Archives for the Month of November 2009 on Shirley Moore, Grant Writer
Specific Aims Section
So, what makes a good specific aims section. There are lots of grantwriting books that provide guidance on this. I personally use the advice that I got in a grant writing course once. My first short paragraph is usually to highlight the problem and its importance. What we know about the problem, the specific gap in knowledge, and why this gap is a problem for the field. Each of these components is only about 1 sentence.
The second paragraph gives some context to set the stage for what I am going to propose in this application, stating the long term objective for my program of research and then specifically for this proposal, followed by some intriguing new literature or data that I have that makes the timing and my team’s qualifications unique to undertake this study.
In the third paragraph I then go deeper into applying the new idea to my population and the variables under study. This is followed by a broad purpose statement and the specific study questions. Following the study questions, I like to write a sentence or two that summarize the study design. I usually add a significance and innovation statement, but with the new shorter page limit, I’m not sure that I’ll put these in the specific aims section of the application. I’ll see what I can fit on the page when I write.
My advice to new grant writers when learning to write a specific aims section is to carefully read the specific aims pages of several successful grant writers – notice the pattern that they use. But most importantly, learn to OUTLINE your specific aims in a bullet point fashion first, prior to forming the sentences. This really helps the flow and makes every sentence have a distinct purpose.
I expect that my specific aims section will undergo many revisions in the next three months. My experience is that whoever reads the specific aims section along the way makes suggestions to improve/change it – just when you are sure you have crafted the perfectly elegant, persuasive, scientifically tight and intriguing specific aims – someone comes along and tweaks it again!
Remember, with the new NIH guidelines, the specific aims section can be no longer than 1 page. This reminds me to share my basic outline for the research plan section of a NIH grant application. When I write next, I’ll share that.
What this grant is about
It dawns on me that I should be sharing just what this grant application is about. This is a competing continuation grant of an existing project, SystemCHANGE, an R01 funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. It ends in the next few months and my goal is to obtain a continuation of this project – thus, this application I am now writing. My research focuses on increasing lifestyle exercise in persons who have had cardiac events. In my current project, I have been conducting a three-group randomized trial of two behavioral interventions and usual care. The two behavioral intervention arms are based on differing theories and approaches to helping persons engage in lifestyle exercise. My results have shown that both these two interventions have significantly increased lifestyle exercise for a year after a cardiac event as compared to subjects in the control group. This is my second randomized trial in which my intervention(s) have been significantly better than usual care to improve lifestyle exerise.
My thoughts for this next grant are that it is time for me to do a study imbedding my intervention into the actual care system of cardiac patients. Thus, my plans are to write a grant application to test the intervention as delivered in existing cardiac rehabilitation programs. This is exciting for me, as my goal when I began this line of research 15 years ago was to redesign the lifestyle change teaching that patients were taught in cardiac rehabilitation programs.
I’m struggling as I write the specific aims section about whether or not I should be writing this study as a comparative effectiveness study or a standard randomized trial. Or maybe, I should be writing it with an emphasis on implementation science? Both of these areas (comparative effectiveness and implementation science) are new to me and will require some new learning. Mmmm – could be time to have lunch with some colleagues and talk this through with them.
Back to work after the holiday
It is the Sunday after thanksgiving and I am starting on the grant application after a few days off. I am an every day writer -- whether it is grants or manuscripts -- so days without writing seem strange to me. My goal is to put in about 20 minutes of actual writing on a project every day. (Long uninterrupted periods of time in which to devote only to writing never seem to come in my life). Writing every day also keeps me feeling like I am making progress and relieves the guilt of thinking that I am not making progress. Of course, when writing a grant application, there is much to be done that is not “writing,” such as personally contacting co-investigators, consultants, recruitment sites, coordinating with the Center for Research and Scholarship (CFRS), finding and reading the literature, etc. Most of all, I find there is just a lot of time needed for sharing my ideas and discussing options and challenges about the science portion of the application with colleagues. I think that is a major point I hope to convey with this blog – grant writing is not just a solitary thing you do alone in your office. The best science is worked out over time with the input of others. So, my goal is to ask more colleagues to lunch over the next few months. They are a big help to me. This is in contrast to thinking that I do not have time for lunch when grant writing. Lunch with colleagues is an important part of my grant writing strategy. Right now, however, I’d better get started on a VERY rough draft of the specific aims section.
