We encourage:

1. Projects of High Scientific Caliber
   
   NIH looks for grant proposals of high scientific caliber that are relevant to public health needs and are within NIH Institute and Center (IC) priorities. ICs highlight their research priorities on their Web sites. Applicants may want to contact the appropriate Institute or Center to discuss the relevancy and/or focus of the proposed research before submitting an application. NIH also has a number of broad NIH-wide initiatives that may be of interest.
   
   
2. Investigator-Initiated Research
   
   NIH strongly encourages investigator-initiated research across the spectrum of our mission. We issue hundreds of funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) in the form of Program Announcements (PAs) and requests for applications (RFAs) to stimulate research in particular areas of science.  Some PAs, called “Parent Announcements,” span the breadth of the NIH mission in order to ensure we have a way to capture “unsolicited” applications that do not fall within the scope of targeted announcements.  The majority of NIH applications are submitted in response to parent announcements.
   
   
3. Unique Research Projects
   
   Projects must be unique. By law, NIH cannot support a project already funded or pay for research that has already been done. Although you may not send the same application to more than one Public Health Service (PHS) agency at the same time, you can apply to an organization outside the PHS with the same application. If the project gets funded by another organization, however, it cannot be funded by NIH as well.