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 Outlook for Fiscal Year 2008 Appropriations
Friends of NICHD Requests Funding Increases for Child Health Research
Defense Science Board and Senate Armed Services Committee Meetings
Fischhoff Provides Risk Analysis Briefing on Capitol Hill
NSF Biological Sciences Directorate Holds Spring Advisory Committee Meeting
Meeting with Sen. Johnson's Staff on VA Issues
Center for Scientific Review Gets Feedback on Peer Review from Behavioral Scientists
Effects of the Administration's Budget
Outlook for Fiscal Year 2008 Appropriations
While Congress spent most of April out of session for a long Easter recess, Science Government Relations staff continued to work independently and in broader coalitions to educate Congress and key congressional staff about important science funding issues.
With the House under Democratic leadership, there is renewed interest in restoring recent cuts to important research, health and education programs. As the new chair of both the full House Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, David Obey (D-WS) will play a critical role in making these decisions and has expressed his support for a broad range of health and research programs.
In recent meetings with Chairman Obey's committee staff, as well as in congressional testimony, APA has continued to push for a 6.7 percent increase for the National Institutes of Health and increases for other health programs. On March 30, 2007, APA submitted its testimony citing concern over falling success rates at NIH (now below 20 percent in many institutes). APA's testimony also raised concern about research training and the need to maintain programs to support young and minority investigators who are most vulnerable in the current funding climate.
Other House members have shown their support by signing a Congressional "Dear Colleague" letter to support 6.7 percent increases for NIH for the next three years, which they state is necessary to "restore the funding lost to NIH since 2003 and preserve our investment in biomedical research." The letter currently has 161 Congressional signatures.
However, before Congress gets started on individual appropriations bills, it has to complete its work on the concurrent Budget Resolution, which limits how much money the appropriations committees can allocate to discretionary programs. Currently, the House budget resolution provides approximately $22 billion more than the president requested and nearly $6 billion more than the Senate budget resolution. We expect the final budget resolution to emerge from conference within the next week.
One specific issue that has been of concern to individual investigators supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is the funding for the National Children's Study, which seeks to enroll a cohort of 100,000 children from before birth to age 21 to look at the environmental influences on child health and development. The Bush Administration proposed to stop the study in its FY 2007 and FY 2008 budget requests only to have Congress provide a new funding stream for the NCS through the Office of the NIH Director. At a congressional hearing in March, Chairman Obey asked NIH Director Elias Zerhouni about the NIH's lack of support for the NCS, and Zerhouni explained that the decision was based on budget priorities and that funding the NCS would drastically reduce NICHD's ability to fund other research. In response, Obey indicated that Congress would again provide additional funds to NIH for the NCS. As co-chair of the Friends of NICHD, APA's Karen Studwell submitted the coalition's congressional testimony to the House in late March, which called for $111 million for the NCS. Please click here to read more about the Friends of NICHD testimony.
Some of the additional goals advocated in APA's Labor-HHS-Education testimony were increases in suicide prevention programs at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; increases in the Graduate Psychology Education program in the Health Resources and Services Administration that trains psychologists to work in integrated care settings with rural and under-served populations; and expansion of Child Trauma treatment and prevention programs.
Chairman Obey is pushing to have all appropriations bills, including the Labor-HHS-Education bill, completed in the House by the July 4th congressional recess.
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Friends of NICHD Requests Funding Increases for Child Health Research
On March 30, the Friends of NICHD, co-chaired by Science GRO's Karen Studwell, submitted testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education in support of additional funding for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The coalition of more than 100 organizations called for a 6.7 percent increase for the National Institutes of Health and a commensurate increase for the NICHD, which would increase its FY08 funding to $1.337 billion. In its testimony, the coalition highlighted the breadth of NICHD research, including its research on math and science education, stating, "In addition to reading, a new portfolio of basic and applied research is focused on how children learn the necessary skills for achievement in math and science. This is critical developmental research that will inform the nation's innovation agenda and ensure a competitive workforce."
