What is the deferral policy for the BPS PFA?

PCORI will continue the application submission deferral process piloted in 2021 for selected PFAs to include the Broad Pragmatic Studies PFA.  Application deferrals are available to applicants who submit an LOI to the Broad Pragmatic Studies and are invited to submit a full application. Applicants will be limited to two sequential deferrals, which may cross Cycle Years (e.g., an applicant who is invited to submit a full application for Cycle 2 may defer submission to Cycle 3, and then may potentially again request a deferral to Cycle 1 2023). Applicants may defer to the same priority area for a Broad Pragmatic Studies application.

To request a deferral, the Principal Investigator (PI) must email pfa@pcori.org prior to the application deadline, copying the institutional Administrative Official (AO). For a request to be granted, the deferral request must be submitted before the application deadline and the AO must be included in the request email. As noted above, applicants will be limited to two deferrals. Applicants will be notified of the status of their request within one business day of its receipt.  

Under this pilot program, applicants will not need to re-upload their LOI or re-complete application fields for the next cycle to which they deferred within PCORI Online. Deferral requests received after the application deadline will be rejected and applicants will be encouraged to submit a new LOI for the next posted cycle. 

Applicants proposing projects that fall under an SAE for a particular cycle should note that if they elect to defer their application submission to a later cycle, the SAEs might change. However, for the Broad Pragmatic Studies PFA, any changes to SAEs would not affect application responsiveness determinations.