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APA Kicks off the FY07 Appropriations Season by
Advocating for Strong Psychological Research Program within the VA
On Wednesday, March 1, Executive Director for Science
Steve Breckler presented APA's testimony on funding for psychological
research and services within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Quality of Life
and the VA. APA was lucky to receive a five-minute "slot" to
testify orally before the Subcommittee, which directs funds to the VA and
its research and medical care accounts. In Dr. Breckler's testimony, he
thanked the Subcommittee for doubling the mental health research budget
within the VA in Fiscal Year 2006, and requested continued, strong support
in Fiscal Year 2007, despite a cut to overall VA research support proposed
by President Bush this year. Breckler also encouraged Congress to require
more direct collaboration between the research arms of the VA and the
Department of Defense and emphasized the need for psychological scientists
to be involved in the design, implementation and analysis phases of
newly-mandated studies of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental
health issues with military and veteran populations.
Later that same day, Breckler and PPO's Heather Kelly met
with the Executive Committee members of the Association of VA Psychologist
Leaders (AVAPL) during their annual trip to APA Headquarters. Discussions
focused on research funding and the appropriations process, inclusion of
VA psychologists in congressionally-mandated studies of Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder, and psychology's representation on current National
Academies of Science/Institute of Medicine panels studying VA-related
issues.
 Read
APA's complete oral testimony
Science Policy Staff Meet with New NSF Leaders
On March 8, Science Policy staffers Geoff Mumford and
Heather Kelly accompanied APA's Executive Director for Science Steve Breckler to a
meeting at the National Science Foundation with Dr. James Collins and Dr.
David Lightfoot, the new Assistant Directors of Biological Sciences (BIO)
and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), respectively. The
meeting was meant to serve as introduction to APA and to help us define
areas of mutual interest.
Drs. Lightfoot and Collins noted that the meeting was
timely because they'll both be attending an Assistant Directors retreat at
the end of April to discuss future NSF initiatives and cross-directorate
activities. It was clear that Drs. Lightfoot and Collins were impressed
both by the size of APA and the scope of our activities.
One near term cross-directorate activity that is likely to
draw in APA members as participants is a Neuroscience Workshop planned for
late spring. Within that general subject area, Collins expressed a keen
interest in developmental neuroscience and taking it all the way from
biochemistry to thought. We discussed the role that psychology can play in
a number of NSF's initiatives, including cyberinfrastructure to facilitate
the next generation of cybertools, science of learning, science metrics,
and the social science of science policy. Drs. Collins and Lightfoot are
very interested in urban ecology and decision making under uncertainty, as
well as nurturing more collaboration with Geological Sciences.
We all came away feeling good about the level at which the
two Directorates want to work together. The collaborative spirit will be
reinforced when the two Directorates hold a joint advisory council meeting
on April 19-21, and APA staff will look forward to providing a full report
on that meeting in a future edition of SPIN.
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APA Submits Testimony in Support of DHS Programs
Each year Science Policy staff request opportunities to
provide oral "public witness" testimony before several
Appropriations Subcommittees in the House and Senate that oversee federal
agency budgets. We do this with the hope of raising the profile of new
programmatic initiatives of interest to psychology or, in some cases,
salvaging programs that might be on the chopping block. But oral testimony
slots are a precious commodity. In the House, depending on the
jurisdiction of the subcommittee, they can be very difficult to come by
(and the Senate has eliminated them entirely). For example, slots before
the House subcommittee overseeing NIH are awarded on the basis of a
lottery, and unfortunately APA didn't win this year. However, all the
subcommittees accept testimony for the written record, and while it
doesn't provide face time with a subcommittee Chairperson, we still hope
to plant a seed or two and put APA on record. Last year APA member
Michelle Keeney was hired by the Department of Homeland Security to manage
the Social and Behavioral Research Program within the Threat Awareness
Portfolio of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of
Homeland Security. With her stewardship, there are some exciting
programmatic initiatives underway, and Science Policy staff prepared this
testimony in an effort to raise awareness of, and shore up support for,
those programs.
Read
the APA Testimony
House Republican Study Committee Includes NIH Cuts in
Budget Planning
While the Senate successfully added more money for health
and education programs to its budget resolution, the House Budget
Committee is waiting until the end of March to begin consideration of the
House budget resolution. On March 16, Democratic staff from the Budget and
Appropriations Committees met with advocates for biomedical and behavioral
research and stressed that the House would likely support the Bush
Administration's budget proposal to decrease discretionary spending. On
March 8, the Republican Study Committee, a group of one hundred
conservative Members, released its own proposed budget, called the Renewal
of the Contract with America. Of major concern to the scientific community
is the RSC proposal to cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) by ten percent. The RSC asserts that NIH has funded numerous
nonessential projects in recent years, referring specifically to studies
of HIV/AIDS and sexual health research that were targeted for funding cuts
in 2003. It is hoped that these cuts will encourage privatization of some
NIH research and reduce the federal investment in some areas of scientific
inquiry. It is unlikely that this proposal would pass the House; however,
it does paint a dismal picture of current Congressional support for
biomedical and behavioral research funding.
Read
the Republican Study Committee report: Renewal of the Contract
with America
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DHS Social and Behavioral Sciences Partnership
APA Science Policy staff have spent considerable time
advocating for the importance of psychological science in the mission of
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Much of that work began when
the Department was merely an Office of Homeland Security in a small suite
on the White House complex. Back then, it was easy to identify central
points of contact, eager OHS staff were receptive to new ideas, and we had
a dedicated Senior Scientist, Susan Brandon, willing to tackle a whole new
set of scientific issues. When Dr. Brandon left APA, she soon found
herself discussing many of the same homeland security issues but from the
White House end of the phone, where she served so ably as the Assistant
Director of Social, Behavioral, and Educational Sciences under Dr.
