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NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation (2004)

Chapter: 2 Current Use of Center Awards

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Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

2
Current Use of Center Awards

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long tracked its budget by “mechanism,” one of which is research centers. Other mechanisms include research project grants (RPGs), other research grants, research and development (R&D) contracts, research training, and intramural research. Three of the budget mechanisms—RPGs, research centers, and other research grants—account for two-thirds of NIH’s total budget. Table 2-1 is a simplified version of the mechanism table submitted with NIH’s fiscal year (FY) 2003 budget request.

As a first approximation of the use of centers by NIH, administrative data on the numbers and amounts of research center awards reported by NIH are analyzed in the first section of this chapter. These data are based on the coding system NIH uses to keep track of extramural awards, in which certain grants and cooperative agreements are coded as center awards. A later section of the chapter discusses the fact that NIH’s coding of center grants leaves out a relatively small but growing, and perhaps important, set of awards that appear to support centers but are not coded as center awards in NIH’s budget and extramural award statistics.

OVERALL NUMBER, COST, AND LOCATION OF NIH CENTER AWARDS

In February 2003, when NIH submitted its FY2004 budget request to Congress, it estimated that it would fund 1,209 research center awards in FY2003 at a cost of $2.4 billion per year. The actual number of centers is

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

somewhat smaller than the number of awards, because the same site may receive multiple awards and competitive supplements. NIH does not track the number of centers, but the committee estimates that the unduplicated number of entities with center awards is approximately 1,050 after supplements and multiple awards are accounted for.

Figure 2-1 graphically displays the number of center grants awarded in each state in FY2002. There were center grants in every state. California, with 179, was the state holding the most center grants in FY2002, followed by Massachusetts with 97. The median number of center awards among the states was 16. This distribution is generally in line with the overall distribution of NIH extramural awards of all kinds.

Funding for center grants has generally increased in line with the overall NIH budget in recent years, constituting between 8 percent and 9 percent of the total NIH budget during the 1992 to 2003 period (Figure 2-2). In FY2002 the average center grant was $1.9 million a year. The range spanned three orders of magnitude however, from $55 thousand to $56 million, and the median annual center grant amount was only $1.3 million.

The FY2004 budget request sought an increase of $167 million to fund 1,237 center grants in FY2004 (see Table 2-1). If the proposed budget

FIGURE 2-1 Distribution of research center awards by state, FY2002.

SOURCE: Based on data provided by NIH Office of Extramural Research, April 16, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

FIGURE 2-2 Center and research project grant (RPG) funding as percentage of NIH budget, FY1992-FY2004.

SOURCE: NIH mechanism table in FY2004 Congressional Justification Budget (U.S. DHHS, 2003).

increase is approved by Congress, center awards would constitute 9.3 percent of the FY2004 NIH budget, compared with 9.0 percent in 2000 and 8.9 percent in 2001.

The increase in the funding of center awards since FY1992 has been approximately the same as the increase in funding for RPGs and for all research grants during the same period. There has been more of a change in the size of center grants because the number of center awards has not grown as fast as the funding. Assuming the FY2004 budget is approved, the number of center awards will have increased by 43 percent since FY1992 (from 868 to 1,237) while funding increased by 133 percent in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms. In 2004 dollars, the mean center grant was $1.3 million in FY1992 and will be $2.1 million, or 64 percent larger, in FY2004.

TRENDS BY INSTITUTE

The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), perhaps a special case because of its mission to provide research resources, funded the most center awards in FY2001, 313 (approximately 25 percent of the total). The National Cancer Institute (NCI) led the remaining institutes, with 140 center awards, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) came in third, with 81 (Table 2-2). The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded 33, the median number of center awards among the institutes.

