NIMH is moving right along...

I got my Summary Statement for my grant today, which is excellent time considering that I've only had my score for a few days. (They tell you to allow 6-8 weeks.) The Summary Statement has two parts: a "summary of discussion," which summarizes what everyone had to say, and then critiques from my three in-depth reviewers giving both numerical rankings and strengths-and-weaknesses for five different review categories.

Here's the bullet:

This application has numerous strengths including: addressing a highly significant public health problem (failure to initiate or delayed initiation of antiretroviral therapy); a clearly thought through iterative model of intervention development; well established involvement of the community; and a generally strong research design. In addition, testing takes place in both an outpatient clinic and an AIDS Service Organization setting thereby increasing generalizability. An additional strength is the complimentary expertise of the team.

Weaknesses include: a seemingly over ambitious work scope and time-line; insufficient description of plans for recruitment and retention; and a lack of clarity of how this study relates to other research being conducted by members of the team. Additional more negligible weaknesses are described in the individual critiques.

Overall, this is an extremely strong and timely application. (emphasis mine)

So there it is. I think the critiques are fair, for the most part, so that's a relief. These are fixable weaknesses, although I don't know quite how I will be able to provide more detail about several topics in the resubmission when I'm also going to be required to cut the length in half. (In half! *cries*)

I talked to my external mentor Sheryl at length on Friday. She thinks my score is encouraging and that I may well get funded this time around. (We'll see if she still feels the same way after she reads my Summary Statement.) She advised me that I should read the Summary Statement several times, let it sit for a few days, and then ask my NIMH Program Official if we can set up a phone meeting to discuss my chances and my options for the next step. So that's what I'll do now.

Being critiqued is always wounding, so below the cut I'm going to put in some nice things they said about me and my grant, as a sop to my ego. Feel free to ignore if (a) you already think I'm awesome, or (b) this type of evidence would not convince you.

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