Marburger at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). It's
worth mentioning the early work, not as a trip down memory lane, but more
as a reminder of how far we've come.
Psychologists are now involved in a broad spectrum of
activities within the jurisdiction of DHS. For example, Michelle Keeney
manages the Social and Behavioral Research Program within the Threat
Awareness Portfolio of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate. Baruch
Fischhoff and Roxane Cohen Silver provide expertise as members of the
Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee and the
Academe and Policy Research Senior Advisory Committee of the Homeland
Security Advisory Council, respectively. Detlof von Winterfeldt and Arie
Kruglanski serve as Principle Investigators directing the activities of
two of the five University-Based Centers of Excellence and student
psychologists are becoming the next generation of Homeland Security
experts training under the DHS Scholars and Fellows program.
And what of Dr. Brandon? She's now a Behavioral &
Social Sciences Principal within the Information Technology Division of
Mitre, a nonprofit government contractor leading, among other projects,
one she conceived while still at OSTP - the DHS Social and Behavioral
Sciences Partnership. As described by DHS, the Social and Behavioral
Sciences Partnership (Partnership) Program assembles leading thinkers on
the social and behavioral aspects of terrorism and national security to
participate in study sessions and web-based dialogue focused on topics of
relevance to the SBR Program, to DHS, and to the nation as a whole. It was
created to describe the significant roles that social, cultural, economic,
and psychological factors play in the threats we face and our
counter-threat activities, as well as to provide a mechanism for communicating social
and behavioral research findings to policymakers. In FY06, at the request
of the DHS Policy Directorate, the Partnership will examine the impact of
U.S. policies on radicalization in the United States. It will also hold
study sessions on topics related to 1) assessing the intent of terrorist
groups and 2) determining the long-term impacts of a terrorist attack with
improvised nuclear devices.
I was fortunate to have been invited to the first meeting
of the group as part fly-on-the-wall, part scribe. Because all
participants signed non-disclosure agreements, we are limited to sharing
this approved
summary, but I can say it was a very stimulating, if somewhat sobering,
experience. Suffice to say psychological science is well represented
within the group, and Dr. Brandon continues to provide the sort of
leadership for which she received an APA Presidential Citation at the
recent Science Leadership Conference.
More
information about the DHS Partnership Program
Read
the Presidential Citation for Susan Brandon
How to Build a Better Budget: Specter- Harkin
Amendment Passes
Thanks to an impressive grassroots advocacy effort, the
Specter-Harkin amendment to add $7 billion to the Senate budget for
education, research and public health programs passed 73-27 on March 16.
The Public Policy Office sent out a plea for psychologists to phone their
Senators to urge a yes vote on the amendment, and despite the short
notice, APA members placed over 100 calls. Added to the strength of the
grassroots effort of other associations (FASEB, the Federation of American
Societies of Experimental Biology, reportedly generated over 8,000 letters
or contacts), these calls helped produce a significant victory in this
year’s struggle to increase funding for biomedical research, public
health and education programs.
The Specter-Harkin amendment was drafted to restore
funding for public health and education programs that have been seriously
eroded by years of flat funding, outright reductions, and four years of
across-the-board cuts. Last year alone, public health programs lost over
$1 billion in funding.
Thanks to all of you who called your Senators!
Of course, many additional hurdles must be overcome in
order to assure that the increased funds remain in the budget and are
appropriated for the purposes intended. Former U.S. Rep. John Edward
Porter, now the president of Research!America, exhorted members at that
organization’s annual meeting this week to press the House Budget
Committee to adopt a similar amendment, or allow one to be offered when
the Fiscal Year 2007 budget is considered on the House floor. As one of
the architects of the doubling of NIH’s budget while he was chair of the
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and
Education, Porter is a longtime friend of health research. APA is an
organizational member of Research!America.
Watch for additional action alerts from the Public Policy
Office as we work to ensure that NIH receives a healthy increase in
funding this year, and that programs at the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education are adequately funded
as well. If you have not yet subscribed to the Public Policy Action
Network, we urge you to subscribe.
In that way, you can be ‘targeted’ by congressional district in the
event that particular Representatives are being urged to take particular
actions. For example, constituents in the districts of members of the
House Budget Committee are likely to be especially needed as the 2007
budget is prepared in the House.
Our take-home message from this experience is: If you
receive a request to take action, please ACT! Thank you.
More
information about Research!America
Advocating for Psychological Science at NSF and NASA
Because psychological scientists play vital roles within
both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA), APA also submitted formal, written
testimony in March to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science,
State, Justice, and Commerce. APA urged the Subcommittee (whose funding
jurisdiction includes NSF and NASA along with larger federal departments)
to invest substantially in the two science-mission agencies in Fiscal Year
2007. APA's testimony addressed the overall proposed research budget for
NSF and specific, human-centered research programs within NASA. APA urged
the Subcommittee to support the President's request for NSF, which for the
first time in recent years would increase support by a healthy 7.9% over
current funding for a total of $6.02 billion. In the case of NASA,
however, APA is concerned about substantial cuts to programs in
Aeronautics and Human Systems Research and Technology, and recommended
restoring funds for those portfolios to current year levels at a
minimum.
Read
APA's written testimony
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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