A few days ago, I got this email:
The very same day, I got an email from someone else, which I've excerpted parts of here
"I been a virtual attendee for a number
Once upon a time, the NIH had you lead the body of your grant proposal with a section titled "Background and Significance." Then they messed everything up by taking out
Your goal is to show strength, confidence, and logical thinking about your research, with each aim well thought out and accomplishing a critical mission within the context of your proposal.
Starting in January, NIH is implementing a shortened grant format for all of the main grant types, including R01's and K awards. This came from very long and involved deliberation with many members of the research community, spanning years.
That’s the one “nice” thing about grant rejections from NIH or NSF: they almost always contain at least two reviews. From those, you may get at least some idea of where the reviewers were coming from, in order to figure out how to fix the problems (or whether to start over).