Grants & You: Winter 2024: Scholarly Innovation & Grant Resources

The How and Why of Recovery of Grant Funds

NIH has been asked before under what circumstances NIH recovers funds because of grant noncompliance. This important question has many layers, as there are implications for NIH grants oversight, integrity in research, protection of the U.S. taxpayer’s investment, and the public’s trust in scientific research. In the following, NIH discusses the reasons why NIH may seek to recover funds, specifically in situations of overt and covert omissions of non-compliance (not “honest errors”).

Types of Integrity Concerns 

Say an investigator puts together an application that was very similar to another one of their studies that a private organization funded. Their institution was unaware of the other support, and submitted the application seeking NIH funding. As the application scored favorably, NIH subsequently approved it for funding. Program staff noticed that the research team had publications that clearly fell within the scope of the NIH award, yet NIH was not cited while other grants were. Upon closer review, we learned that there was duplicative, overlapping funding. When we shared these findings with the recipient institution, they agreed to repay grant funds.

NIH has also experienced real (not perceived) instances where a principal investigator designated on an NIH award purposefully omitted their involvement, including time and commitment, on multiple projects supported by another funder. Importantly, they did not disclose this information to NIH or even their own institutions. When looking further, we may find that the researcher was overcommitted. If they were made aware of the other support when the application was submitted (as required to be disclosed), there is a high probability we would have made a different, more informed funding decision. For instance, we may not have funded the proposal or we may have reduced the budget, salary support, or other costs depending upon the specifics.

What happens after integrity violations are found …

The exact amount of funds returned in such situations varies case-by-case. Please keep in mind that the money goes back to the U.S. Treasury, not the NIH’s pool of funds to support another research project. 

NIH generally will afford the recipient an opportunity to correct the deficiencies before taking action. To determine how much monies should be returned, NIH performs a careful and thorough review of each situation as part of our rigorous oversight, compliance, and stewardship roles (see this section of the NIH Grants Policy Statement). It is important to remember that since NIH makes awards to organizations, they are responsible for repaying or returning any funds, not the designated principal investigator. In some cases (for example, see here) the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) will seek monies directly from the principal investigator.

What it comes down to…

Even though grant funds are recouped for the taxpayer, NIH can never fix the damage that bad actors caused by unfairly diverting funds away from meritorious applications. The damage has been done. So, somewhere out there a principled researcher was not supported, a deserving project did not get off the ground, and potential public health advances may have been curtailed all because grant funds were misused.

Read the full article here.

Requesting Student Data for Research Purposes

ATSU students, faculty, and staff who would like access to ATSU student data, including email addresses, for any research purpose (including, but not limited to surveys, class projects, theses, and dissertations) must complete the following steps at least ten working days prior to the date the information is needed.

Requests are only accepted for research being conducted by currently enrolled students and/or faculty. The student must have prior approval from the ATSU Institutional Research Board (IRB).

Requesting Student Data

The student's advisor or committee chair must submit a request through ATSU's ticketing system and select the "Enrollment Data Request" subcategory.  Please upload all of the following to the ticket request:

• A copy of the IRB approval letter.

• A copy of the written permission from the Dean(s) or designated representative of the requested student population (see guide below).

• Include the details for the student population, including any demographic and contact information, that is needed for the research purpose. 

Receiving Student Data

Within 10 working days of the request, Enrollment Services will provide the requested data to the advisor or committee chair. 

Please note, any students with a FERPA block on their information will not be included in the request. 

Using Student Data

• The released student data cannot be provided to any other parties and may only be used for the intended research project. 

• All parties involved in the research project are responsible for safeguarding and the storage of the provided student data. 

• At the conclusion of the research project, all student data must be deleted/destroyed. 

• When using student email addresses, send using the bcc line only. The sender's email must be from an atsu.edu email account.

• The first line of all communications sent out using this student data must be "The following research project has been approved by the ATSU Institutional Review Board."

• If a student requests to be removed from the distribution list provided, the student data must be deleted and not included in any further related communications.

Approval(s) Required Prior to Data Request Submission

• ASDOH Dr. Robert Trombly, Dean

• ASHS Dr. AnnLee Burch, Dean 

• CHC (CA) Dr. Eric Sauers, Dean 

• CGHS Dr. Marisa Hastie, Dean

• KCOM Dr. William Sexton, Assessment Committee Chair 

• MOSDOH Dr. Dwight McLeod, Dean

• SOMA Dr. Sharon Obadia,  Dean

Visit the ATSU Enrollment Faculty/Staff support site here. 

I want to Learn How to Apply for NIH Research Funding. Where should I begin?

