CAHT-BSSR: The Coalition with
the Impossible Name
by Patricia C. Kobor, Public Policy Office
The establishment of the Office of Behavioral
and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) in 1995 was a milestone for psychology and the other
behavioral sciences. But the legislation that authorized OBSSR?s
creation was hard-fought. In 1993, staff members of the Consortium of
Social Science Associations called governmental affairs representatives
of all the behavioral and social science organizations headquartered in
the Washington area and invited them to work together on the
establishment of OBSSR. That was the beginning of the "Coalition
with the Impossible Name"?CAHT-BSSR, or the Coalition for the
Advancement of Health Through Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.
Members of this coalition include APA, the
Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), the Federation of
Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, the American
Sociological Association, the American Anthropological Association, the
Alan Guttmacher Institute, the Population Association of America, and
others. Some members of the coalition had worked together previously
through their mutual COSSA membership. Some of the other organizations
had worked together in various legislative coalitions. However, this
particular combination had never been assembled before. The goal to
establish an office at NIH that could help coordinate and promote all
the represented sciences served as a powerful incentive for all members
to cooperate.
In 1993, the coalition worked with the
(then-named) House Energy and Commerce Committee and the (then-named)
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources to refine the mission of
OBSSR and to build support for the proposed office. The coalition worked
with NIH leadership, including then Acting Director Ruth Kirschstein,
MD, on how the office should be organized within NIH. Because the office
was created by an act of legislation, members of the coalition had a
critical role to play in informing the behavioral and social science
community about its creation. In 1995, coalition members worked with
Norman Anderson, PhD, the first director of OBSSR, to nominate advisers
to work on OBSSR?s strategic plan. The coalition also worked to
promote OBSSR as an information resource for Congress. Regular coalition
meetings with OBSSR staff helped the office reach the scientific
constituencies it needed to accomplish its mission.
As the critical organizing work on OBSSR was
completed, coalition members decided to continue meeting to monitor the
status of behavioral and social science research at NIH, since the
coalition had become an important forum for communication among the
organizations. In the years since its founding, CAHT-BSSR has taken on
various projects, including lobbying on legislation affecting written
consent for research with children and research on health disparities in
minority populations. The coalition has offered joint comments on issues
related to infrastructure and peer review at NIH. CAHT-BSSR has welcomed
speakers from behavioral and social science research programs at NIH and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has presented
testimony to Congress on funding recommendations for OBSSR and other
parts of the Public Health Service. Recently, it has served as a
communication vehicle on issues related to the Decade of Behavior
Initiative.
I was present at the founding of the coalition
and am still there as co-chair, along with Angela Sharpe of COSSA. The
significance of this group is not that we always agree about the best
course of action needed to promote behavioral and social science
research at NIH, but simply that we talk together about common NIH
issues much more frequently than we ever did before CAHT-BSSR was
established. We have worked together to put to rest our earlier
fractious reputation, and the sciences benefit from our organizations?
work as team players. It is significant that NIH leadership can reach
most of the organizations that care about behavioral research with one
phone call or one meeting.
Earlier this year, CAHT-BSSR said goodbye to
OBSSR?s first director. We hope to welcome the second in a matter of
months. I trust that the coalition will continue to be a resource and a
repository of institutional memory for the OBSSR director and others at
NIH who seek to tap the expertise and power of the behavioral and social
sciences.
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