Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Funding 5/2/2019 Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Funding Ideas/Suggestions From My Experiences as a Competitor and Reviewer

Overview of Suggestions 5/2/2019 Overview of Suggestions 1. Build an interdisciplinary team & speak to a broad interdisciplinary audience 2. Couch your study/program in a rich historical-theoretical context 3. Take a balanced, rather than fundamentalist, approach to methods 4. Emphasize practical (clinical or policy), rather than mere statistical significance 5. Persist (be responsive to comments)

5/2/2019 CIHR Context 1. Interdisciplinary in philosophy, mandate, mission and practices 2. Highly competitive (20% success norm) 3. Very demanding committee workload 4. Health and health care research are necessarily applied 5. Scholarly quality 5-10 fold more valued than mere quantity (e.g., track record)

How CIHR Contextual Factors Play Out in the Review Process 5/2/2019 How CIHR Contextual Factors Play Out in the Review Process Ideas/Suggestions on How to Use Them to Your Advantage

Challenge 1: Diverse Committees With Large Workloads 5/2/2019 Challenge 1: Diverse Committees With Large Workloads - Diverse disciplinary, philosophical, & methodological perspectives - Not unusual for A & B internal or external reviewers to be discordant - Not unusual: - 100+ proposals to review - Each member A or B reviewer on 20 to 25 proposals - 60 to 80 hours of prep before Ottawa

Solution 1: Attract An Advocate (Best If Not in Your ‘Choir’) 5/2/2019 Solution 1: Attract An Advocate (Best If Not in Your ‘Choir’) - 3rd person in debate is often critical - Interesting ideas up front (jargon-free) - Connect to practical significance - Underscore preventive potential - Provide theoretical context (political, clinical or biological plausibility) - Balanced presentation of detailed methods (don’t pick a fight here)

Challenge 2: Very Competitive 5/2/2019 Challenge 2: Very Competitive - Regrettably, it seems that many quit It is probably true that: - CIHR has a unique culture - Committees are sometimes philosophically, methodologically, even politically unbalanced - Extreme views are represented - Fundamentalist perspectives typically don’t win (in or out of committee)

Solution 2: Focus on What You Can Control or Change 5/2/2019 Solution 2: Focus on What You Can Control or Change - Stay in the game and in so doing learn to play the game better, and ultimately, win - Be responsive to reviewer comments - Build an empowering team - Interdisciplinary researchers - Competent methodological expertise - Practitioners, decision makers - Senior experienced scholars - Junior scholars (faculty & graduate students): value added training

Challenge 3: Assessment of Track Record Quality 5/2/2019 Challenge 3: Assessment of Track Record Quality - Many committee members try to level the disciplinary playing field by ‘standardizing’ this assessment - Research published in the most competitive scholarly forums - Prestigious, high impact, peer- reviewed journal articles emphasized - Uptake maters: SSCI/SCI citations - Other, less competitive, nonpeer- reviewed works pretty much ignored: chapters, abstracts, even books, etc.

Solution 3: Plan Ahead to Play the Game Most Powerfully 5/2/2019 Solution 3: Plan Ahead to Play the Game Most Powerfully - In this game, quality trumps quantity - A junior scholar could thus plan a strategy to win a New Investigator award (1st 5 years post-Ph.D.) - One can always be renewed - The last 5 years are emphasized in track record assessment