NCGVR Moves Closer to Selecting Projects for 2020 Funding Round

After receiving a strong response to its latest request for proposals (RFP), the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research (NCGVR) has invited full proposals on 48 scientific research projects on gun policy and gun violence reduction.

This latest call for proposals was released in January and prompted 238 letters of interest, including 15 competitive applications for dissertation and post-doctoral award funding. Together, the letters of interest proposed almost $111 million in research efforts.

This year, in collaboration with the Missouri Foundation for Health, NCGVR set aside $1.5 million in funding to support gun policy research relevant to Missouri. Of the 238 letters of interest received, 32 of them proposed conducting Missouri-relevant research. The collaborative has requested full proposals for 11 of these projects.

In total, NCGVR has invited 48 full proposals, including nine dissertation proposals, which represent $23 million in proposed work. The collaborative will be awarding $9.5 million as part of this grant award cycle.

“Again this round, we received many strong and thoughtful applications and had to make difficult decisions,” said collaborative director Andrew Morral. “To avoid asking researchers to submit many more full proposals than we can fund, we only extended invitations to about 20 percent of applicants.”

Two Ph.D. reviewers with relevant expertise independently assessed each submission, followed by a program-level review. Recommendations were then made to the independent Research Advisory Committee, which made final decisions on the invitations to submit full proposals.

All applicants received feedback from the reviewers on how they evaluated their proposals.

Applicants have until May 1 to submit full proposals. Funding awards will be made in June and July 2020.

NCGVR has one open request for proposals to develop a concept paper on how to measure the benefits and harms to legal gun users imposed by various gun policies. Short proposals to conduct this research are due April 10, 2020.