuff doesn't happen, that's what really kills you. I think it takes about 100 hours. You found your idea, feel for it, and it's a focused question, and then literature, you developed the idea, you vetted it, got some feedback, and then you're just going to, again, this is not something that should be finished the day before it's due. So most grants will have introductory, it's a page you'll send to the NIH project officer to vet your idea. So let's say you've decided on the direction or the person in charge of that area of research only reads this page. And if it's hard, the field needs to be understanded. You really can't fall back on the idea that, you know, my area of research is so complicated, only people who are involved in it can understand it. That is just not going to fly. The specific aims, sort of a snapshot of what's going on, specific enough where the people are doing the more in-depth review, but broad enough that people who are on the fly can grasp the importance of what you have. And from this process, what further gaps will be, you know, the gap, the statement of need, a little bit about the methods, what, if it really doesn't hit the key components of the background that it needs to be done, which sets up the problem, the overall objective. Particularly in the logic flow of prior work, I think, you know, two or three is acceptable, but really it's not written as a review paper, but really as a logic flow. Provide support for the rationale, the overall objective of the application, the long-term goals, the central hypotheses, why you are qualified. Don't propose more than you can do. One of the things that you hear on in the allotted period of time, areas of a grant, and typically we're looking at three and we're going to add it, creates a scenario where the specific aims are dependent on what kind of discussions stop. Again, you know, keep at it, it's a long-term plan and progress through this. And this is where I would like to encourage you to listen to the rest of the webinar.

securing funding

funding mechanisms

grant proposal

specific aims

mentorship