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Defense Science Board and Senate Armed Services Committee Meetings
Heather Kelly, whose Science GRO portfolio includes psychological research within the Department of Defense (DoD), met with key players in both the executive and legislative branches in recent weeks to push for behavioral science support in FY08. Brian Hughes, Executive Director of the Defense Science Board (DSB), met with the Coalition for National Security Research (CNSR), of which APA is an active member, to discuss recent and ongoing DSB studies. Dr. Kelly spoke with him about one of the most recent DSB reports, "21st Century Strategic Technology Vectors Vol. III", in which mapping the human terrain emerged as a priority area for DoD research. She also emphasized the need to include behavioral science in a DSB study currently underway on National Guard and Reserves issues. In addition, Heather met with the Democratic and Republican staffers of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) specifically responsible for oversight of DoD research programs, asking for language in the FY08 defense authorization bill restoring cuts to basic and applied research programs.
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Fischhoff Provides Risk Analysis Briefing on Capitol Hill
On April 17, Science Government Relations Office (GRO) staff arranged for APA Fellow Baruch Fischhoff to brief staff from the House Science Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation and the House Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Subcommittee on the scientific bases of risk analysis and communication. The briefing was prompted by congressional interest in the way DHS assesses risk and public statements by the Under Secretary of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate indicating he was seeking input from the National Academies on the issue.
For example, on March 8, Congressman David Wu (D-OR), Chair of the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, released a statement before a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's FY08 R&D Budget priorities that said, in part ".... We can fund billions of dollars in research, but if we don't pay attention to the risks we should be addressing, we won't have the answers we need when we need them. We can base research on anecdotal impressions of need, but that is not the scientific approach the American people have a right to expect."
During the April briefing, Dr. Fischhoff provided some background on the history of scientific risk analysis, as well as on his own evaluations of risk across a remarkable range of potential hazards, including nuclear power, liquid natural gas, climate change, toxic chemicals, radon, surgery, mammography, sexually transmitted diseases, dietary supplements, dirty bombs, nuclear attacks, avian flu, and xenotransplantation. He then discussed some critical components of behavioral science that play into sound risk analysis/communications: 1) recruiting, eliciting, and evaluating expertise; 2) making assumptions about human behavior, and; 3) two-way communication with the intended audience. He also used a recent article published in Health Physics (see press release) as a platform to engage the staff in discussion of risk as it applies to an important element of the DHS S&T portfolio (i.e., what people should do following a nuclear attack).
As follow-up, Science GRO staff encouraged the appropriations subcommittee to include report language on risk in the House DHS appropriations bill and received a commitment that they would. In addition, Science GRO staff will continue to work with the Innovation and Technology Subcommittee staff to craft language that would highlight the importance of risk analyses and communication in a DHS reauthorization bill expected to be introduced late spring.
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NSF Biological Sciences Directorate Holds Spring Advisory Committee Meeting
On April 19, Science GRO staff attended the Biological Sciences Directorate Advisory Committee meeting. Dr. Jim Collins, Assistant Director for Biological Sciences, began the meeting with a budget and organizational update. Much of NSF's budget increase is being driven by bipartisan congressional support of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), which focuses NSF resources on physics, math, and engineering. Unfortunately, given those priorities, increases for other NSF Directorates are relatively modest and the FY08 budget puts Biological Sciences on a low rung with a 4.1 percent increase, second to last, just above Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. On the bright side, the overall increase of 6.8 percent for NSF stands out against the flat funding of many other federal research funding agencies.
In the Q & A that followed Dr. Collins' presentation, Advisory Committee members expressed a great deal of concern about Bio's status in the NSF funding hierarchy and the low success rates of applicants seeking grant support from Bio. Although the overall success rate for submissions in 2006 was 18 percent in Bio, that includes a variety of mechanisms beyond traditional program grant submissions - the latter have a success rate somewhere between 9-13 percent, depending on the Division.
Much of the remainder of the morning focused on presentations highlighting changes in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (a name change from Organismal Biology). Of particular interest was a visually arresting presentation by Iain Couzin on collective animal behavior that examined how swarming animals communicate.
