Case Study 23.1 — Hernandez Scales Up

A composite, illustrative case continuing the arc from Chapters 16 and 22. Dr. Hernandez and her team are composites built to teach; the multi-PI and subaward structures are real. Verify current rules with your funder and grants office.

From two sites to a real team

We last saw Dr. Hernandez winning her R01 on an A1, after adding a second clinical site to prove recruitment feasibility (Chapter 22). That funded study succeeded — and now she wants to run a larger, more definitive trial of her text-message diabetes-adherence intervention, across three health systems serving different patient populations. This is no longer something one investigator at one institution can do. Hernandez has crossed into the world of collaborative proposals, and this case follows how she builds a team the reviewers can believe.

Step 1 — Does she really need a team? (Section 23.1)

Hernandez applies the chapter's first discipline: honesty about whether the work needs a team. It clearly does — a definitive trial requires more patients than any single site can enroll, and the three sites reach genuinely different populations (essential for generalizability). Each potential partner passes the necessary-complementary-capability test: each site contributes a distinct patient population and a local investigator whose clinical and community knowledge is essential to recruitment and delivery. No partner is there for prestige; each is there because the work requires it. The team is built from what the science demands.

Step 2 — Choosing the leadership model (Section 23.2)

Hernandez weighs the models. A pure single-PI-with-subawards structure would technically work, but it would understate the genuine intellectual leadership of one colleague — a behavioral-intervention expert who co-leads the science, not merely runs a site. So Hernandez chooses a multiple-PI (MPI) model with that colleague, and brings the other two site leaders in as co-investigators with subawards. She designates herself contact PI (the administrative communication role), understanding this doesn't make her "more" of a PI scientifically — the leadership plan defines actual authority. The structure now mirrors the real division of leadership: two co-equal MPIs leading the science, site investigators leading their sites.

Step 3 — The leadership and coordination plan (Section 23.3)

This is where Hernandez knows the proposal will be won or lost, so she invests real effort. Her plan specifies:

  • Governance: the two MPIs share scientific authority; a Steering Committee (MPIs plus site investigators) decides protocol questions monthly by majority, with the contact PI breaking ties; the contact PI holds final authority over budget and timeline.
  • Roles: Hernandez leads trial design and primary analysis; her co-MPI leads the intervention and fidelity; each site investigator leads recruitment and delivery at their site; a Coordinating Center provides administrative and biostatistics support.
  • Communication: monthly Steering Committee calls, weekly operational calls among site coordinators, a shared data system, quarterly all-team meetings.
  • Conflict resolution: disputes escalate Steering Committee → MPIs → a named external advisory board member; site underperformance triggers a defined remediation process.
  • Track record: the two MPIs have co-authored prior studies, and the team did joint pilot work across two sites during the prior award — concrete evidence they have already worked together.

That last element is decisive: reviewers betting on the collaboration can see it isn't a new, untested pairing — it's a team that has already learned to work together (the threshold concept).

Step 4 — Subawards, on an early timeline (Section 23.4)

Hernandez builds a layered budget: her institution as the prime (its indirect rate), and each partner site with its own sub-budget and own indirect rate, plus a scope of work and a letter of commitment signed by each institution's authorized official. She applies her institution's indirect only to the allowable portion of each subaward, per the funder's rules. Knowing that gathering signed packages from three institutions takes weeks, she starts the process six weeks out, gives every partner a firm internal deadline, and assigns her grants administrator to own the coordination. She also budgets the Coordinating Center explicitly — running a three-site trial is real, fundable administrative work.

Step 5 — One voice (Section 23.5)

The proposal is drafted by many hands — each site investigator contributes recruitment and context sections, her co-MPI drafts the intervention sections. Hernandez (with a designated writer) owns the whole document, harmonizing terminology, eliminating repetition, connecting the sections, and making the aims, narrative, and budget cohere. The submitted proposal reads as one team's coherent argument — itself a demonstration that the team can integrate its members' work.

What this case teaches

  1. Let the structure follow the real collaboration. Hernandez chose MPI because the leadership was genuinely shared — the model mirrors how the team actually works.
  2. The leadership plan is the core argument. Governance, conflict resolution, and evidence of prior collaboration convince reviewers the team will function.
  3. Subawards and timelines are real work. Layered indirect rates, signed commitments, an early start, and a funded coordinating function.
  4. One voice demonstrates coordination. The coherent proposal previews the coordinated project.

🔄 Retrieve: Without rereading, explain (a) why Hernandez chose MPI rather than single-PI-with-subawards, and (b) the single most decisive element of her leadership plan, and why. (Answers above.)