Transitioning from Individual Projects to Center Grants

1. Transitioning from Individual Projects to Center Grants Perelman School of Medicine Symposium Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD June 22, 2012 Department of Health Care Management Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Leonard Davis Institute University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine CHERP, Philadelphia VA Medical Center

2. Imagine if. . . • You have been a well-funded and successful investigator • You are 6-7 years + into your academic career • You have gotten a bunch of R01s and built a solid record of accomplishment • You feel that you need an overarching platform for your work ‘to take it to the next level’

3. Reasons to go for it Center grants confer additional external recognition Branding can help bring more opportunities your way and help with dissemination Provide administrative support that can provide ‘glue’ for work between investigators Helps you think more deeply about what you want to accomplish Help confer the sense to NIH and others that you lead one of the best groups in your field

4. Reasons not to do it It is an enormous amount of work to put together a competitive Center grant application Have to think carefully about whether it helps you achieve your goals more efficiently than alternatives Some external branding can be done without a Center grant; key issue is how influential your science is Building a Center involves enormous investments of time; this may in many cases reduce your academic productivity

5. Talk Outline P01 application (unsuccessful) P30 Application (successful) A few words on funding from corporations

6. P01 Components Cores Admin Core – “the glue that makes sum larger than the parts” Data/Methods Core Choice Projects Typically between 3-5 Lowest scoring can potentially be dropped Need a minimum of 4 Each part gets scored and then overall score is given

7. P01 Application  Planning and Orchestrating Form an investigative team and define roles Solicit external and institutional support Create a checklist Set internal deadlines and stick to them

8. Many pieces  establish team leads DSMB Advisory Board Administrative Core PI Biostatistics Core PI Project 1 PI Project 2 PI Project 3 PI Project 4 PI Process Evaluation Core PI

9. Many pieces – establish team leads Figure 1. Program Project Grant Organizational Structure Administrative Core Kevin Volpp, M.D., Ph.D., Director George Loewenstein, Ph.D., Associate Director Steering Committee P01 PI and Co-PI Project PIs Core PIs Associate Directors Admin Manager National Advisory Committee Project 1 PI: Kevin Volpp, M.D., Ph.D. Project 2 PI:Jalpa Doshi, Ph.D. Project 3 PI:Jennifer Elston Lafata, Ph.D. Project 4 PI:George Loewenstein, Ph.D. LDI CHI P01 Cores Biostatistics and Data Management (BDM) (Troxel) Process Evaluation and Cost Effectiveness (PE-CEA) (Shea and Glick)

10. Describe fit within University and enlist support from relevant organizational leadership Figure 1. Related entities

11. Leverage all available resources External letters of support – well-placed EAB and DSMB Internal letters of support Make friends with the super-helpful people in the PSOM Office of Research Program Development Liz Bien x8-2726, http://www.med.upenn.edu/rpd/index.html

12. Putting the application together Oversight of a P01 submission is like oversight of an active program project grant Solicit input from and delegate tasks to team members Stay on schedule Mediate differences of opinion Review progress regularly Avoid overlap in scope among pieces Build rapport and dialogue with NIH program staff about the proposal: you need them to buy in to what you are trying to do

13. Create a submission checklist and set internal deadlines

14. Drafting the pieces – lots of details. . .

15. More than just details. . . Whole must be bigger than proverbial sum of parts Omit redundancies and discrepancies among cores and projects Get signed subcontract budgets in time to modify overall grant budget, if necessary Letters of support Understand the sheer volume of documents (CHIBE’s P01 was 796 pages long with a 6 page table of contents)

16. Assembling the documents This will take an entire day or two, no matter how much support you have Allow time to review and re-review everything Rally help early Administrative staff Business office staff Office of Research Program Development

17. Key lessons Carefully match your interests and likely availability of funding (NIA ended up only funding P01s with scores in 1.0-1.2 range in 2009) If your project isn’t funded, don’t give up! Individual projects can be submitted as R01s Cores can be modified for use in other proposals

