NIH
Senate Health Committee Advances Biomedical Innovation Bills
On April 6, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held the third in a series of hearings (March 16 and March 9) to complete its work on companion legislation to the 2015 House-passed 21st Century Cures Act. Opening the hearing, HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) noted that the committee has completed action on approximately 50 bipartisan proposals via 10 hearings and five staff working groups that held more than 100 meetings. The proposals resulting from these deliberations form the Senate’s companion legislation to the 21st Century Cures Act. The legislation also serves as the means of…
NIH Appears Before Senate Appropriations Subcommittee
On April 7, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS), accompanied by five of the NIH’s 27 institute and center directors and/or acting directors. Attending were: Richard Hodes, National Institute on Aging (NIA); Doug Lowy, National Cancer Institute (NCI); Nora Volkow, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); Walter Koroshetz, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); and Christopher Austin, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
NIH Director Fills Vacancies for PMI Cohort and ECHO Programs
National Institute of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins recently announced the appointments of Eric Dishman as the Director of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program and Matthew Gillman as the Program Director of the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO).
COSSA Submits FY 2017 Testimony on NIH, CDC, Education, and Other Agencies
COSSA submitted its annual Outside Witness Testimony to the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. COSSA’s testimony for fiscal year (FY) 2017 addresses the need for strong funding of the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Institute for Education Sciences, and Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs. Click here to read testimony submitted to the House, and here for the Senate. Back to this issue’s table of contents.
OBSSR to Hold Webinars to Present 2016-2020 Strategic Plan
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) is holding two webinars to present the Office’s 2016-2020 Strategic Plan and to solicit feedback from the scientific community, including “researchers in academia and industry, scientific or professional organizations, public health and health care professionals, patient advocacy organizations, and other interested members of the public.” OBSSR Director William Riley and Deputy Director G. Stephane Philogene will present the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan during both webinars; the information provided will be the same. The webinars are scheduled for Tuesday, May 10, 2016 (10:30 – 11:30 am EDT) and…
Members of Congress Submit Funding Requests for Social and Behavioral Science Agencies
Over the past several weeks, Members of Congress have been signing their names to “Dear Colleague” letters, formal requests to the House and Senate appropriations committees for specific funding levels for various federal agencies. COSSA has been tracking letters in support of strong funding for the agencies important to the social and behavioral sciences on our funding updates page. COSSA appreciates the efforts of all of the Members who have signed on to the letters below: House & Senate letters on FY 2017 appropriations for HEA-Title IV/Fulbright-Hays International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs House letter on FY 2017 appropriations…
NCCIH Seeks Input on Draft 2016-2021 Strategic Plan
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NICCIH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking input on its draft NCCIH Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2016-2021. Following up on a previous request for information (RFI), along with the response provided by its National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health and the NCCIH staff, this RFI is intended to seek the input of the larger public, including researchers and scientific/professional organizations, among others. NCCIH specifically is seeking comments on the five strategic objectives and the six high priorities contained in the plan. Comments will be accepted through…
NIMH Seeks Input on Tasks and Measures for the RDoC
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking input from stakeholders, the scientific community, and the general public related to its Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework. RDoC is defined as a “new way of classifying mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures.” Specifically, the Institute is seeking input regarding “existing tests with known construct validity, and also general suggestions on the most important criteria to consider when selecting candidate tests.” NIMH’s National Advisory Mental Health Council will convene a workgroup “charged with the task of recommending a list…
Social Science Advocates Take Capitol Hill
On March 16, about 50 social and behavioral science researchers, stakeholders, and advocates met with their Members of Congress to advocate in support of fiscal year (FY) 2017 funding for federal agencies and programs that support social and behavioral science research. Despite the system-wide shutdown of the DC Metro, advocates from 14 different states made it to Capitol Hill to discuss the value of this research and why it is in the national interest. Materials used to help articulate these messages can be found on the COSSA website, including fact sheets on COSSA’s FY 2017 funding requests. Back to this…
NIH Makes Annual Appearance Before House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee
On March 16, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins made his annual, and perhaps final, appearance before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS) as an official of the Obama Administration. Collins was accompanied by four of the NIH’s 27 institute and center directors and/or acting directors, including Anthony Fauci, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Richard Hodes, National Institute on Aging (NIA), Doug Lowy, National Cancer Institute (NCI); and Nora Volkow, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The NIH panel received a warm welcome from Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold…
OBSSR to Develop “Revised, Contemporary Definition of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research”
As part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) strategic planning process to update its 2007 strategic plan for fiscal years (FY) 2016-2020, the Office plans to reconsider NIH’s definition of behavioral and social sciences (BSSR). In his recent OBSSR Connector blog post, OBSSR Director William Riley explained that the office is Congressionally mandated to “define behavioral and social sciences research to assess and monitor NIH funding.” As a consequence, the current definition “resulted in a high level taxonomy of BSSR and delineates basic versus applied behavioral and social sciences research with a range…