From FY1992 to FY2001 the biggest growth in number of center

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

TABLE 2-1 NIH Budget by Mechanism (in millions of current dollars)

 

FY2002 (Actual)

FY2003 (Estimated)

FY2004 (Requested)

Mechanism

Number of Awards

Amount of Funding

Number of Awards

Amount of Funding

Number of Awards

Amount of Funding

Research Project Grants

36,231

13,017.0

38,309

14,298.1

39,520

15,203.8

Research Centers

1,137

2,116.9

1,209

2,422.4

1,237

2,589.0

Other Research Grants

5,915

1,446.1

6,213

1,608.9

6,348

1,662.2

Subtotal, Research Grants

43,283

16,580.0

45,731

18,329.4

47,105

19,455.0

Training Awards

 

653.3

 

693.2

 

715.5

R&D Contracts

1,999

1,797.0

2,397

2,430.4

2,438

2,779.0

Intramural Research

 

2,234.0

 

2,548.8

 

2,629.8

Research Mgt. & Support

 

785.9

 

920.1

 

968.8

Cancer Prevention & Control

 

486.6

 

539.8

 

551.8

Extramural Construction

 

117.6

 

457.0

 

0

National Library of Medicine

 

274.3

 

305.9

 

316.0

Office of the Director

 

253.5

 

274.0

 

318.0

NIH Buildings and Facilities

 

295.9

 

769.1

 

80.0

TOTAL

 

23,478.1

 

27,267.6

 

27,814.0

 

SOURCE: The data on which this table is based come from NIH’s FY2004 Congressional Justification Budget (U.S. DHHS, 2003). The key table is posted on the NIH website at http://www.nih.gov/news/budgetfy2004/fy2004presidentsbudget.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

TABLE 2-2 Number of Center Awards by Institute, FY1992-FY2001

 

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

Percent change, 1992-2001

NIAAA

13

14

13

15

16

15

14

17

15

15

15.4

NIA

51

55

63

66

60

72

66

61

65

66

29.4

NIAID

27

10

14

14

14

14

22

14

17

19

−29.6

NIAMS

25

26

31

31

29

26

27

37

29

37

48.0

NCCAM

 

10

16

14

NA

NCI

87

101

157

78

68

68

64

94

94

140

60.9

NIDA

25

23

34

36

30

30

32

33

34

33

32.0

NIDCD

17

16

15

16

16

18

17

17

17

19

11.8

NIDR

28

28

29

27

32

48

21

19

15

13

−53.6

NIDDK

48

61

59

59

59

57

58

65

68

69

43.8

NIEHS

18

19

22

23

24

22

25

27

27

26

44.4

NEI

29

29

30

30

31

32

33

34

37

39

34.5

NIGMS

11

10

8

10

10

9

7

9

17

26

136.4

NICHD

77

78

78

68

69

70

75

76

73

63

−18.2

NHGRI

15

14

12

12

14

16

13

20

21

26

73.3

NHLBI

65

68

68

75

78

77

82

82

81

81

24.6

NIMH

53

56

60

57

55

55

54

57

57

52

−1.9

NINR

7

7

7

6

6

7

7

9

10

19

171.4

NINDS

42

46

44

43

39

38

38

46

48

50

19.0

NCRR

230

238

241

267

278

265

257

262

283

313

36.1

All

868

899

985

933

928

939

912

989

1024

1120

29.0

All except NCRR

638

661

744

666

650

674

655

727

741

807

26.5

 

SOURCE: Unpublished table of Information for Management, Planning, Analysis, and Coordination (IMPAC) data provided by NIH Office of Extramural Research, October 29, 2002.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

awards was at NCRR (83 more centers), NCI (53 more), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) (21 more), and NHLBI (15 more), which together accounted for two-thirds of the net gain of 253 centers during the period. Although NCRR’s total increased by 83 (most of them developmental grants for the Institutional Development Award [IdeA] program, discussed below), the base was large, and so the percentage increase was a modest 36 percent. The National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) had the biggest percentage gain in number of centers (171 percent), followed by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) (136 percent) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (73 percent).

The pattern of funding was similar to that of the number of center awards (Table 2-3). NCI spent the most on centers in 2001, but NHGRI spent the second largest amount, followed by NHLBI. From 1992 to 2001, NIGMS increased its funding of centers the most, by 936 percent in real terms. NHGRI was second at 587 percent, followed by NINR at 212 percent (the mean was 74 percent, the median 39 percent, excluding NCRR). In absolute terms, NHGRI had the largest gain from 1992 to 2001, $211 million, followed by NCI and NIGMS. Those three institutes accounted for 75 percent of the net increase in funding over the period.

