Minutes of the August 17, 2000 FMVCC Meeting
VENUE: WRAIR/NMRC
PARTICIPANTS:
Carter Diggs
Dan Gordon
Gray Heppner (Phone)
Tonu Wali
Marty Myer (Phone)
This brief meeting was principally concerned with a discussion of the interaction of FMVCC with the NVPO regarding the unmet needs program.
At the previous meeting Dr. Myers presented plans to accelerate the process this year, with final plans being made in August, proposals requested by October, reviews in December, and awards in January. He expects the following procedures to be followed:
- Proponent investigators will be asked to explain why the proposal is an unmet need
- Likewise, there will also be a request for the same assessment from the agency point of view
- Agencies will be requested to do an internal review and prioritization to insure that only appropriate proposals are forwarded
- Proposals will be considered by the NVPO working group in the following order:
- Proposals will be again evaluated to determine if they reflect unmet needs; if it's determined that they're not, they will not be reviewed.
- Previously approved continuation proposals will be evaluated for satisfactory progress; if satisfactory they will be funded as a first priority
- Each agency's first priority will be funded if funds are available.
- Special priority areas will receive next consideration
- Remaining proposals will be ranked by the working group for merit and relevance and funded accordingly
A short discussion period followed in which Dr. Myers indicated that the criterion for classification of unmet needs is that the activities would not be accomplished unless the additional funding was received.
Additional discussion centered on the difficulties imposed by the procedures described. Several points were made:
- Activities that would not be accomplished if no additional funding was obtained would by definition, even though important, be of a lower priority than other activities. Thus there would be a tension introduced which would result in a "grantsmanship" effort to propose projects of a lower programmatic priority but with sufficient merit to be competitive.
- In a similar vein, in order to increase the probability of funding, proponents would often submit proposals which could be categorized as in the "special priority area", even though they might not be as germane to the field.
It was proposed that the NVPO could best promote malaria vaccine development by earmarking funds for that purpose and asking FMVCC to recommend how they could best be spend without the unmet needs criterion. Dr. Myers indicated that this was not feasible since it would be contrary to congressional intent.
Dr. Myers indicated he would communicate to FMVCC further developments as we move to the next cycle of unmet needs awards.
The next meeting is scheduled for 3PM on 21 September 2000 at WRAIR/NMRC.
