Demographics of AHRQ Grant Reviewers and Outcomes

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: 1) to determine the special demographics of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) grant reviewers; 2) to correlate participation in grant review and rate of funding at AHRQ.

STUDY DESIGN: All the meeting rosters from January 2009 to December 2014 were retrieved and analyzed. Age, sex, frequency of participation, number of reviewers, and success rate are analyzed

POPULATION STUDIED: AHRQ reviewers.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A total of 3,467 reviewers have participated in AHRQ review sessions from 2009 to 2014 or 576 reviewers per year. They have reviewed a total of 5,890 applications (3,927 from study sections and 1963 from special emphasis panels). Reviewers are more likely to be males with PhD degrees. The third quarter sessions were the busiest with 1494 reviewers (42%) followed by the second quarter (30%) and first quarter (27%). Caucasians account for 75% of the reviewers followed by Asian-Americans (14%), African-Americans (6%), Hispanics (3%), and Native Americans (1%). There are 1,271 funded applications with a 21.6 percent funding rate. Correlation between participation in grant review and funding rate is strong.  

CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that: 1) close to 600 reviewers participate in AHRQ peer review each year; 2) fall is the busiest review time of the year; 3) reviewers are Caucasians (75%) followed by Asians (14%) and African-Americans (6%); 4) Caucasians and Asian-Americans are respectively 12.5 and 2.4 times more likely to volunteer as reviewers than African-Americans; 5) participation in AHRQ peer review is advised for minorities.