Category: Director’s Column

With the one-year anniversary of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) approaching, the impact and importance of the recovery act is ever present. The second quarter reporting closed and the NIH released an initial set of recovery act investment reports, the important scientific work being done daily by our grantees continues to impress me.

As the new decade begins, it is a time to look forward while learning from the past. A critical component of the Enhancing Peer Review initiative is the implementation of continuous review of the peer review process.

This past year has been both exciting and at times challenging, but as we reflect on 2009 one thing that we can be sure of is that the changes NIH, and extramural community, has experienced will foster continued prosperity in 2010 and beyond. Over the last twelve months, NIH has welcomed a new director, issued new stem cell guidelines, re-invested in the American economy, entered the final implementation phase of the Enhancing Peer Review initiative, and reviewed the financial conflict of interest policy.

Recipients of NIH grant awards funded from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) have recently finished submitting their first quarterly reports to FederalReporting.gov, with immensely successful results. Thanks to the hard work and commitment of you, NIH’s extramural grantees, our high submission rate and low error rate make NIH one of the leading agencies in the Federal government.

Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into law earlier this year, NIH has received more than 30,000 applications and awarded $5B to more than 12,000 grants and contracts. We take this time at the end of the fiscal year to thank the entire extramural research community for submitting, reviewing and performing all the great science that is being made possible by ARRA.

Our new NIH Director, Dr. Francis S. Collins, took the helm on Monday, August 17. A bold leader with bold ideas, Dr. Collins combines deep knowledge of NIH with broad, thoughtful perspective on the biomedical research enterprise. During his first day on the job, Dr. Collins addressed NIH staff, outlining five key themes for the agency-five themes tied together by the value they gain from extramural research.

Fiscal Year 2009 will not be leaving us with a shortage of topics to discuss. Are you as out of breath as I am? Let’s take a minute to review what’s been happening and discuss Financial Conflict of Interest policy review and recommendations. Read on to stay on top of this year’s changes…

When President Obama asked the National Institutes of Health to review existing human stem cell research guidelines and issue new guidance within 120 days, we conducted a comprehensive review that resulted in the draft Guidelines we published on April 23, 2009. As of July 7, the final Guidelines on Human Stem Cell Research have taken effect, and we believe that these guidelines achieve both of the President’s goals of advancing the field of human embryonic stem cell research and raising the bar for ethical standards.

Pursuing research that advances public health entails striving to be worthy of public trust. We know that our grantees work hard to ensure that research is carried out with the highest standards of integrity and is free of bias. Public and private research collaborations are increasingly complex, and so it is important for us to continuously evaluate how these relationships might affect NIH funded research. NIH, through the Department of Health and Human Services has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM). Through this Notice, we are seeking comments from the public on possible changes to the existing regulations that we often refer to as the “Financial Conflict of Interest” regulations.

NIH issued a draft of the Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research on Friday, April 17. This draft is a crucial step toward implementing President Obama’s Executive Order 13505, Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells. Establishing policy and procedures under which NIH will support research in this area will help to ensure that NIH-funded research is ethically responsible, scientifically valuable, and in compliance with the law.