Key Dates

Related Announcements

• July 24, 2025 – Notice to Applicants of Adjustments to Achieve Consistency in Peer Review Contacts and Processes. See Notice NOT-OD-25-135.

Issued by

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

Purpose

This Notice alerts the extramural research community that NIH is removing AIDS application due dates from the application process. This policy change is effective for applications submitted for January, 2027 and later Advisory Council Reviews.

Non-standard AIDS application due dates were implemented in 1988 to expedite the time to award for applications addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic within the United States. Since then, the administrative challenges of managing the non-standard dates have greatly increased. HIV/AIDS applications must be identified, segregated and their status validated in manual processes outside of the normal referral stream.  In 1988 NIH had to apply these processes in the context of reviewing about 32,000 grant applications.  In 2025 NIH will receive over 102,000 applications and managing the additional administrative burden of the non-standard deadlines is no longer practical. The advantages of the non-standard dates to AIDS applicants were indistinct.  With this shift, HIV/AIDS applications being submitted on the standard receipt dates will continue to have three receipt dates per year, four months apart from one another, as they had with the previous AIDS receipt dates.  The change will also lift the administrative burden on recipients of trying to determine if their application met current NIH guidelines for “AIDS research”. Removing AIDS application due dates will assist NIH’s efforts to improve efficiency and strengthen the integrity of the peer review process, while maintaining a high standard of scientific evaluation for HIV/AIDS applications.

NIH will continue to accept HIV/AIDS applications on AIDS application due dates for Advisory Council Reviews up through May, 2026. Beginning with the applications for Advisory Council Review in January 2027, NIH will no longer accept applications submitted on AIDS application due dates. Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) that include AIDS application due dates for January 2027 Advisory Council Reviews are superseded by this notice. NIH will revise NOFOs to reflect the standard application due dates including AIDS applications.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

The Division of Grants Policy at: [email protected].