Michelle L. Kienholz and Jeremy M. Berg. How the NIH Can Help Get You Funded: An Insider's Guide to Grant Strategy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. $27.95. pp. 188. Paperback. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐998964‐5.

• Author: Tonya Neaves,Aaron Kestner
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.161
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015

Book Review

Michelle L. Kienholz and Jeremy M. Berg. How the NIH Can Help Get You Funded:

An Insider’s Guide to Grant Strategy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014.

$27.95. pp. 188. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-19-998964-5.

Over the course of the past century, there has been a steady transition from

traditional or basic research to more applied and sponsored research. The

National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a long history of funding cutting-edge

biomedical and health-related research in the United States. In recent years,

nearly 80 percent, or $31 billion of the NIH budget, is designated to fund

extramural research. Developing competitive grant applications and acquiring

funding for research requires diligence, and is daunting. In Michelle L. Kienholz

and Jeremy M. Berg’s How the NIH Can Help Get You Funded: An Insider’s Guide to

Grant Strategy, the authors begin to demystify the grant-writing process by

providing practical “how to” advice to their readers.

Beginning with the creation of the NIH in 1937, Kienholz and Berg provide a

thorough review of the institution as a whole. The authors extensively detail the

process by which the organization encourages and reviews grant applications, as

well as administers the varying grant programs once awarded. Kienholz and Berg

highlight the importance of generating excitement about one’s research through-

out one’s application, noting that anything short of a passionate presentation will

ensure that another one of the 90,000 applications gets awarded f‌irst.

Finally, they advise that an applicant should take considerable time in

crafting the intellectual merit and broader impacts sections, not treat them as an

afterthought. It is critical for applicants to understand the “social value” and/or

“social good” of their research and clearly articulate this in the broader impacts

section, which asks, “does it help, and, if so, who,” or “does it create, and if so,

what?”

Despite the strong representation of the basics involved in any grant

application, Kienholz and Berg offer much of their advice in piecemeal fashion.

Rather than reading as a strategic guide for scientists—as implied in the title—

many chapters felt like little more than “to-do” or “not-to-do” lists. As a result,

the text is in direct contradiction to the authors’ own suggestion to generate

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2015

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1948-4682 #2015 Policy Studies Organization

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