18. What is a Roybal Center? • NIH P30 center grant • Authorized by Congress in 1993 • Named for former House Select Committee on Aging Chair Edward R. Roybal (U.S. House 1963-1993) • Purpose: Build a research infrastructure to enhance basic research and accelerate development of new ideas; foster academic, public, private collaborations • Goal: Translation of research into applications that can be moved quickly into practice to improve the health and well being of older adults

19. P30 application Roybal P30 Centers – 5 year grants focused on administrative support and pilot program support Existing Centers had to apply for renewal at 2009 In 2008, NIA let it be known that they were looking to bring in at least 1-2 new Centers In 2009, we applied for and became one of 13 Roybal Centers nationally

20. 13 Roybal Centers nationwide • Roybal Center for Translational Research on Aging, Harvard (Christakis) (social networks) • Behavior Change in Health and Saving, NBER (Laibson) • Northwest Roybal Center, University of Washington (Teri) (cognitive impairment) • PENN CMU Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health (Volpp and Loewenstein) • Roybal Center for Translational Research on Aging and Mobility, UAB (Ball) (mobility in older adults) • Center for Translational Research on Chronic Disease Self-Management, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (Callahan) • Roybal Center on Advancing Decision Making in Aging, Stanford (Garber) • Roybal Center for Health Policy Simulation, USC-RAND Corporation. ( Goldman) • Midwest Roybal Center for Health Promotion and Translation, UIC (Hughes) • Princeton Center for Research on Experience and Well-being (Krueger and Deaton) • Roybal Center for Financial Decision Making, RAND Corporation (Kapetyn) • Oregon Roybal Center, OHSU (Kaye) (Mobility and cognitive function) • Cornell-Columbia Institute for Translational Research on Aging, Cornell and Columbia (Reid) (pain management)

21. You have to convince NIH that Center plan makes sense • Big picture here is very important • How does the new center fit into your research group’s organizational structure? • How does the new center fit into Penn’s organizational structure? • Can it leverage existing relationships and resources at Penn? • Show basic ingredients for successful Center exist (abundance of talented faculty) • Demonstrate ways this complements existing activities • Reasons why UPENN is the best place in US for this

22. Describe where it fits within UPENN and obtain support from leaders of related entitites Figure 1. Related entities

23. CHIBE Administrative Core Administrative support Retreats Dissemination Training Pilot Core Pilot Projects Co-Investigators CMU Faculty Penn Faculty Trainees Planning  organizational structure of Penn-CMU Roybal Center on Behavioral Economics and Health Principal Investigator Kevin Volpp, M.D., Ph.D. Co-Principal Investigator George Loewenstein, Ph.D.

24. Planning – create a submission checklist and set internal deadlines

25. P30 – once it is funded Start thinking about renewal! What constitutes success Focus on elements that will make your Center unambiguously successful Keep records of new grants, papers, press, evidence of translation of research that can be used at time of next renewal to make that process simpler

26. Corporate Research Portfolio Diversification of funding useful Opportunity to raise more flexible funding Need to find a match between your interests and corporate interests Non-negotiable: full access to data and full rights to publish Most everything else is negotiable

27. Corporate Research Portfolio Biggest advantage: allows you to do things you otherwise couldn’t do Humana simplicity plan Discovery trial of physical activity in 11,000 people Aramark food pricing studies Weight Watchers Cost sharing trial CVS Caremark medication adherence studies

28. Corporate Research Portfolio Pros: Leverage corporate infrastructure to recruit participants, collect data If your research is successful, good chance they will translate it into practice! Don’t need to limit price to costs; more flexibility in budgets Can include administrative costs in your budget Cons: Companies often have shorter time horizons In our experience they are generally more interested in smaller studies and not definitive longer term studies

29. Summary • Center grants can help you ‘take your research to the next level’ • Think carefully about whether this is actually a logical evolution of your career; many people may be happier running a smaller research group • If you are going to do this, need to put a lot into the applications; need to convince them that UPENN and your group is the group to fund • Consider alternatives such as corporate sponsorship as a complementary way of supporting and building your program

30. Questions? • Email: volpp70@wharton.upenn.edu • Research: • chibe.upenn.edu