Public Affairs

As originally printed in The Physiologist, 
April 2001, Volume 44, Number 2 
Page 90

NIH Reconsiders Grant Review Procedures
FASEB Recommends $23.6 Billion for NIH

NIH Reconsiders Grant Review Procedures

    The NIH has been asked to consider the practical impact of two initiatives intended to reduce the time and paperwork involved in submitting and reviewing grants. In the near term, however, only minor changes in modular grants submissions and “streamlined” grant review are expected.
    Peer review panels want more budget information on the modular grant applications, according to discussions that took place at two January advisory group meetings. Responding to these concerns at the January 22-23 Center for Scientific Review (CSR) Advisory Committee meeting, Acting NIH Director Ruth Kirschstein defended the modular grant concept. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that it might need “some fine-tuning around the edges” and promised to ask the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director to give the concept further consideration. Speaking the following week at the January 29-30 joint meeting of peer review and regulatory burden oversight groups, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Wendy Baldwin confirmed that the only change for now would be a modification in the modular grant application.
    The modular grant approach was announced in December 1998 and was first put into place for applications submitted after June 1, 1999. Modular grant applications were intended to reduce the paperwork burden of submitting a grant and to expedite the approval process. Investigators were allowed to request funds in modules of $25,000 up to a maximum of $250,000 by submitting an abbreviated application form. The purpose was to enable peer review groups to focus on the innovativeness and potential scientific impact of the proposal rather than the specifics of its budget.
    However, study section members have since complained that the abbreviated modular grant application form fails to provide the information they need to assess proposals. Reviewers want more information about other sources of support provided to applicants’ labs. 
    Baldwin told the joint meeting of the Peer Review and Regulatory Burden Oversight Groups that NIH plans to modify the modular grant application by asking that information about ongoing and recently completed projects be appended to the two-page biographical sketch, rather than being incorporated into it. More far-reaching changes will not be considered until the June meeting of the Advisory Committee to the Director, Kirschstein told the same group. 
    Baldwin underscored her intention to give the modular grant concept additional time. Although the modular grant procedure took effect in June 1999, only about a year’s worth of such grants have gone through the submission and review process. “We want to evaluate the mechanism” of modular grants, Baldwin said, “not the process of people learning about the mechanism, which is what we are in the midst of now.”
    The earlier meeting of the CSR Advisory Committee was also a forum for concerns about “streamlining” grant applications, a process formerly referred to as triage. Streamlining was intended to reduce the amount of time study sections spend on grants considered least likely to be funded. Concerns raised included the differences in practices among study; the lack of feedback to applicants whose grants are streamlined; and whether novel ideas fail to receive appropriate consideration because they are the vulnerable to streamlining. CSR Director Ellie Ehrenfeld said that she plans to have some study sections try out ways to make certain that streamlined grants receive appropriate attention. Elements suggested included making sure that study sessions at least have brief discussions of streamlined applications and asking the prime reviewers to provide more informative comments. Reviewers may be asked to provide an explanation if their assessments of the application are markedly different. In addition, Scientific Review Administrators will be asked to put more information in the summary statement that goes back to the applicant about why the grant was given only a streamlined review. 

As originally printed in The Physiologist, 
April 2001, Volume 44, Number 2 
Page 91

FASEB Recommends $23.6 Billion for NIH

    The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has recommended that the NIH be provided with $23.7 billion in FY 2002. This would keep the nation’s premier public source of biomedical research funding on a five-year path to doubling its budget. The NIH’s FY 2001 appropriation is $20.313 billion.
    The NIH recommendation was the centerpiece of FASEB’s annual funding recommendations to Congress. A committee of nearly 40 scientists representing FASEB’s member societies developed the recommendations at a consensus conference late last year. Their report, which was entitled Federal Funding for Biomedical and Related Life Sciences Research, FY 2002, was released on January 24. In developing their recommendations, the group reviewed life sciences research portfolios at the NIH, National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Veterans Affairs, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and other agencies. 
    The FASEB consensus conference recommended a 15 percent increase for the NSF to bring its budget to $5.1 billion. The conferees also recommended a $44 million increase in VA medical research and a $50 million increase for investigator-initiated life sciences research within NASA’s newly created Biology Research Enterprise.
    The conferees recommended “an increase in the budget directed towards supporting investigator-initiated grants, so as to fund more high-quality proposals.” At the same time, FASEB recommended that the NIH “implement new and strengthen existing opportunities for funding of new investigators.” It also recommended “a substantial increase in the base salaries of NRSA-funded post-doctoral fellows and benefits comparable to those received by permanent employees” because “the low level of compensation for post-doctoral fellows constitutes a crisis in biomedical research as we are not able to attract the best and brightest young minds into careers in life-sciences research.” 
    FASEB further recommended that adjustments in research overhead reimbursements be considered as a solution to the “growing administrative costs associated with increased regulation.” Regulations covering topics ranging from human subjects protection to animal care hazardous and from waste disposal to cost accounting standards and the responsible conduct of research “continue to proliferate, along with the attendant cost and complexity of complying with them,” the report said. “It has also become increasingly apparent that new regulations are being promulgated with little, if any, attention to their costs or any analysis of their benefit.” FASEB suggested that regulatory compliance costs should be fully funded by the sponsoring agency and recommended that there be a new, uncapped, category of indirect costs, dedicated to compliance activities. This would “require federal agencies to shoulder the compliance costs associated with new regulations and assess the projected benefits and costs of newly proposed regulations.” 

[Table of Contents] [John Hall, 74th President of APS] [APS News] [Membership] [Positions Available] [Books Received] [People & Places] [News From Senior Physiologists] [Scientific Meetings and Congresses] [APS Membership Application]