2024 Innovative Project Award Pre-Proposal Instructions

1. Log on to ProposalCentral and navigate as follows:
   Create New Proposal > Filter by Grant Maker
   Select “American Heart Association”
   Locate “Innovative Project Award” and click “Apply Now”
2. Title
   Enter Title
3. Accept Program Requirements
   In this section, you will acknowledge you have read and understand all program requirements for the Innovative Project Award.
4. Applicant/PI and PI Demographics
   In this section of the application, you will provide information about yourself, your academic career, effort and professional time, demographics, citizenship, location of work for the research project and college degrees. Save each section as you complete it.
   
   **This information will not be shared with peer reviewers.
5. Institution and Personnel
   In this section, you will provide information about your institution including identifying the Grants Officer, Fiscal Officer, and Technology Officer.
   
   These Officers must be selected from the list of registered users. Contact your institution’s grants office if you are unsure of which person to select from the list. It is important to select the correct Grants Officer, as he or she is responsible for the final submission of your LOI to the AHA.
   
   • Third Party Personnel
     Please provide the contact information (full name and email) for all consultants or collaborators (if applicable). Please only include this information in this specific ProposalCentral field. It should not be included in the one-page pre-proposal upload, project summary, or non-scientist summary.
   **This information will not be shared with peer reviewers.
6. Project Summary & Non-Scientist Summaries, Classifications
   
   
   1. Prepare your Non-Scientist Summary
      Enter a description of your project that is written to be understood by non-scientists. This information may be reviewed by people who do not have scientific or medical backgrounds. Please be clear and avoid technical and scientific terms, when possible. When formulating your lay summary, it might help to imagine that you are explaining your work to a new acquaintance who does not work in the science field.
      
      NOTE: It is incumbent upon the applicant to make a clear link between the project and the mission of the AHA. The lay summary will be assessed in terms of potential impact on the AHA mission; this will be factored into the overall priority score as noted in the peer review criteria.
   2. Complete the Project Summary
      Write a concise description or abstract describing the work proposed. This should be as brief as possible since you also will be required to upload a separate LOI document. Note: This field will not accept any special characters or keystrokes (e.g., β, π, etc.).
7. Science Classifications and Research Classification
   These classifications are independent of each other and will not affect the peer review of your application.
   
   1. Research Classification Type: Select the Research Type that best fits the research being conducted in your lab (basic, clinical, or population).
   2. Science Classification: Choose both a Primary Classification and a Secondary Classification. Current science classifications are listed on the AHA website.
8. Upload One Attachment
   
   1. Upload your pre-proposal as a .PDF document. See Pre-proposal Guidelines below. (Limited to 1 page).
9. Validate, Signature Page(s), and Submit

No reference letters nor impactful publications/literature cited are to be supplied with the initial pre-proposal. Two references as well as literature cited will be required from those selected to submit a full application.

Pre-proposal Guidelines (one-page limit)

The American Heart Association is piloting double-blind peer review for the 2024 Innovative Project Award pre-proposal review. While some identifying information will be collected within ProposalCentral, it will be for AHA us only and will not be shared with reviewers. Pre-proposals are reviewed for the proposed research idea only. As such, the following information should NOT be included in the one-page pre-proposal upload, project summary, or non-scientist summary:

• Do not include: Name, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Title, or any Institutional/Partnering Organization information in the pre-proposal
• DO NOT name Third Party Personnel/Key Personnel including:
  • Consultants/Collaborators
  • Mentors/Sponsors
  • Colleagues

You are encouraged to write in third person (example: the applicant). Using "I" or "We" is allowed.

Failure to comply will result in the administrative withdrawal (disqualification) of the pre-proposal.

This pre-proposal should briefly address the following points.

• Clearly and explicitly articulate the project's innovation and the potential impact on cardiovascular and/or cerebrovascular research.
• The Innovative Project Award (IPA) promotes unexplored ideas; therefore, should you include information about preliminary work, then the proposal is not innovative. You may refer to previous projects you have conducted to demonstrate that you possess a competency or technique that equips you to take on this new direction. Proposals may also refer to existing, unanalyzed datasets and the types of data they contain (e.g., geospatial, demographic, billing, molecular) that could be leveraged in conducting the proposed work, but there should be no preliminary descriptive summaries of the data itself.
• How your proposed project will introduce a new paradigm, challenge current paradigms, look at existing problems from new perspectives, or exhibit other uniquely creative qualities. Specifically, how this project would be a departure for you and lead to new areas of investigation.
• Provide a solid rationale for the work.
• Discuss new avenues of investigation that will be revealed, if successful.

Format/Type Requirements

You must comply exactly with the AHA's format/type requirements and page limits. Failure to comply will result in the administrative withdrawal (disqualification) of the pre-proposal.

• Documents must be single-spaced.
  No more than 15 characters per inch (cpi) or an average of no more than 15 cpi (cpi includes symbols, punctuation, and spaces).
• No less than ¾” page margins on all four sides.
• Maximum of 50 lines per page.
• Arial Font style, 12-point font size for Windows users; Helvetica Font style, 12-point font size for Macintosh users.
• Only Portable Document Format (PDF) files are accepted.

Note: The ProposalCentral electronic system will reject a document that exceeds the page limit.

Internet website addresses (URLs) may not be used to provide information necessary to the review because reviewers are under no obligation to view the Internet sites. Moreover, AHA reviewers are cautioned not to directly access an Internet site, as it could compromise their anonymity. The only place a URL may be used is in the biographical sketch as described in the instructions for that form.

The AHA has the responsibility to make final determination of conformance to format requirements and the authority to withdraw applications. This decision is final and not subject to appeal.