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APA Recruits New Science Advocates at SPSP
APA Science Policy staff Karen Studwell and Heather Kelly
attended the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social
Psychology (SPSP) to lead an advocacy training workshop for scientists.
They provided an overview of the legislative and appropriations process
and prepared participants to become more effective advocates for
psychological research. Given the flattening of funding for scientific
research across multiple federal agencies and criticisms from some
Congressional members about behavioral research, it is more critical than
ever that scientists make their voices heard on issues affecting research.
After participating in the workshop, attendees were ready to engage their
own Representatives and Senators in a discussion about the relevance and
value of psychological research and the need for continued federal
support. In the Spring, some of these social and personality psychologists
will meet with their Members of Congress in their home districts during a
series of coordinated advocacy visits in which they will educate them
about the importance of basic social and personality research within the
National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
APA's Science Policy Office covers a broad array of
federal agencies and policy issues that impact psychological research. To
learn more about our efforts, visit the Science
Policy website.
Taking Human Effectiveness
Research to New Heights: APA Science Visits Nellis Air Force Base
PPO staff find their Capitol Hill advocacy efforts improve
dramatically when they can present legislative staff with clear examples
of psychological research’s impact on real-world problems. At the end of
January, Executive Director for Science Steve Breckler and PPO’s Heather
Kelly and Karen Studwell visited Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to get a
first-hand look at human effectiveness research and its value to the Air
Force mission.
 Read
the full article from APA's Psychological Science Agenda
Friends of NIDA meets with Board of Advisors
On February 1, the Friends of NIDA (FoN) Coalition’s
Executive Committee met for the first time with our Board of Scientific
Advisors to review our work over the past year and to get input for the
coming year. The Board consists of two retired Congressmen, all
former NIDA Directors, and the former heads of the White House Special
Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention and the Office of National Drug
Control Policy.
Dr. Nora Volkow, the current Director, lauded our efforts
and discussed some of her priorities, which include promoting the need for
parity for mental health and substance abuse treatment, and trying to
figure out how to provide incentives to the pharmaceutical industry to get
more involved in medication development. Congressmen Bliley and Rogers
reiterated the importance of energizing the grassroots in support of drug
abuse research and offered to network on our behalf. Following the
President's State of the Union theme, it was also suggested that making
drug abuse an economic argument (i.e., hurts the economy through lost
productivity, etc.) might help generate increased attention to the
problem. So we have plans to follow up with Employee Assistance Programs
to work on collecting data along those lines. General Barry McCaffrey
enjoyed the group-think so much he suggested having quarterly meetings and
volunteered to contribute financially to help keep the organization
running.
View
photos from the FoN dinner meeting
NIMH Council Faces New Budget Climate
On February 3, the National Advisory Mental Health Council
met to discuss a variety of issues of concern to psychological science.
NIMH Director Tom Insel began the meeting with an overview of the FY 2007
budget, which would result in a $9 million cut to the institute. While
NIMH's highest priority is funding individual research project grants (RPGs),
there are expected to be some reductions of support for institutional
training awards, which include awards for minority training. To increase
support for young investigators, NIMH is planning to fund ten awards under
the new NIH
"Pathway to Independence" program.
The Council also received updates from the Council
Workgroup on Racial/Ethnic Minority Recruitment and Diversity that is
reviewing the NIMH success rate for recruiting staff, research
participants, trainees and investigators. NIMH is organizing program staff
to track clinical trial recruitment quarterly to ensure that overall and
minority recruitment goals are being met. Given the NIMH plans to decrease
training, the Workgroup recommended that NIMH ensure that the
reductions do not have a disproportionate impact on training for diverse
populations and recommended that NIMH develop measures to quantify the
impact of training support on the development of minority investigators.
The Services and Clinical Epidemiology Workgroup also
presented its recommendations to bridge the gap between what treatments
are effective and what treatments are available to patients and consumers.
As part of its report, the Workgroup recommended that NIMH should: 1)
support research on the implementation and sustainability of
evidence-based interventions to determine the mechanisms underlying the
successful implementation of these interventions in varying settings with
culturally and geographically diverse populations; 2) create a means of
identifying those policy changes and other shifts likely to have the most
significant impact on mental health and seize the opportunity to study
their impact; 3) seek out opportunities to add research components to
service projects funded by other agencies and departments to identify
organizational, relational and treatment approaches that makes them
successful; 4) continue to support development, adaptation and validation
of research tools to measure quality of care and fairness; 5) sponsor
research to study the existing mental health services delivery systems to
develop criteria that can be used to characterize successful systems and
to identify and promote feasible best practices; 6) sponsor research on
fairness and quality in mental health services; 7) create time sensitive
ways to bring the most rigorous methodologies to bear on initiatives to
learn what treatments work for whom and how to get effective therapies
implemented.
