|
[Subscribe
to SPIN]
APA Submits Comments to NIH on "Strategic
Research Plan and Budget to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health
Disparities"
APA called for NIH to increase its investment in
behavioral research on health disparities in minority populations. In
comments submitted January 5, 2004, APA’s Chief Executive Officer Norman
B. Anderson, PhD, wrote,“NIH
has invested in the training of scientists and the development of
methodologies that make it possible for researchers to study behavioral
and social phenomena such as patient-provider communications, racism, the
multiple influences of socioeconomic status, allostatic load, and variable
experiences of stress and its disparate impacts upon immune function.But NIH must follow up initial investments with strong,
multi-institute partnerships in order to continue progress through the
current “post-doubling” budget environment.”
 Read
the APA comments
Read
the NIH Strategic Plan
Organizations Come Together to
Support Peer Review
The Coalition to Protect Research (CPR), formerly the
National Alliance to Support Sexual Health Research and Policy, held its
second meeting on January 7. CPR, co-chaired by Karen Studwell of APA's
Public Policy Office and Angela Sharpe of the Consortium of Social
Sciences Associations, met to continue refining the coalition's messages
and advocacy strategies. The 40 member organizations are unified in their
goal of protecting the peer review process from congressional interference
and are gearing up for a possible vote similar to last year's Toomey
amendment that occurred during the FY04 appropriations cycle. CPR will
meet with key congressional staff in January and February as the FY05
appropriations cycle gets underway. In March, the coalition is also
planning a congressional briefing to educate Hill staff about the
importance of research on sexual health and its implications for public
health issues from HIV/AIDS prevention to the impact on marriages. The
coalition is also developing a sign-on petition for scientists to
highlight their support for the peer review process and a scientific
enterprise free of political interference. We'll bring you more details on
the petition next month.
APA's Division 44 on Gay and Lesbian Issues is also
co-sponsoring a symposium at the convention with the Public Policy Office
entitled, Supporting Scientific Integrity and Freedom in Behavioral Health
Research. Participants include Karina Walters of the University of
Washington School of Social Work, Tooru Nemoto of the UCSF School of
Medicine's Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Thomas Coates, University
of California at Los Angeles Department of Medicine, Isabel Fernandez of
the University of Miami School of Medicine, and APA's Karen Studwell.
These prominent behavioral scientists will discuss their research as well
as their personal experiences of defending their research against
political attacks. We hope to see you all in Hawaii and encourage everyone
interested in this issue to attend the symposium.
More
information about the APA convention
[back to top]
APA Fellows Appointed to Senior Advisory
Positions at DHS
As this issue of SPIN goes to press, we have been at a
high risk "code orange" of terrorist attack for several weeks.
And although it was obvious that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
was very concerned about airline hijackings over the holidays, we only
recently learned that the possibility of a dirty bomb detonation was also
weighing heavily on DHS through the New Year. For those of us
working in downtown DC, the cliché "That's life in the big
city" takes on a new and unsettling meaning.
Of course, these threats and many others will continue to
loom large even though we have returned to code yellow. But DHS is, and
will continue to be, a work in progress - an evolving infrastructure
having to contend with an evolving threat matrix. That's why we have been
spending considerable energy trying to understand how DHS will embrace
psychological science (and scientists) as it moves forward. And the news
is reasonably good.
We've reported previously on the role of at least one
psychologist, Liz
Kolmstetter, directly employed by the Transportation Security
Administration to develop the recruitment, selection and training system
for airport security personnel. Psychology students were also among those
who received awards in the first round of the DHS Scholars/Fellows
competition in September. Further, the first DHS Center of Excellence,
which will be housed at the University of Southern California, will be
co-directed by a mathematical psychologist, Detlof
von Winterfeldt, establishing the Homeland
Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events.
But as important as it is to have psychologists applying
and conducting research for DHS, science policy staff have been working to
ensure that psychologists are helping to mold the programs and policies of
this new Department. Science Policy staff regularly nominate psychological
scientists to serve on federal advisory committees, and through the years
we have enjoyed reasonable success in getting them placed. Finally, we're
pleased to report that efforts spanning two years to place psychologists
on two high level DHS advisory councils have paid off. Admittedly, the
process was somewhat torturous at times, as agency heads were replaced and
one bureaucracy (DHS) swallowed another (TSA).
