PHS 398 gestalt

I've been trying to reorganize my initial NIH proposal outline, so it fits the new guidelines. Here's how I think I should be using the new format:

1. Use the 'Significance' section to build the reader's interest in the problem(s) our Specific Aims address.
2. Use the 'Innovation' section to build the reader's interest in the methods we will use to achieve our aims.
3. Use the 'Approach' section to convince the reader that we can accomplish our Aims.
4. Use the initial 'Specific Aims' page to summarize all of the above, both as an introduction for the few readers who will read the rest of the proposal and as a stand-alone summary for everyone else.

How should I divide up the 12 pages? 'Specific Aims' is limited to one page (not counted in the 12). 'Significance' can be several pages. It must provide all the background that motivates the work, but I guess it doesn't need to contain any background that's only needed for understanding the methods we'll use, as that can go in 'Approach'. The length of 'Innovation' depends on how much of our approach we need to describe in order to showcase its innovativeness. It can describe as innovative methods that are explained in detail later — it doesn't need to provide the convincing evidence of their innovativeness. A page will probably be plenty. That leaves about 8 pages for the Approach, where we describe everything we're going to do, with all the detailed hows and whys.