UC San Diego Health Sciences Grant Writing Course helps launch successful research careers

(Press-News.org) To launch a successful research career in the health sciences, junior faculty need to write persuasive, high-quality grant proposals that get funded. However, the skill is not widely taught in medical schools or graduate programs. In a new study, University of California San Diego researchers report that early career faculty who completed the institution’s innovative Health Sciences Grant Writing Course demonstrated significant increases in grant submission rates and funding success — especially among women and faculty from underrepresented backgrounds. The study was published on January 12, 2025 in Academic Medicine.

Obtaining a grant for independent research from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the primary source of funding for biomedical research in the U.S. — is highly competitive. In 2023, only 19% of grant applications submitted to the NIH by early career investigators were funded, reflecting a highly competitive environment. Acknowledging that grant writing is a specialized skill, UC San Diego Health Sciences Office of Faculty Affairs launched a structured, multi-component grant writing course in 2017. The course is designed to equip these faculty to prepare competitive grant proposals with confidence, supporting them through every step of the process with the tools required to be successful.

“Grant writing is a genre, its own kind of communication,” said co-author JoAnn Trejo, PhD, MBA, professor of pharmacology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and senior ​assistant vice chancellor for Health Sciences Faculty Affairs. “The most important thing in today's world is to communicate how significant the project is with respect to science. And you are also advertising the work that you've done before, assuring the committee that you're capable of doing this work.”

Between 2017 and 2021, 85 early career Health Sciences faculty — including physicians, MD/PhDs and PhD research scientists — enrolled in the Grant Writing Course.  Of these, 45 were women, and 15 were researchers from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. None of the participants had previously received an independent research grant through the NIH or another major funder as a principal investigator.

The majority of participants held appointments in UC San Diego School of Medicine, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, or the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The course took place over nine sessions across three months, featuring step-by-step instruction in writing an NIH R01 grant application. R01 grants support long-term, comprehensive health sciences research projects. Participants received mentorship from senior faculty on sections of the proposal, including the opening statement, hypothesis, aims, significance, innovation, approach, biosketch and responding to critiques. The course covers the process of researching the state of the field and how to work with content experts, and emphasizes persuasive, logical, clear and engaging writing.

During the course, participants developed first drafts of their proposals, which were then reviewed and critiqued by their peers and mentors. They went through several revisions based on this feedback and engaged in a mock NIH study section with verbal and written critiques from senior faculty using the agency’s formal review format. At the end of the course, many submitted their proposals for funding.

Data on submission rates and outcomes was collected at several timepoints before and after the course, with a two-year prospective follow-up. Key outcomes of the study after two years included:

87% of participants submitted the grant proposal they developed during the course 96% of participants submitted at least one grant application 79% of participants received grant funding as a principal investigator or multi-principal investigator since taking the course 40% of the proposals written during the course were approved and funded 30% of the funded proposals were R01, R01 equivalent or R21 (exploratory/developmental) grants Success rates were equal for men and women and highest for underrepresented faculty Participants’ confidence in their grant-writing skills also increased significantly, with the greatest improvement being their understanding of the NIH review and award process. In response to qualitative questions, participants were overwhelmingly positive about their experience, citing its impact on their subsequent funding success.

“ I think what builds confidence is to understand what's expected in every single section of a grant, and then to try to write that section yourself, get feedback on it, make it better, get more feedback on it, make it better,” said first author of the study Andrea LaCroix, PhD, MPH,  faculty director for the course and distinguished professor at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science.

Traditionally, grant writing has been a lonely process, according to Trejo.

“The traditional model for grant writing does not emphasize collaboration,” said Trejo. “Basically, you get sent to your office and told to write some grants,” said Trejo. Asking for help was discouraged.

“The Grant Writing Course takes the opposite approach, emphasizing grant writing as a team process — that we help each other and that our responsibility is to become effective peer reviewers,” said LaCroix. “It's a model of expansive opportunity — the belief that another person getting a grant doesn’t take anything away from me.  You need to water the plant and you need to feed the plant. You don't say to the plant ‘well, now that you're here in my house, get your own water, get your own food, get your own sunlight.’”

Grant writing skills are especially important at a time when federal funding for medical research is under increased scrutiny,” she said. “It's more important than ever that we support our early career faculty in producing excellent grant applications, establishing a supportive network and sustaining them through this time.”

Trejo said several universities offer health sciences grant writing programs in various forms, but the study is one of the first to systematically evaluate the impact on early career researchers.

“Early career researchers are working to address some of today’s most pressing health care challenges,” said Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences John M. Carethers, MD. "By investing in hands-on grant writing training, UC San Diego Health Sciences is investing in the future of cutting-edge research and innovation. Participants in this program will go on to make significant contributions to their fields and improve the well-being of patients and their communities.”

Additional co-authors on the study include: Danielle Fettes, Yelda Serin, Mariko Poupard, Virginia Hazen, Deborah Wingard, all at UC San Diego.

The study was funded, in part, by the NIH (grants UL1 TR001442, KL2 TR001444 and U54 CA272220).

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

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