Does Seed Funding by the Plastic Surgery Foundation Progress to National Institutes of Health Grants? A 20-Year Analysis.

[BACKGROUND] One of the goals of the Plastic Surgery Foundation (PSF) is to initiate a pathway by which researchers can develop national extramurally funded grants. This study was performed to investigate the effectiveness of seed PSF grants in helping researchers obtain grant funding through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

[METHODS] The NIH RePORTER database was queried with the names of all American Society of Plastic Surgeons members. PSF pilot grants and research fellowships were defined as PSF seed funding. To obtain information on the PSF grants, all grants that were funded from 2003 through 2023 were manually extracted from the website. Principal investigators who had both PSF and NIH grants were identified and analyzed further.

[RESULTS] A total of 427 unique individuals earned a PSF grant and 54 unique individuals earned an NIH grant related to plastic surgery. Of those who attained PSF grant funding, 25 (5.9%) attained both PSF and NIH grants; these individuals were awarded 53 NIH grants and 56 PSF grants. Only 11 (2.6%) PSF grant recipients received a PSF grant before attaining NIH grant funding. Of the 49 PSF research fellowship recipients, only 2 (4.1%) later received an NIH grant.

[CONCLUSIONS] The PSF provides the most seed grant funding in plastic surgery outside of the NIH. However, transition from PSF seed grants to NIH funding remains low. Additional work to understand PSF grant conversion to other important sources of funding, including Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, and Foundation grants, is needed.