The TSA nominations process began almost two years ago,
when we submitted a list of prominent researchers to then-Undersecretary
John Magaw. The nominations were acknowledged, but no action was taken to
assemble the advisory committee. When Magaw missed a series of
legislatively mandated deadlines to screen checked baggage and faced
personnel cost overruns, he was replaced by Admiral James Loy, and the
process started over again. Loy has since been elevated to serve as Deputy
Secretary of DHS under Tom Ridge, and this time our nominations were acted
upon. We are very pleased that Deborah Boehm-Davis, Professor in the Human
Factors and Applied Cognition Program at George Mason University, has been
appointed to the TSA Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) originally chartered
in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001.
Dr. Boehm-Davis is well versed in advising on matters
related to aviation and aviation security; she recently rotated off as
Chair of the Federal Aviation Administration's Research, Engineering and
Development Advisory Committee (REDAC).
The TSA's SAP will have its inaugural meeting this month, and a summary of
the meeting will be presented at the next REDAC meeting in February.
There are a whole host of advisory committees and
subcommittees serving TSA's parent agency, DHS. But the highest in the
pecking order, the Homeland Security Advisory Committee (HSAC), reports
directly to Secretary Ridge. Four senior subcommittees report to HSAC,
covering issues related to emergency response, state and local government,
the private sector, and academic and policy research (see links below). It
was the latter to which our nominee, Dr. Roxanne Cohen Silver, was
appointed. As was the case with TSA, the appointment process was arduous:
when the Office of Homeland Security became the Department of Homeland
Security, large shifts in personnel meant that Dr. Cohen had to resubmit
the requisite paperwork and endure a lengthy vetting process twice.
Dr. Cohen, who studies how people respond to traumatic
events, was APA's featured researcher at the Coalition for National
Science Funding Exhibition on Capitol Hill in May of 2002. Her study of
how individuals have been affected by 9/11 (the results of which were
first reported in the September
11, 2002 issue of JAMA [PDF]) is one of the only on-going federally funded
longitudinal studies of the event's impact on individuals' mental health.
Asked to comment on her appointment, Dr. Cohen said
"Both the U.S. Surgeon General and the Institute of Medicine of the
National Academies have made it clear that considering the nation's mental
health is vitally important as we address terrorism here and abroad. The
appointment of a psychologist to this advisory committee demonstrates this
administration's commitment to addressing the psychological aspects of
terrorism. I am honored to be included among the distinguished members of
this committee and to have the opportunity to serve our nation in this
manner."
We are most appreciative to Drs. Cohen-Silver and
Boehm-Davis for their willingness to have their names put forth, and for
providing a voice for scientific psychology as DHS continues to shape
priorities, programs and policies.
View
the DHS organizational chart
View
the Science and Technology Directorate organizational chart
For more information on the HSAC and its subcommittees,
see the following links:
Academe
and Policy Research Senior Advisory Committee
State
and Local Officials Senior Advisory Committee
Emergency
Services, Law Enforcement, and Public Health and Hospitals Senior Advisory
Committee
Private
Sector Senior Advisory Committee
[back to top]
Opportunities for I-O and Human Factors Research at
NSF
In December, Dianne Maranto from APA's Science Directorate
and Heather Kelly from PPO brought two distinguished psychological
researchers to Washington for meetings with National Science Foundation
(NSF) program staff from the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Directorate (SBE). APA members John Hollenbeck, PhD and Eduardo Salas, PhD
represented the subdisciplines of industrial-organizational (I-O) and
human factors (HF) psychology, both areas which rarely seek or receive NSF
funding. Hollenbeck and Salas met with program officers from the Decision
Risk & Management Sciences (DRMS) program and the senior advisor in
charge of NSF's new Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) research priority
area. They highlighted potential contributions of I-O and HF psychology to
both DRMS and HSD and strategized with staff about ways to strengthen
their fields' relationships with NSF (e.g., including more I-O and HF
experts on review panels). One concrete result of the meetings is that
DRMS program officer Jonathan Leland has agreed to be on a panel at the
upcoming Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference
this spring.
More
information on NSF's Decision Risk & Management Sciences program
More
information on NSF's Human and Social Dynamics priority area
[back to top]
Any questions?
If you have any questions regarding SPIN or specific
science policy issues, please feel free to contact any of APA’s Science
PPO staff.
Geoff
Mumford, Ph.D., Director of Science Policy
Pat
Kobor, Senior Science Policy Analyst
Heather
O'Beirne Kelly, Ph.D., Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
Karen
Studwell, J.D., Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
Sara
Robinson, Legislative Assistant
| 
APA's
Science Policy Insider News