About PHASTR

Background

The N3C PHASTR is designed to quickly address high-impact questions that can be answered with N3C data. These questions will be identified by NCATS and NIH leadership, and proposals to address them within the N3C Data Enclave will be open for a short time for each. Successful proposals will be awarded a short-term contract and will be expected to produce quantitative answers within a given time frame.

Following standard N3C policy, source data cannot be duplicated outside of the N3C Data Enclave, and all analyses must be completed within the Enclave. Results will be submitted by investigators via the N3C Results Download process; this process and other policies are described under Governance Resources.

Training materials and information on office hours and other support are available. For questions about the initiative, please contact publichealth@nih.gov. For other inquiries about N3C, email cd2h@cuanschutz.edu.

Purpose

NCATS launched N3C PHASTR to address high-impact questions that are not being investigated by the research community. The effort also is funded by the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Goals

Provide fast, actionable analysis of high-impact, public health research questions. Engage the community capable of working with N3C “big data” to answer public health-related research questions of interest.

Support Mechanism

The N3C Public Health Answers to Speed Tractable Results, or PHASTR, works through a subcontract mechanism. Proposals to address questions will be submitted to NCATS’ primary contractor, Axle Informatics, from the N3C platform. Teams with successful proposals will work through Axle (as a subcontractor) to complete the work.

For more information, watch the  N3C PHASTR Q&A Webinar (11/17/22)

Who Can and Cannot Apply

Any individual or team with appropriate expertise, experience, and resources can submit a proposal, provided there is no real or apparent conflict of interest.

All offerors must follow all registration and data access processes associated with the environment, including meeting the access requirements for Level 3 data as described.

Submission Process

Application

All work will be performed utilizing the N3C Data Enclave.

Offerors – those wishing to submit a proposal in response to a N3C PHASTR public health-related research question – will access the proposal submission process from the N3C home page where they can find a new button labeled "Public Health Proposal."

The N3C PHASTR submission package consists of the following components that offerors must include in their proposals:

• Project Summary: A high-level description of how the overall question and associated Aims will be addressed. Include primary and major secondary objectives and how they align with the stated Aims. Briefly describe the overall design of the study and effort (e.g., retrospective case-control study; uncontrolled characterization of COVID-19 outcomes; development of a supervised learning algorithm for prediction of outcome X; development of a clustering algorithm to identify subphenotypes of condition Y). 
• Strategy for Cohort Identification: The proposed approach to data set/cohort creation for analysis. This includes an outline of key criteria for inclusion in the analysis, anticipated sample size; and, if applicable, a definition of exposures of interest. If controls are used, the manner in which these are identified should be specified. Referring to the Inclusion, Exclusion, and Phenotype sections of the PHASTR posting is appropriate.
• Analytics Approach: A proposed methodology for answering the question. This should include a brief description of endpoints, statistical methodology, key covariates, any critical statistical assumptions and limitations, the approach to missing data, and plans to mitigate bias. Referring to elements of the PHASTR posting is appropriate. A brief outline of anticipated sources of bias, potential confounding, and missing data is required, along with a plan for how they will be addressed.
• Justification: A description of how the proposed strategy will address the overall question(s).

Proposal Evaluation

The N3C PHASTR proposals will be evaluated by the NCATS contractor’s scientific staff using the information provided in the Proposal Preparation Instructions. All offerors will be sent an email to convey the results of the evaluation.

Successful offerors will be offered a subcontract by the NCATS contractor to complete the work.

Contact Information

For questions about the initiative, please contact publichealth@nih.gov. For other inquiries about N3C, email cd2h@cuanschutz.edu.

Quick Start for Experienced N3C Users

If you are already familiar with N3C, here’s what you need to know:

• Proposals are modified Data Use Requests, accessible from the Enclave Homepage under "Public Health Proposals."
• All offerors must be from a Data Use Agreement-holding institution.
• The Level 3 Limited Data Set will be available.
• Results will be submitted through the N3C results download process; proposals will describe the expected result formats.
• Results will be visualized on the N3C public health dashboard.
• Your project workspace will have read-only access to all other project workspaces involved with this initiative for code and data re-use.
• After the contract is completed, if you wish to continue the work for publication or other noncontract uses, you will need to upgrade the Data Use Request to a research Level 3 and submit IRB letters of determination. N3C staff will support this process if desired.