New Steps to Help Ensure Safe Work Environments for NIH-Supported Research

June 11, 2020

If an institution requests approval to remove a principal investigator (PI) or other senior key person named in the grant award due to concerns about safety and/or the work environments (e.g. due to concerns about harassment, bullying, retaliation, or hostile working conditions), NIH expects to be notified. If an institution requests a change of recipient institution, and there are concerns about safety and/or work environment involving the PD/PI, NIH expects to be informed.

Improving Visibility of NIH-supported Clinical Trial Activities and Results

September 16, 2016

In a separate post today, we provide an overview of the various reforms the NIH is leading to enhance our stewardship of clinical trials. In this post we’d like to focus a bit more on our efforts to broadly disseminate clinical trial availability and results information.

Timely dissemination of clinical trial results information has been a problem, one that has been documented more than once, and that appears to apply to NIH- as well as non-NIH funded trials. To realize the benefits of a clinical trial, the findings must be available to the public as soon as possible after the trial has concluded. This is not only responsible use of taxpayer dollars for publicly funded trials, but also fulfills our responsibility to the individuals who volunteered in these studies with an understanding that their participation would contribute to advancing medical knowledge. Today, NIH announced a new policy that will complement a new federal regulation, referred to here as the Final Rule, also released today, to improve the accessibility of information on clinical trial availability and on the outcomes and results of completed trials.

As you likely know, to carry out the laws passed by Congress, federal agencies issue regulations that govern the activities of the agency and the applicable community. The “Final Rule” announced today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is …

Building Better Clinical Trials through Stewardship and Transparency

September 16, 2016

NIH is the largest public funder of clinical trials in the United States. As stewards of this research enterprise, we have been actively listening and discussing how to overcome hurdles and shortcomings that we, and others in the research community, have identified. If you’ve been following the conversation, you’ll know that NIH already has implemented some key reforms to enhance clinical trial stewardship. Today, in a Viewpoint Essay published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), we provide an overview of how these reforms, and new initiatives, fit in to the broader picture of building a better clinical trial enterprise through better stewardship, accountability, and transparency.

Figure 1 illustrates the clinical trial “lifespan”, and key opportunities for improving the quality and efficiency of clinical trials – opportunities that translate into more innovative and robust clinical trial design, and accelerated discoveries that will advance human health. NIH is leading a multi-faceted effort that addresses shortcomings and challenges throughout this lifespan, including the application and award process; the scientific review of trial applications; post-award management and oversight; sharing of trial data; and dissemination of research results information to the public. ….

Accelerating Clinical Research by Streamlining Multi-site Review of Human Subjects Research

June 21, 2016

Research involving human participants is key to improving public health and advancing medicine. Oversight of such research by institutional review boards (IRBs) both protects research participants and promotes ethical science. IRB review and approval is a critical step in initiating the start of a research project and for multi-site studies, NIH is taking an important step to help streamline the process. Today, NIH is issuing the NIH Policy on the Use of a Single Institutional Review Board (IRB) for Multi-Site Research (sIRB Policy) ….

Building a Better Biomarker Glossary

April 18, 2016

Precise and clear communication across biological and clinical research disciplines supports efficient translation of results from basic research into applied therapeutics and interventions. Both the NIH and FDA are keenly interested in working together to help the biological and clinical research communities speak a common language, so that research results can be clearly understood by both groups. This is especially true in considering the vocabulary used to describe measures of health, disease, or physiological processes…..