NSF Director Dr. Arden Bement and Deputy Director Kathie Olsen met with the group after lunch, fresh from a Senate hearing on "U.S. Competitiveness through Basic Research". Both of them reassured the group that they take every opportunity to tell congress that all scientific disciplines are necessary to contribute to competitiveness, not just math and physical sciences. Addressing questions from the Advisory Committee about applicant success rates, Dr. Bement bemoaned the rise in rejection of grants rated "very good to excellent", which is now around 33 percent, up from around 20 percent ten years ago. Although the foundation-wide success rate is about 23 percent, he'd like to see it up around 26 percent, but noted that the Biological Sciences budget would likely lag behind the other Directorates for the remainder of this administration because of the ACI, as well as an implicit association people make about biology and biomedical research funding following the doubling of the NIH budget.
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Meeting with Sen. Johnson's Staff on VA Issues
On Friday, April 20, Science GRO's Heather Kelly joined Friends of VA (FOVA) research coalition colleagues in a meeting with Sen. Tim Johnson's staff. Sen. Johnson (D-SD) chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, which provides annual funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), including its intramural research program. FOVA requested a substantial increase in the VA research program for FY08, given what for years has been basically flat funding, and identified the need for a dedicated account to renovate existing research lab facilities. The Chairman's staff was very receptive and will work with him on these issues as the appropriations season progresses.
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Center for Scientific Review Gets Feedback on Peer Review from Behavioral Scientists
The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held the second in a series of "open houses" designed to elicit feedback from scientists about whether the current constellation of peer review groups is working well. The first meeting, in March 2007, focused on the neurosciences. The second meeting, on April 25, involved behavioral and social scientists.
CSR last systematically examined the peer review infrastructure seven years ago with the "Boundary" process. Antonio Scarpa, PhD, Director of CSR, explained at the outset that CSR is determined to ensure that the Initial Review Group structure, and study section composition, serve science as well as possible and that continuous evaluation is needed to ensure that reviews are as fair and timely as possible.
CSR manages most of the peer review at NIH with standing study sections; the institutes themselves establish review for some projects. The study sections at CSR are designed not to be captive to one institute: so, for the most part, review of applications is not aligned with specific programs at NIH, and is not coupled with the question of what projects will be funded. Institutes determine which projects they will fund according to their internal rules and broad program priorities.
The roster of around 150 attendees showed that many psychologists were present whose expertise ranged from basic animal studies to human treatment research. Program officers from NIH institutes, members of NIH advisory committees, study section chairs, representatives from professional associations, and extramural scientists attended. Those present were given the opportunity to ask questions about the peer review process, but the meeting was designed primarily to focus on scientific questions. Attendees were asked to consider the following questions:
- Is the science of your discipline, in its present state, appropriately evaluated within the current study section alignment? Suggestions?
- What will be the most important questions and/or enabling technologies you see forthcoming within the science of your discipline in the next 10 years?
While many scientists acknowledged that the peer review for their area of research often works well, there were suggestions about areas that CSR should carefully monitor. One attendee commented that some areas of psychology, e.g. Industrial/Organizational psychology, do not have good homes in the current NIH peer review structure. Another expressed concern that the peer review in developmental research tends to pull projects more toward application and away from basic questions. Another scientist commented that social psychology is an area that is currently well reviewed, but predicted that pressure from NIH institutes for direct application would soon extend to the peer review structure and make it harder for basic social psychology research to be well reviewed.
Attending from APA were Executive Director for Science, Steven Breckler, PhD, and Elizabeth Hoffman, PhD, and Pat Kobor from the Science Government Relations Office.
Additional information about this series of meetings can be found on the CSR website.
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Effects of the Administration's Budget
What would the effect of the Administration's budget be on behavioral and social science research programs? APA Science Government Relations staff members Heather Kelly and Pat Kobor contributed to a chapter in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's publication, titled "Research & Development 2008". Click here to read this chapter.
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Any questions?
If you have any questions regarding SPIN or specific science policy issues, please feel free to contact any of APA's Science GRO staff.
Geoff Mumford, PhD
Assistant Executive Director for Science Policy
email
Pat Kobor
Senior Science Policy Analyst
email
Heather O'Beirne Kelly, PhD
Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
email
Karen Studwell, JD
Senior Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
email
Elizabeth Hoffman, PhD
Legislative and Federal Affairs Officer
email
Anne Bettesworth
Science Policy Associate
email
Kirk Waldroff
Science Website Manager
email
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