The relationship of the centers to their institutes is another matter, at least as measured by their share of the budget. NCI spends the most of any institute on centers, but centers still account for only 6.9 percent of NCI’s overall budget (Figure 2-3). Only four institutes expended more than 10

FIGURE 2-3 Center funding as a percentage of the institute’s budget, FY2002.

SOURCE: Institute mechanism tables in the FY2004 Congressional Justification Budget (U.S. DHHS, 2003).

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

TABLE 2-3 Funding of Center Awards, by Institute, FY1992-FY2001 (in millions of dollars)

Institute

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

NIAAA

$16.8

$17.3

$18.8

$19.9

$21.1

$21.9

$22.3

NIA

$45.3

$51.5

$55.4

$58.3

$58.6

$61.7

$64.9

NIAID

$14.8

$7.7

$9.6

$9.8

$10.4

$10.3

$14.6

NIAMS

$22.5

$23.6

$25.8

$26.1

$25.2

$24.8

$27.5

NCCAM

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

$0.0

NCI

$145.1

$145.0

$158.7

$155.7

$162.3

$159.9

$163.5

NIDA

$24.1

$26.6

$39.0

$41.4

$41.1

$42.1

$43.0

NIDCD

$16.3

$17.1

$16.7

$16.3

$16.6

$18.0

$18.6

NIDR

$18.5

$18.1

$19.7

$21.5

$22.9

$25.7

$23.2

NIDDK

$40.6

$46.7

$51.4

$52.9

$52.7

$54.5

$56.9

NIEHS

$16.9

$18.1

$20.6

$21.4

$22.1

$23.6

$23.3

NEI

$7.6

$7.6

$8.1

$8.3

$9.0

$9.8

$11.2

NIGMS

$7.4

$7.8

$7.0

$8.3

$9.0

$8.9

$6.7

NICHD

$49.9

$49.0

$48.5

$47.6

$46.8

$51.4

$55.7

NHGRI

$29.4

$31.4

$33.0

$38.0

$42.7

$53.8

$74.2

NHLBI

$96.5

$96.8

$101.5

$107.0

$108.2

$110.2

$117.2

NIMH

$63.8

$65.3

$69.6

$68.3

$68.9

$72.3

$74.0

NINR

$1.7

$1.8

$1.8

$1.9

$2.1

$2.9

$3.0

NINDS

$31.5

$31.2

$35.5

$39.2

$38.6

$36.6

$40.9

NCRR

$245.9

$247.9

$264.9

$278.6

$291.5

$312.9

$335.3

All

$894.4

$910.6

$985.5

$1,020.7

$1,049.9

$1,101.3

$1,175.8

All except NCRR

$648.5

$662.6

$720.6

$742.1

$758.4

$788.4

$840.6

 

SOURCE: Unpublished table of IMPAC data provided by NIH Office of Extramural Research, October 29, 2002 (the factor used to determine real change was the gross domestic product (GDP) implicit price deflator, from Table 10.1 in OMB, 2003).

percent of their budget on center awards. Both NCRR and NHGRI spent more than half their budgets on center awards.

TRENDS BY ACTIVITY CODE

NIH also uses a set of “activity codes” to track its expenditures that is more detailed than the budget mechanism categories. There are 13 budget mechanisms, but there are several hundred activity codes. The best-known activity code is R01, which denotes the traditional individual investigator-initiated RPG. Other commonly used activity codes are R21 (exploratory/ developmental grants), R03 (small research grants), U01 (research project cooperative agreements), K01 (research scientist development awards), and P01 (research program projects).

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

 

 

 

Nominal change 1992-2001

Real change 1992-2001

1999

2000

2001

Amt.

Percent

Amt.

