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Review
. 2019 Feb 1;111(2):109-117.
doi: 10.1093/jnci/djy208.

Survivorship Science at the NIH: Lessons Learned From Grants Funded in Fiscal Year 2016

Julia H Rowland  1 , Lisa Gallicchio  2 , Michelle Mollica  3 , Nicole Saiontz  4 , Angela L Falisi  4 , Gina Tesauro  5
Affiliations
Review

Survivorship Science at the NIH: Lessons Learned From Grants Funded in Fiscal Year 2016

Julia H Rowland et al. J Natl Cancer Inst. .

Abstract

Federal investment in survivorship science has grown markedly since the National Cancer Institute's creation of the Office of Cancer Survivorship in 1996. To describe the nature of this research, provide a benchmark, and map new directions for the future, a portfolio analysis of National Institutes of Health-wide survivorship grants was undertaken for fiscal year 2016. Applying survivorship-relevant terms, a search was conducted using the National Institutes of Health Information for Management, Planning, Analysis and Coordination grants database. Grants identified were reviewed for inclusion and categorized by grant mechanism used, funding agency, and principal investigator characteristics. Trained pairs of coders classified each grant by focus and design (observational vs interventional), population studied, and outcomes examined. A total of 215 survivorship grants were identified; 7 were excluded for lack of fit and 2 for nonresearch focus. Forty-one (19.7%) representing training grants (n = 38) or conference grants (n = 3) were not coded. Of the remaining 165 grants, most (88.5%) were funded by the National Cancer Institute; used the large, investigator-initiated (R01) mechanism (66.7%); focused on adult survivors alone (84.2%), often breast cancer survivors (47.3%); were observational in nature (57.3%); and addressed a broad array of topics, including psychosocial and physiologic outcomes, health behaviors, patterns of care, and economic/employment outcomes. Grants were led by investigators from diverse backgrounds, 28.4% of whom were early in their career. Present funding patterns, many stable since 2006, point to the need to expand research to include different cancer sites, greater ethnoculturally diverse samples, and older (>65 years) as well as longer-term (>5 years) survivors and address effects of newer therapies.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Distribution of fiscal year 2016 National Institutes of Health-wide survivorship research grants by funding mechanism (N = 165). Other includes: R34, R43 (Small Business Grants), and R15 (Academic Research Enhancement Award).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Distribution of fiscal year 2016 National Institutes of Health-wide survivorship research grants by study focus and design (N = 157). The eight grants coded as establishment of a cohort are excluded from this figure, because these applications did not lend themselves to coding by a major area of focus.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Funding trends for survivorship research grants held in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences from 1998 to 2017.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Study cancer survivors.
    [No authors listed] [No authors listed] Nature. 2019 Apr;568(7751):143. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-01095-9. Nature. 2019. PMID: 30967678 No abstract available.

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