National Advisory Mental Health Council Open Policy Session

On January 12, Elizabeth Hoffman of the Science Policy Office attended the Open Policy Session of the National Advisory Mental Health Council at NIH. Included on the agenda were the Director's report, status updates on clinical science initiatives, diversity efforts at NIMH, the peer review process, and presentations by new NIMH Investigators.

NIMH Director, Dr. Tom Insel, opened the meeting with a FY07 budget update. NIMH, along with most other federal agencies, is currently operating under a continuing resolution (CR), putting the agency's budget at about 0.6 percent below FY06 levels (i.e., a budget of roughly $1.4 billion). With annual biomedical inflation at approximately 3.5 percent, even a flat budget would amount to a reduction in spending power, which presents a challenge for the agency's extramural research funding efforts.

But the outlook changed for the better on January 29 when Senate and House appropriators filed a joint funding resolution totaling $463.5 billion - what remains in the Republican budget resolution for the current fiscal year. Under the joint resolution, NIH would receive $28.9 billion, an increase of $619.5 million over FY06 levels. To read more about how the joint funding resolution will affect the scientific community, please click here, and to access the full text of the new CR, click here.

As of now, Insel's alternative strategies to deal with the budget situation under the CR include no inflationary increase for non-competing grants, and reallocating funds to maintain new and competing research project grants at FY04-05 levels. There is no word yet on whether the additional funding would provide for inflationary increases for non-competing grants. We'll be sure to provide updated details on the status of the resolution and its impact on NIMH in upcoming SPIN articles.

After reviewing the NIMH budget, Insel and Dr. William Carpenter, Chair of the NIMH Clinical Trials Networks, provided updates on new science and clinical trials initiatives. The Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN), a public-private partnership co-sponsored by the Foundation for NIH, supports six genome analysis studies. GAIN analyzes approximately 1,000 - 2,000 genomes from healthy volunteers and another 1,000 - 2,000 from patients to enhance the development of new methods to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure diseases. The first round of GAIN studies focuses on the kidney and diseases of the brain, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and attention deficit disorder.

Clinical trials are also underway for the study of bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia, and NIMH is currently seeking input from mental health professionals, clinical researchers, patient advocates, and individuals living with mental illness about important mental health research questions that could be addressed through these initiatives.

Another highlight of the meeting was peer review at the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), which is undergoing significant re-engineering to shorten the review cycle, improve study section alignment and performance, enhance recruitment and retention of high quality reviewers, and decrease the burden on both applicants and reviewers. Dr. Toni Scarpa, Director of CSR, promises that change is imminent. Stay tuned!

The next Open Policy Session will take place in May.

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