NIH Wants to Hear From You about Support of Basic Behavioral and Social Sciences Research

The NIH is seeking input from the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public about current and emerging priorities in basic Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (bBSSR) that may offer potential for improving and accelerating health research and its impact on the health of the Nation. APA is asking scientific psychologists to respond both to NIH and to APA with ideas about areas of basic research that are not well supported at NIH, but that may be relevant to its mission to enhance health. This information will aid NIH’s Office of Planning and Strategic Initiatives (OPASI), working with expertise from the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, in developing a congressionally-requested strategic plan for bBSSR at NIH. Click here to view text from the House Appropriations Committee request and the full NIH announcement.

Basic research in the behavioral and social sciences is designed to further understanding of fundamental mechanisms and patterns of behavioral and social functioning relevant to the Nation’s health and well-being, and as they interact with each other, with biology and the environment. As is the case with basic biomedical research, basic behavioral and social sciences research is designed to elucidate knowledge about underlying mechanisms and processes, knowledge that is fundamental to improving the understanding, explanation, observation, prediction, prevention, and management of illnesses, as well as the promotion of optimal health and well being. The range of focus includes different “granularity” or levels of complexity. Basic behavioral and social sciences research involves both human and animal studies and spans the full range of scientific inquiry, from processes within the intra-individual level (“under the skin”), to mechanisms “outside the skin” that explain inter-individual, group, organizational, community, population, macroeconomic and other systems level patterns of collective behavior. While the primary focus of basic BSSR must ultimately be directly relevant to behavioral and social factors, the domains and units of analysis can include intra-organismic as well as inter-organismic factors (“cells to society”), over varying units of time from nanoseconds to centuries, and including lifespan developmental phases and phenomena that may occur within and across generations.

The Request For Information invites the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public to respond to the following questions:

1) What are the existing essential/foundational research topics already being supported and in need of continued support or further development (i.e. core areas of bBSSR)? What existing areas need to be phased out or dropped?

2) What exciting new emergent areas of bBSSR are likely to significantly advance the NIH mission and address pressing biomedical and public health needs? What areas are not being addressed that ought to be addressed because they will likely lead to important or perhaps even breakthrough insights that will ultimately improve the Nation’s health and well-being?

NIH welcomes identification of priority areas that cut across the missions of multiple NIH Institutes and Centers (IC) (e.g. understanding fundamental mechanisms in human motivation and goal directed behaviors), as well as specific examples of basic research that fit the mission of a particular IC.

Responses will be accepted through November 26, 2007 and can be entered at the same site linked above (www.bbssrresponse.com). APA encourages you to share your responses with the Science Government Relations staff so that your ideas may inform the APA response to the request. Please send a copy of your response to Pat Kobor by Monday, November 19, 2007.

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