Start your orientation on the New to NIH page of NIH's Grants and Funding website. It provides overviews to help you understand the world of NIH grants, including links to allow you to take a deeper dive on topics of interest. Learn about:  

• NIH’s scientific mission, funding categories, structure, and budget support for research.  
• How NIH announces funding opportunity announcements. 
• Eligibility requirements for organizations, individuals, and early-stage investigators. 
• Roles of different NIH staff, their responsibilities, and how they can help you. 
• Electronic systems, roles, and required registrations for you and your organization.   

The bottom of the New to NIH page lists additional resources. Don’t miss the Information For guides for Researchers, Research Administrators, Small Business, and other roles.   

Ready for more? Explore the Grants Process and other major sections listed at the top of the NIH Grants and Funding website. 

CARE for Health Brings Research to Primary Care Settings

A few months ago in a director’s message, Helene M. Langevin talked about an important new NIH initiative, Communities Advancing Research Equity for Health™ (CARE for Health™), spearheaded by the director of NIH, Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D. This exciting program will bring clinical research opportunities to primary care settings. The first round of grants has been awarded, and the work of delivering on the vision of the program has officially begun. 

According to the latest data, more than half of the one billion physician visits that occur each year are visits to primary care providers. Routinely embedding clinical research into primary care practices is a challenging but vital step in understanding whole person health. Primary care providers, who serve on the frontline of patient care, are most likely to see the full range of health challenges people face—across all diseases and conditions and across the lifespan—and more fully appreciate complex factors that can create barriers to better health. By engaging with patients and providers in primary care settings, researchers will gain new insights into the connections between these factors and the health of individuals. Importantly, however, a prerequisite for successfully embedding research into primary care is to ensure that conducting the research does not add additional burdens to practitioners already struggling under heavy workloads, as is often the case in primary care, especially in low-resourced settings. Overcoming this challenge is one of the main goals of CARE for Health. 

Read more about the CARE Initiative and it's impacts on primary care here. 

Did you just finish a research project and want to publish it in a journal? Don’t know what journal to publish in? Don’t want to pay the high publication fees? Well, you are in luck; as an additional benefit to our faculty, students, and staff, the A.T. Still Memorial Library has entered into several agreements that enable ATSU-affiliated researchers to publish open access at no charge with the following publishers: Cambridge, Springer, Wiley, and BMJ Case Reports. To learn more about how to take advantage of these programs or for help identifying journals that fit your research, reach out to your liaison librarian.

Some examples of top journals from these publishers that are part of the library agreement are:

• Journal of Clinical Periodontology

• Sports Medicine

• Medical Education

• Occupational Therapy International

• Journal of Internal Medicine

• Journal of Child Language

• Language Learning

• European Journal of Dental Education

• Oral Radiology

• Research in Higher Education

• Health & Social Care in the Community

• Journal of Public Health Policy

• Journal of Physiology

• Advances in Medicine

 If you have questions or need additional help, don't hesitate to get in touch with your library liaison    

Using Artificial Intelligence and Other Digital Technologies to Enhance Grant Management Operations

NIH is leveraging  AI and other digital technologies to strengthen their internal grant and application management operations. 

Where does your application go…  

NIH reviewed over 75,000 applications in fiscal year 2023. It is a Herculean task to ensure all of these applications are assigned to the appropriate program and review staff at NIH, so they get a fair and timely review. One way NIH referral staff identify potential study sections to assign these many applications to is using the AI-based Automated Referral Tool. . 

Looking at those applications in more detail…  

Applicants are not allowed to submit duplicate or highly overlapping applications to be reviewed at the same time. Digital tools help NIH compare submitted applications for any potential scientific or budgetary overlap. For instance, NIH uses natural language processing (NLP), a type of AI, to find similar language in grant applications. 

We are also exploring how AI and machine learning can guide programmatic assessment of an application’s Data Management and Sharing Plan. These plans explain how to promote the sharing of scientific data underlying findings from NIH-supported research to accelerate biomedical research discovery. 

Better understanding the research we fund…  

AI algorithms are also being tested to improve public reporting on NIH funded projects. NIH wants to know, for instance, what projects other algorithms identify to validate results from the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization system. If successful, the process will help make better use of NIH staff expertise and time throughout the category validation and maintenance processes.  

Read the full article here. 

Check Out RGSI's Online Portal

The Division of Research, Grants & Scholarly Innovations (RGSI) consists of an administrative core and 3 departments: Sponsored Programs (SP), Research Support (RS), and A.T. Still Research Institute (ATSRI).

RGSI is dedicated to nurturing a strong and supportive environment for research and scholarly activity at

ATSU.