Percent

$24.0

$24.2

$25.0

$8.2

48.6

$4.9

24.7

$70.9

$72.3

$75.0

$29.6

65.4

$20.9

38.8

$15.9

$19.4

$22.7

$7.9

53.4

$5.1

28.7

$30.2

$29.1

$32.0

$9.4

41.9

$5.1

19.1

$13.4

$21.7

$20.8

$20.8

NA

$20.8

NA

$206.5

$242.9

$299.9

$154.7

106.6

$126.9

73.3

$45.9

$47.7

$47.0

$22.9

95.4

$18.3

63.9

$19.1

$16.4

$16.0

−$0.3

−2.1

−$3.5

−17.9

$23.8

$24.4

$24.1

$5.6

30.2

$2.0

9.2

$63.7

$67.0

$76.1

$35.6

87.7

$27.8

57.4

$27.6

$29.3

$31.6

$14.7

86.6

$11.4

56.5

$13.0

$14.8

$17.9

$10.2

133.5

$8.7

95.9

$7.4

$49.8

$91.1

$83.7

1135.0

$82.3

936.0

$59.1

$60.7

$60.6

$10.7

21.4

$1.1

1.9

$139.4

$170.1

$240.5

$211.2

719.5

$205.6

587.4

$122.4

$123.8

$126.7

$30.2

31.3

$11.7

10.1

$81.3

$78.5

$75.5

$11.7

18.4

−$0.5

−0.7

$3.0

$4.0

$6.2

$4.5

271.3

$4.2

211.5

$53.7

$58.9

$59.8

$28.4

90.2

$22.3

59.5

$388.9

$435.5

$588.2

$342.3

139.2

$295.0

100.6

$1,408.9

$1,590.6

$1,936.4

$1,042.0

116.5

$870.1

81.6

$1,020.0

$1,155.1

$1,348.3

$699.7

107.9

$575.1

74.4

The activity codes constituting the research center mechanism, and their definitions, are provided in Appendix B. The predominant codes for research center awards are P30 core grants, P50 and U54 specialized centers, and P60 comprehensive centers. Specialized centers were the most numerous in 2001 (383). Core grants were second in number (318), and there were far fewer comprehensive centers (44) (Figure 2-4). Growth rates were similar over the 1992 to 2001 period, with specialized centers constituting about 34 percent of the group in 1992 and 2001, core grant centers about 27 percent and 28 percent, and comprehensives 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

In terms of dollars awarded, specialized centers had the most funding and the fastest growing budgets (Figure 2-5). Their share of the funding for the three main center types grew from 54 percent in 1992 to 64 percent in

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

FIGURE 2-4 Number of specialized, core, and comprehensive center awards, FY1992 and FY2001.

SOURCE: Unpublished table of IMPAC data provided by the NIH Office of Extramural Research, October 29, 2002.

FIGURE 2-5 Funding of specialized, core, and comprehensive center awards, FY1992 and FY2001 (in constant dollars). The factor used to calculate constant dollars is the GDP implicit price deflator, from Table 10.1 in OMB, 2003.

SOURCE: Unpublished table of IMPAC data provided by the NIH Office of Extramural Research, October 29, 2002

2002. The comparable shares for core grant centers were 37 percent and 31 percent, and for comprehensive centers they were 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Among the other types of centers (not shown), one big change was in the number of P20 planning or developmental awards, primarily because of

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

growth in the NCRR IdeA program.1 The number of P20 grants in 2001 was double the number in 1992 (120 compared with 62). Most of the new P20s in 2001 were supported by NCRR and NCI, and most of the increase in funding was by NCRR, because its new P20 grants averaged more than $2.5 million compared with less than $300,000 for new P20 grants awarded by other institutes. This trend will be reinforced by the longer length of IdeA P20s being awarded by NCRR—three to five years instead of the usual one year. However, the funding involved was still relatively small—$135 million in FY2001.

