Leonard Jason: Thank you. Vicky you mentioned that PAs are going to be discontinued at NIH. I’m wondering if RFAs are also going to be discontinued and if they are not going to be discontinued, is there any possibility of there being an RFA for this field?
Dr. Vicky Whittemore: Program announcements are being discontinued but RFAs are not. I think the distinction is that RFAs typically do have some set-aside funding associated with them, whereas program announcements are essentially just an announcement that we’re interested in receiving grants in a particular area of research.
In addition, there will continue to be program announcements, what are called PARs, which are program announcements that have special review. What that means is that you can have a program announcement with a specially established review group, a special emphasis panel for review. You can also – we’ll be able to have a program announcement with set-aside of PAF, which means a program announcement with specific funding.
We’re are – one of the things on the working group of Council list of things to advise us on, are moving forward whether we should issue any of the PAR PAF category or RFAs. We also are planning to do a survey and discussions with the community about the research gaps to really understand where the research needs are.
It’s one thing to put out a very broad research funding announcement whereas it sometimes it’s much more beneficial if it can be more focused areas of need. Those are some of the things that we’re looking into as to how to be most effective and to really stimulate the research that needs to be done next in ME/CFS. Thank you for that question and hopefully we’ll be able to move on those kinds of things in the near future. The next question, please.
