Grant Writing in Public Health Academia: Navigating Federal, Foundation, and Nonprofit Landscapes
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As the demand for competitive and impactful research intensifies, public health scholars must navigate a grant landscape marked by increasing complexity, cross-sectoral expectations, and heightened accountability. In response, this literature review synthesizes evidence from academic and open-access sources to identify best practices in grant writing within academic institutions, with particular attention to faculty development, narrative design, university-level infrastructure, evaluation planning, and sustainability. While grounded in public health, the review draws on cross-sectoral insights to elevate strategies that support contextually relevant, interdisciplinary, and high-impact proposal development. Findings emphasize that successful proposals are not solely the product of individual skill but emerge from organizational ecosystems that support strategic communication, relational collaboration, and administrative capacity. The review highlights promising models, such as mentorship-driven faculty development, participatory evaluation frameworks, and research development infrastructure, that position grant writing as both a technical and strategic endeavor. It also identifies structural challenges, including disparities in university-level support, ambiguity in funder expectations, and under-investment in post-award capacity. Emerging trends, such as the use of AI in proposal development, curricular integration of grant writing, and facilitative pre-award support, reflect a broader reimagining of grant writing as a collaborative process embedded in organizational practice. The review concludes with implications for practice and policy, urging institutions to move beyond isolated interventions and invest in coordinated systems that make grant development more accessible, sustainable, and impactful. In doing so, they establish public health research as a cornerstone of population health, capable of informing policy, catalyzing innovation, and strengthening the systems that support community well-being.
DOI: 10.17615/r1r5-pc17
Author: Linger, Jessica
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems and Management
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7108639394
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