Federal Grant Award Summary

The University of Pennsylvania received a $622,659 Project Grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences under the Medical Library Assistance program (CFDA 93.879) beginning June 1, 2026 and concluding May 31, 2031. The award funds research to develop causal ablation methods for comparative effectiveness research, addressing critical methodological challenges in medical research that relies on randomized experiments and observational study data. The project will produce three distinct causal ablation frameworks targeting common analytical complications: truncation by death, time-varying confounders, and zero-inflated outcomes. These frameworks will enable researchers to systematically identify the minimum set of assumptions necessary for valid causal inferences and to understand which assumptions—individually or in combination—lead to informative conclusions about healthcare interventions.

The research deliverables include: (1) appropriate assumption sets meeting compatibility criteria, (2) tailored grid search algorithms specific to each assumption set, (3) point and partial identification estimators with corresponding statistical methods, and (4) summary reporting mechanisms that present results organized by assumption credibility. These methodological products are designed to improve the quality of comparative effectiveness research evidence by reducing reliance on unrealistic or untestable assumptions and providing analysts with transparent tools to assess which causal inferences are most robust across varying analytical assumptions.