NIMHD Financial Management Plan for Grant Awards

The NIMHD Appropriation for FY 2023 is $525,138,000 which represents an almost 14.2% increase above the previous fiscal year’s appropriated budget. The appropriated funds dedicate $56,000,000 toward a legislated program for chronic diseases in populations with health disparities and an additional $3,765,000 for the RCMI program.

NIMHD will use a zone of consideration when funding decisions are made without adherence to a strict pay line.

Zone of Consideration

A zone of consideration is a range of priority scores within which competing applications will be considered for funding. The table below details the range of priority scores per relevant grant program.

The currently available funding strategy information for NIMHD competing awards is displayed in the tables below. The NIMHD will continue to update its funding strategy for FY2023, as necessary and as additional information becomes available. Applicants are advised to use information presented here, in conjunction with information available in their organizational eCommons accounts, for planning purposes only.

Criteria for Selective Pay and Zone of Consideration

Final award decisions related to zones of consideration will be based on a variety of criteria relevant to:

• Scientific and technical merit of the proposed project, as determined by scientific peer review in the context of NIMHD priorities and areas of funding.
  • Of specific interest are meritorious applications that focus on racial and ethnic minority populations and/or low socioeconomic status (SES) persons.
  • The intersectionality of race and ethnicity and/or low SES with rural populations or sexual and gender minority (SGM) groups, and people with disabilities is also a priority.
• National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NACMHD) recommendations.
• Overall programmatic portfolio balance and need such as scientific gaps and needs, areas of special interest to the NIMHD, underrepresented scientific areas in NIMHD’s portfolio, and overlap with existing programs.
• Development and diversity of biomedical workforce that supports the NIH Next Generation Researcher’s Initiative (NGRI) and promotes researchers from underrepresented groups as a program priority.
• Potential for highly innovative scientific impact in advancing the science of minority health and health disparities.

To maximize available resources for new research grants, NIMHD competing R01 awards for established investigators will be subject to programmatic adjustments from the Initial Review Group (IRG) and NACMHD recommended levels. These adjustments will take into consideration the overall scientific and technical merit of the grant application, comments in the summary statement, the cost of the proposed research, other resources available for related research projects, and program priorities. NIMHD will reduce R01 competing awards for established investigators in FY 2023 by an average of up to 15% within the general allocation based on review of individual applications.

NIMHD will not consider applications from established investigators with three currently funded projects through the R01, P50, or U54 mechanism from any Institute or Center.

Consistent with the NIH NGRI, NIMHD seeks to encourage the stable integration of early stage investigators (ESIs) into the scientific research workforce. In support of this, NIMHD competing R01 awards for ESIs in FY 2021 will generally be funded at 100% of the IRG and NACMHD recommended levels.

NIMHD will generally fund non-competing continuation awards (Type 5s) in FY 2023 at the full committed levels.

Page updated Oct. 5, 2023