NHC UPDATE
Supporting NIH -- Appropriations and a Collaborative Database -June 2009
The NHC continues to work as a steering committee member of United for Medical Research (UMR), a new coalition designed to represent the broadest possible set of interests, including the patient community, research groups, the biotech and pharmaceutical community, and associations such as The Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research. UMR works alongside other organizations such as the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and Research!America.
The Coalition serves as a repository of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding information and provides a central organizing force for advocacy efforts concerning appropriations legislation affecting the NIH. It will design and develop an ongoing, comprehensive strategy to increase funding for NIH. UMR has hired the Glover Park Group, a public relations and communications organization, and is currently working with the firm to develop a multi-year plan that will establish the health community’s core long-term message in support of NIH funding. The plan will be publicly unveiled later this year.
The NHC has signed onto several letters of support for increased health appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010, including additional funds for NIH, Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration.
At present, Congress plans to move all of the appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30. While the budget legislation has been signed into law, no appropriations bills have been voted on in the full committees in either the House or the Senate.
The NHC also is partnering with the NIH Office of Extramural Programs in developing a database that would make information on unfunded but worthwhile NIH research proposals available to the NHC’s members and other potential funders of health research.
The NHC has begun working with an experienced IT firm, Humanitas, Inc., to develop the NHC-branded website for this database project. A timeline has been created and the database is being designed. The database will be built over the next six months, and Humanitas will begin testing the site with a select group of scientific officers from NHC member organizations in October 2009.
Once testing is complete, NIH will notify all non-funded applicants deemed significant and of scientific and technical merit of the availability of the database. In addition, the NHC will promote the database to its members and the larger research community. The plan is to fully launch the database in January 2010.
The collaborative research database program was sponsored by Pfizer Inc and the National Institutes of Health.
