Evaluation of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs Review Process (2016) / Chapter Skim
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7 Coordination of Research Priorities
7 Coordination of Research Priorities
Pages 99-114
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From page 99... ...
However, the amount of money going to such research is finite, necessitating the judicious use of the available funds to support health research. Coordinating research priorities and funding among federal and nongovernmental agencies, including international organizations, can serve several purposes in addressing this issue.
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From page 100... ...
. There are many other philanthropic and nongovernmental organizations that fund research on the same health conditions that CDMRP funds, such as cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, neurofibromatosis, muscular dys 1 This number does not include $207 million for Restore Core Research Funding Reduction.
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From page 101... ...
The comparison was conducted using information available on the NIH and VA websites and the expertise and familiarity of the committee members with the organizations. The sections below summarize how NIH, VA, CDMRP, and selected other research funding organizations establish research priorities and their attempts to avoid funding duplicative research for health conditions in the CDMRP portfolio.
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From page 102... ...
National Institutes of Health NIH consists of 27 individual institutes and centers that conduct and/or fund medical research on a wide variety of human health conditions; the research ranges from basic biologic research to preventive medicine, applied medical advances, and public health. Although some research is conducted in-house by NIH researchers and clinicians, NIH's focus is providing extramural funding to support researchers at academic institutions, health care industries, and biotechnology groups that are exploring scientific frontiers.
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From page 103... ...
Stakeholders that may help the institutes and centers establish research priorities include the scientific community, both individual researchers and professional societies; patient organizations and voluntary health associations; Congress and the administration; the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director; NIH staff; and the general public. Together these scientists and stakeholders strengthen the research priority setting process for each institute or center.
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From page 104... ...
, which oversees four service areas: biomedical, health services, clinical science, and rehabilitation. In addition to taking guidance from the strategic plan, ORD continuously receives input from Congress and veteran service organizations that may advocate for more research on specific health conditions, such as Gulf War illness, spinal cord injury, and prosthetics.
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From page 105... ...
VA and NIH (along with DoD) co-sponsor conferences on various research topics such as the Second Annual Trauma Spectrum Disorders Conference: A Scientific Conference on the Impact of Military Service on Families and Caregivers, and may also issue joint requests for applications for health conditions of mutual interest, including PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and substance abuse.
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From page 106... ...
As noted by a 2014 Institute of Medicine report on PTSD, "DoD and VA are funding broad PTSD research portfolios and are working collaboratively with the National Institutes of Health and other organizations to fill research gaps, for example, developing the joint National Research Action Plan for Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families for improving access to mental health services" (IOM, 2014, p.
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From page 107... ...
For example, the Gulf War Illness Research Program invites the senior program manager of the Gulf War illnesses portfolio at VA to give a briefing at its vision setting meeting; however, CDMRP reports that this participant does not sit on the programmatic panel (Salzer, 2016b)
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From page 108... ...
. One exception to this is the Breast Cancer Research Program, which in 2013 developed a strategy and landscape document to spell out what the programmatic panel believed to be the overarching challenges in breast cancer and the funding opportunities that the panel hoped would move the science forward.
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From page 109... ...
The committee finds that the participation of CDMRP program managers in research reviews at nongovernmental organizations, if appropriate, might strengthen the CDMRP knowledge base in terms of what organizations are funding research for the health conditions of concern as well as specifics on current or anticipated research activities.
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From page 110... ...
The committee finds that many federal agencies already have formal mechanisms in place to reduce redundancies in the research they fund. For example, the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee, which is composed of representatives from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DoD, FDA, NIH, and VA, began its work with an analysis of each participant's research portfolio in order to determine potential redundancies and collaborative opportunities across the agencies.
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From page 111... ...
NIH, DOD, and VA program managers -- officials who typically manage agen cy research portfolios and may provide input to senior agency officials responsible for making funding decisions -- told GAO that, when review ing health research applications, they typically search publicly available databases for potentially duplicative research projects funded by other federal agencies.
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From page 112... ...
Department of Veterans Affairs VA recently started using eRA Commons, an NIH-sponsored electronic grants management system used to post and exchange grant-related information between the agency and the research community. In addition, VA ORD-funded projects are included in the public NIH RePORTER database (Katz, 2012)
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From page 113... ...
. Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs The Procedures to Avoid Research Duplication document on the CDMRP website informs applicants, awardees, other funding agencies, and the public of how CDMRP identifies and avoids funding duplication.
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From page 114... ...
, NIH's eRA Commons system, NIH RePORTER, International Cancer Research Partnership, the Federal RePORTER, and other program-specific sites, CDMRP science officers try to determine whether the application has potential research overlaps with other federal or nonfederal agencies (CDMRP, 2016h)
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