A Model for Making Project Funding Decisions at the National Cancer Institute

Nicholas G. Hall, John C. Hershey, Larry G. Kessler and R. Craig Stotts
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Nicholas G. Hall: Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
John C. Hershey: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Larry G. Kessler: National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland
R. Craig Stotts: National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland

Operations Research, 1992, vol. 40, issue 6, 1040-1052

Abstract: This paper describes the development of a model for making project funding decisions at The National Cancer Institute (NCI). The American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST) is a multiple-year, multiple-site demonstration project, aimed at reducing smoking prevalence. The initial request for ASSIST proposals was answered by about twice as many states as could be funded. Scientific peer review of the proposals was the primary criterion used for funding decisions. However, a modified Delphi process made explicit several criteria of secondary importance. A structured questionnaire identified the relative importance of these secondary criteria, some of which we incorporated into a composite preference function. We modeled the proposal funding decision as a zero-one program, and adjusted the preference function and available budget parametrically to generate many suitable outcomes. The actual funding decision, identified by our model, offers significant advantages over manually generated solutions found by experts at NCI.

Keywords: decision analysis; applications: incorporating decision makers' preferences into optimization model; health care: national anti-smoking campaign; programming; integer; applications: optimization model to support funding decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
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