What’s the difference between the summary statement from merit review and the Associate Editor (AE) synthesis letter from PCORI peer review? How will each play into my application processing?

The merit review summary statement is an evaluation of your SDM Implementation application submission, and includes the assigned merit reviewers’ (pre-discussion) written evaluations of your application, a summary of the panel’s discussion of your application, and the final average overall application score from the full panel (multiplied by 10). The merit review summary statement does not reflect comments that may be raised during PCORI’s peer review of your submitted DFRR. These comments will be communicated to you separately via the AE synthesis letter.