Using Concepts to Your Advantage

How Can You Benefit From Concepts?

A concept is the planning stage of an institute-specific initiative: a program announcement, request for applications, or request for proposals. Concepts are high-priority research areas in which NIAID would like to receive applications.

Though all concepts do not end up as published initiatives, we publish them on our Concepts Approved by Council page for two reasons:

• Concepts can give you a heads-up for potential initiatives, which we post on the NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID.
• Concepts can give you topic ideas for an investigator-initiated application. Such applications are more likely to qualify for above-the-payline funding.

You don't need to wait for NIAID to publish an initiative to apply in a topic covered by a concept. Savvy investigators look closely to see whether their expertise lends itself to any of these important research topics.

Contact an NIAID program officer to discuss high-priority areas you could use as the basis of an investigator-initiated application.

How Concepts Are Developed

Concepts for future initiatives are the fruits of many meetings and focus groups with the extramural research community. These information exchanges blend ideas of the community with those of NIAID staff into a solid understanding of future scientific needs and directions.

The ideas are then discussed at NIAID's biannual planning meetings where Institute managers look at the big picture and decide which concepts to send to our advisory Council for review.

We then turn to our Council for further guidance. According to law, experts in the field, usually the Council members, must approve a concept before we can announce an initiative. In this way, Council acts as a "board of directors," exerting approval authority for moving a concept forward. Go to our Council page.

Council Helps Shape Concepts

Council's lay and scientific members also review, comment on, and approve an initiative's characteristics, such as budget levels, mechanism (e.g., grant or contract, grant type), and other key features.

At the subcommittee meetings that take place during the Council meeting, program staff present an outline of a proposed concept for Council's scrutiny. (NIAID has three Council subcommittees, one for each of its extramural program divisions.)

For each concept, the subcommittee looks deeply at its scientific merit, relative priority, appropriate budget, and funding mechanism. Council's regular and ad hoc members approve, disapprove, or suggest modifications to each concept.

After fine-tuning by Council and the research community, Council-approved concepts become published PAs, RFAs, or RFPs depending on their Institute-wide priority and the amount of funds we have to spend for that fiscal year.

For more information, go to NIAID Funding Opportunity Planning and the Budget Cycle and the Application Approach: What Are Your Choices? section of NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.