In constant dollars, funding for P50/U54 specialized centers increased by 110 percent from 1992 to 2001, compared with 48 percent and 12 percent for core grant centers and comprehensive centers, respectively. Several factors help explain the large relative increase in funding of specialized centers. NHGRI spending on centers went from $30 million to $240 million, and almost all of it was for specialized centers. NCI launched the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence program (SPOREs) in the early 1990s, which is funded by P50 grants, and NCI spent $100 million on SPOREs in 2001, compared with $16 million in 1992. The two institutes accounted for 57 percent of the net increase in the funding of specialized centers from 1992 to 2001. The increase in funding of specialized centers was apparently determined by NIH, because neither the NHGRI nor NCI SPORE centers were established at the urging of advocacy groups or mandated by Congress.

Given these trends, it is no surprise to find that the average size of awards for specialized centers increased greatly relative to P30 core grants and P60 comprehensive centers (Figure 2-6). In constant dollars, awards for specialized centers were $2.2 million a year on average in 2001, compared with $1.4 million in 1992. The average core grant was almost as big as the average specialized center grant in 1992, at $1.2 million in 2001 dollars, but it only increased to $1.3 million in 2001. The average comprehensive center award hardly grew in real terms either. It was $1.65 million in 1992 and $1.68 million in 2001.

Although not shown here, funding of the Primate Research Centers also increased sharply in real terms from 1992 to 2001, from $3.6 million a year per center, on average, to $7.5 million a year per center in 2001 dollars, but overall funding only went from $50 million to $60 million

1  

The IdeA P20 center program is open to institutions in the 24 states that received less than $70 million from NIH, or had success rates of less than 20 percent for grant applications to NIH, in a recent five-year period. The program funds Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBREs) and Biomedical Research Infrastructure Networks (BRINs) with P20 developmental center grants.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

FIGURE 2-6 Average size of specialized, core, and comprehensive center awards, FY1992 and FY2001 (in constant dollars). The factor used to calculate constant dollars is the GDP implicit price deflator, from Table 10.1 in OMB, 2003.

because the number of centers was consolidated from 14 to 8. P20 grants also increased in size, from $323,700 a year in 1992 to $1.2 million a year in 2001 (259 percent), in 2001 dollars.

SUMMARY OF NIH DATA ON NUMBER AND COST OF CENTER GRANTS

NIH funded 1,120 research center grants in FY2001, at a cost of $1.9 billion. This was about 9 percent of the NIH budget. Most institutes allocated a smaller percentage of their budget to centers (the median was 6.9 percent), while a few, notably NCRR and NHGRI, devoted much more and drove up the mean. After accounting for inflation, funding of centers increased 82 percent from FY1992 to FY2001. Because this was roughly the same rate of increase as in the NIH budget as a whole, the share of NIH funding devoted to center grants did not increase appreciably over that period. If the President’s budget request for FY2004 is enacted, centers will increase their share of the NIH budget slightly, from an estimated 8.9 percent in FY2003 to 9.3 percent.

There have been internal shifts in the center awards category, however, including an expansion of NCRR funding of centers relative to the other institutes (from 28 percent to 36 percent of all center funding from 1992 to 2001), and the emergence of NHGRI as a major supporter of centers. In fact, if NCRR and NHGRI are excluded from the calculation, funding for centers grew by only 37 percent in constant dollars between 1992 and 2001.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

COMPARISON OF CENTER AWARDS TO OTHER FORMS OF RESEARCH FUNDING

NIH uses a number of funding mechanisms to support a variety of research and related activities in the nation’s research institutions as part of its mission to improve health through research on basic processes of health and disease and on ways to turn new knowledge into better treatments and other applications. Approximately 83 percent of the NIH budget is devoted to such extramural research (9 percent supports the intramural research program and the rest funds the National Library of Medicine, program staff in the institutes, Office of the Director, and construction of NIH facilities, activities that are outside the scope of this report).2

The extramural program funds basic and applied biomedical and behavioral research, research training, and career development. These activities are carried out in many ways, most commonly by individual investigators working on specific projects, small groups of investigators with related projects, multidisciplinary centers focused on a particular problem or set of questions, and groups or networks of investigators conducting clinical research according to common protocols. NIH also supports research resources and facilities through national and regional centers.