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving. My daughter arrived home last night and I have lots of shopping to do to get Thanksgiving dinner ready for tomorrow. I have meetings scheduled today (day before Thanksgiving) until 3:30, so will need to be efficient about shopping. I’m a list maker – you could probably tell that from my grant workplan that I shared a few days ago – so that should help. I’ll get back to you after the holiday. It is time to get a rough draft of my specific aims for the grant. I’ll share my thoughts about writing a specific aims section. As you can see from my workplan, I hope to talk with my program officer sometime in the next couple of weeks and I will need a rough specific aims for that discussion with him.
Upcoming Holiday
Well, it has just dawned on me that there will be three holidays between now and when this grant application in due on March 5th (actually it is due into our research office for electronic posting about February 22 – which is why I started writing the grant now. I think it takes 3 months to write a good grant – and I am an experienced grant writer.). But, back to the holiday issue – there is no good time to write a grant. It is a problem at the beginning of a semester, the end of a semester, summer, family weddings, vacations, etc. So, I guess winter holidays as a competing activity for my time is as good as any other time of the year. And – let’s face it, when you live in Cleveland, you might as well be writing a grant during the cold, dark days of winter as doing anything else.
I do need a strategy for writing during the holidays, however. I could be guilty of either not working enough on the grant or not spending enough time with the family because of the grant. So, I need a plan for how to get both in. My rough plan for Thanksgiving is to not write on the grant on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but to write at least some of one day of the weekend. That should keep me in the FLOW, but not overtake my holiday. I’ll have to give some thought about how to work with Christmas. (You’ll note I did not say “Christmas break” - as I really don’t take much of a break when I have a grant needing to be done in February).
Anyway, really good news is that my daughter is coming home from college tonight. That is always good family time. I cook for about 25 people on Thanksgiving. Actually, it is a great diversion from the cerebral work of grant writing and I really enjoy it. Now that I think of it, grant writing and preparing Thanksgiving dinner have a lot in common – lots of advance planning and details that have to come together by a deadline.
Who is Shirley Moore, Grant Writer?
Let me share a little about myself. I am a Professor of Nursing and the Associated Dean for Research at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I study recovery following cardiac events, with an emphasis on lifestyle change. Most recently I have been conducting trials of interventions to increase lifestyle exercise in cardiac patients. I also direct a P30 Center of Excellence in Self-Management Research and run a T32 Training program for predocs and postdocs. You can read more about me at this website.
I am just finishing a current grant, and the grant application that I am blogging about is a competing continuation of this grant. (Competing continuation applications scare me – Do I have enough data from the current study to go forward in this area? Do I have the right idea to even put forward as the next step? It’s pretty obvious that I need to have a telephone conversation with my NIH program officer to get his opinion. I’ll share in an upcoming posting what I do to prepare for this call.)
Oh, I promised in this posting that I would share my grant writing workplan (timeline) for writing this application. I always do a workplan for each grant that I write. I start with a template and then I personalize it for each project. Here is my template. Here is my draft workplan for this project. I call it a draft workplan because I find myself revising it frequently as I get deeper and deeper into the application. I don’t know what I would do without this workplan, though. It keeps me focused on the right thing at the right time (and prevents me from getting paralyzed when I am overwhelmed). Let me know if you try it and it is helpful to you or if you have suggestions. Remember, you will see this change a lot of the course of the next 3 months as I personalize it more to this project and my progress.
Getting Started
Hi, I'm starting this grantwriter blog to share my experience of writing a NIH grant. I hope to show how I break this large task down to workable chucks and share some of the considerations I make along the way in writing a federal grant. This is also a personal growth experience as I have never written a blog before. Thankfully, I have written NIH grants before, so I hope that my blog will assist newcomers to the grant writing process.
My plans are to blog 3-4 times a week over the next 3 months as I write the grant. You are welcome to write comments to me along the way. My next blog will describe a little about my grant plans and show my grant writing worksheet.
Shirley Moore, Grant Writer