Read
APA's comments to the Services and Clinical Epidemiology Workgroup
After the Doubling- What is the Climate at NIH for
Behavioral Research?
Good Advice from NIDA Staff
In Fiscal Year 2006, the National Institutes of Health received its
smallest budget increase since the mid-1960s-less than one percent--and
actually saw its budget cut after a 1% across-the-board cut was applied.
How will that affect research funding and programs at the institutes that
fund behavioral research? Is there any good news amidst the bad? APA's
Science Policy Office put the following questions to several institute
officials and program officers.
We would like to thank David Shurtleff, PhD, Director of the Basic Neuroscience and
Behavioral Research Division at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
and Lisa Onken, PhD, Chief of the Behavioral and Integrative Treatment
Branch, for sharing their advice.
Read
the interview
[back to top]
Friends of NIDA Raise Awareness
about Prescription Drug Abuse
As noted by increasing lay press coverage, the
inappropriate or nonmedical use of prescription medications is a serious
public health concern. An estimated 48 million people aged 12 and older,
or 20 percent of the U.S. population, have used prescription drugs for
nonmedical reasons in their lifetimes. Young adults and elderly persons
are particularly vulnerable to abuse or misuse of these drugs, which
include prescription pain relievers, stimulants, sedatives, and
tranquilizers.
To raise awareness of the problem, on February 23 the
Friends of NIDA coalition, working in conjunction with the Congressional
Caucus on Addiction, Treatment and Recovery, held a briefing entitled "Prescription
Drug Abuse - An Emerging Public Health Threat".
NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow provided an overview of the
institute's prescription drug abuse and treatment research portfolio. She
was followed by Dr. Carol Boyd, Director of the Institute for Research on
Women & Gender at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who discussed
results from her NIDA-funded research on the extent of prescription drug
abuse in secondary schools and among college students. But perhaps the
most poignant presentation came from Nick, a 20 year old man recovering
from prescription drug and heroin addiction who told a wrenching story
that brought many in the standing-room-only audience to tears.
Fortunately, part of Nick's treatment includes one of NIDA's medication
development success stories, buprenorphine, which he credited for
relieving of him of the craving for heroin.
As always, Science Policy staff are very grateful for
Congressman Jim Ramstad's support of these briefings and thank his
staffer, Andrew Mckechnie, for helping with the room arrangements. Future
briefings may include topics such as NIDA's developmental research
portfolio, co-morbidity of substance abuse with other mental disorders, or
the Clinical Trials Network.
View
photos from the briefing
View
NIDA's two-pager on Prescription Drug Abuse
View
Dr. Boyd’s presentation
View
Dr. Volkow’s presentation
Defense Research Funding
The Department of Defense (DoD) has released a Broad
Agency Announcement soliciting research proposals for its Peer
Reviewed Medical Research Program. The Fiscal Year 2006 Defense funding
bill provided $50 million for military health-related research in specific
topical areas, including alcohol and drug abuse, human performance,
chronic pain, PTSD, etc. One of the five award mechanisms is an
Investigator-Initiated Research Award, and letters of intent are due April
10, 2006.
Applications Due March 15 for APA Summer Research
Fellowships in DoD Counterintelligence
Graduate students and post-doctoral psychologists have
just a couple of weeks left to apply for APA's second annual Summer
Research Fellowships in DoD Counterintelligence. Two fellows (one graduate
student and one psychologist) will spend eight weeks in the summer of 2006
as Research Fellows in the Department of Defense's (DoD's)
Counterintelligence Field Activity Office (CIFA), headquartered here in
the Washington, D.C. area. The fellowship will provide invaluable learning
experiences in psychological research and policy related to federal
counterintelligence efforts. The focus of the research will be on topics
relevant to countering terrorist activity, reducing "insider
threat" and developing counterintelligence threat trend analysis.
Fellows will be expected to make internal presentations on research issues
and to complete a brief paper summarizing any relevant research results
compiled during the fellowship. For more information and application
instructions, please visit our website
or contact Dr.
Heather Kelly via email.
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
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