National Children’s Study Archive Available to Investigators
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development issued a Notice (NOT-HD-16-005) to alert investigators of the availability of the National Children’s Study (NCS) Vanguard Data and Sample Archive and Access System (NCS Archive). The NCS Vanguard served as a pilot for “a planned cohort study of environmental influences on child health and development.” The Vanguard pilot enrolled more than 14,000 participants in more than 5,000 families in 40 locations and followed them until 2014. It includes a collection of more than “14 million records and nearly 19,000 biological and 5,500 primary samples from which a…
NIA Requests Input on Alzheimer’s Disease Bypass Budget Implementation
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking input into the development of the fiscal year (FY) 2018 NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Bypass Budget (ADBB). Annual updates to the ADBB are Congressionally mandated (see Update, November 3, 2015). NIA seeks comments and suggestions from the public “on the current state of the science, the highest priorities for future research, and potential conceptual or technical barriers to overcome.” According to the recently released Notice (NOT-AG-16-017), the FY 2018 ADBB will be consistent with the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease and include Alzheimer’s disease and…
President Unveils FY 2017 Budget Request, Kicks Off Annual Funding Battle
The Obama Administration has started releasing details of its final budget request to Congress. Full details of the request for fiscal year (FY) 2017 will continue to roll out over the coming days. COSSA is preparing an in-depth analysis of the request as it pertains to social science programs across the federal government. It is important to note that the President’s request for FY 2017 includes new mandatory spending at several agencies, which would largely account for the increases to these agencies. Details so far include: The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive nearly $8 billion in FY 2017 (including…
COSSA Joins the Call for OAR Working Group on HIV/Substance Use Disorders Research
COSSA joined organizations representing the “range of scientific, professional, and patient organizations committed to the elimination of substance use disorders and addiction through education, advocacy, and the promotion of broad public and private support for HIV/AIDS and substance use research agendas of the National Institutes of Health [NIH]” on a letter to Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in response to the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Trans-NIH Plan for HIV-Related Research. The letter expresses concern “that the priorities overall and those specific to behavioral and social sciences, in particular, downplay the critical importance of reducing…
OBSSR Convenes Expert Panel to Provide Input into Strategic Plan
On January 19-20, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) convened an expert panel to provide input into the Office’s strategic planning process as it works to update the 2007 strategic plan for FY 2016-FY 2020. The meeting follows a series of internal meetings and a November 2015 request for information (RFI) (NOT-OD-16-018) seeking the broad input of the scientific community and the public, including academia, industry, health care professionals, patient advocates and advocacy organizations, scientific and/or professional organizations, and other federal agencies regarding the scientific priorities that should be considered in the update strategic….
NIDDK Publishes Annual Report of Recent Advances and Emergent Opportunities
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently released its 16th annual compilation of the research and programs it supports. The report reflects the Institute’s broad research responsibilities. Included among the advances highlighted by director Griffin Rodgers in his introductory message is the finding that “overweight or obese preschoolers participating in Head Start programs were more likely to reach healthier weights by kindergarten age than other groups of overweight and obese children.” The full report is available on NIDDK’s website. Back to this issue’s table of contents.
White House Announces National Cancer Moonshot Task Force
On February 1, the White House announced a new $1 billion initiative to jumpstart the new national “moonshot” initiative announced by President Obama in his 2016 State of the Union Address. The President established the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force via a presidential memorandum, which will be led by Vice President Biden. The goal of the initiative is “to eliminate cancer as we know it.” The Task Force’s membership will include the leadership of the Departments of Defense (DOD), Commerce (DOC), Health and Human Services (HHS), Energy (DOE), Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Office of Management and Budget, National…
NIH Highlights FY 2016 Legislative Mandates in Effect for the Agency
Included in the fiscal year (FY) 2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (P.L. 114-113) signed into law by President Obama on December 18, 2015 are a number of legislative mandates prohibiting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from using appropriated FY 2016 funding to support certain research areas (see Update, December 18, 2015). A number of the mandates are a continuation of previous statutory limitations on the agency’s funding and include the areas of gun control, anti-lobbying, restrictions and exceptions to restrictions on abortion, pornography on computer networks, needle distribution, dissemination of false or misleading information, and human embryo research. For…
NIH Office of Disease Prevention to Create an Electronic Directory of Prevention Experts
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Disease Prevention (ODP), the lead NIH office “responsible for assessing, facilitating, and stimulating research in disease prevention and health promotion and disseminating the results of this research to improve public health,” is launching an initiative to enhance the scientific rigor of NIH-funded research projects. ODP is seeking the assistance of the extramural research community in “developing a database of experts in research methods relevant to prevention research that can help Scientific Review Officers (SROs) identify reviewers for NIH grant applications.” Prospective experts are asked to complete ODP’s Prevention Research Expertise Survey which…