The funding mechanisms that NIH employs (see Table 2-1) roughly correspond to the main modes of research. RPGs mostly support individual researchers and small research groups. Center awards support interdisciplinary research centers and research resource centers. Other research grants are used for several purposes, with most of the funding going to career development (K-series) grants and cooperative clinical research groups (U10). Training awards go to academic institutions and to individual graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

NIH, with some variation among institutes, awards the largest number of grants (including cooperative agreements) and highest amount of grant funding to individual investigators. The basic individual-investigator grant, the R01, accounted for nearly half (47 percent) of the budget for extramural research in FY2002 (Table 2-4). Program project grants, P01s, which go to small groups of several investigators for projects with the same theme, accounted for 7 percent of extramural funding. U01, U19, and U10 cooperative agreements, commonly used to support clinical trials and clinical research groups and networks spanning a number of medical centers, accounted for 9 percent. Center awards accounted for 11.5 percent of the budget for extramural research. These shares have not changed much since

2  

For the distribution of the NIH budget in FY2003, see http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/ward/trends/distbud02.htm.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

TABLE 2-4 NIH Extramural Research Mechanisms, FY2002

Mechanism

Activity Code

Number of Extramural Awards

Amount of Extramural Funding

Percentage of All Extramural Funding

Research Project Grants

All

34,613

$12,623,765,090

66.2

 

R01

27,568

$8,985,081,987

47.1

 

P01

993

$1,383,021,764

7.3

 

U01, U19

1,271

$1,339,073,659

7.0

 

Other

4,856

$1,017,255,905

4.8

Small Business Programs

All

1,893

$497,433,378

2.6

Centers

All

1,261

$2,198,971,367

11.5

 

P30 Core

317

$438,867,746

2.3

 

P50, P60, U54

472

$1,014,240,236

5.3

 

Research Resource Centers

264

$533,476,278

2.8

 

Other (P20)

208

$212,387,107

1.1

Other Research Grants

All

5,753

$1,510,024,350

7.9

 

Career (K-grants)

3,516

$472,441,223

2.5

 

U10

508

$444,429,728

2.3

 

Other

1,729

$593,153,399

3.1

R&D Contracts

All

1,035

$1,416,940,438

7.4

Research Training

All

2,100

$555,817,043

2.9

Fellowships

All

2,731

$101,505,453

0.5

Other Awards

All

330

$170,007,677

0.9

Total Extramural

 

49,716

$19,074,464,796

100

NOTE: The numbers and amounts of awards in this table differ slightly from those in Table 2-1, because they come from different databases. The data for Table 2-1 come from the NIH Budget Office and are based on budget authority; the data in this table come from the NIH Office of Extramural Programs and are based on obligations. It is not possible to determine the percentage of the NIH budget going to R01s, say, compared with center grants, because the Budget Office data (which include the total amount of NIH funding) do not break out funding by activity code, e.g., P30 or R01, and the Office of Extramural Programs data (which break out funding by activity code) do not provide a comparable figure for the total NIH budget.

SOURCE: grants.nih.gov/grants/award/trends/fund9202.htm (for mechanisms) and grants.nih.gov/grants/award/research/rgmechact9802.htm (for activity codes).

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
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1992, when R01s accounted for 43 percent and centers for 10.7 percent of extramural research funding (NIH, 1995).

Although the amounts of funding going to the various mechanisms can be compared, in practice, centers—and other modes of research supported by NIH—do not operate independently. Typically, the mechanisms are planned and administered as a portfolio of complementary ways to increase knowledge and ways to apply it. This fact is most apparent in the case of P30 core grants. Core grants do not fund research per se, but only provide an organizational setting and technical resources (through core services and facilities) for a group of investigators already funded by other grants. In most cases, centers are not permitted to apply for a center award unless they have a minimum number of funded investigators working on projects related to the center’s focus of research. The intent of such center grants is to increase the productivity of R01 and other NIH-supported research both by providing opportunities for interactions and joint projects among investigators and by expanding their access to research services and tools that individual grants could not afford. NIH supports research as part of some center awards (namely, the P50s, P60s, and U54s), usually because the type of research (e.g., interdisciplinary, translational, and clinical) would not fare well in the RPG review process. But even in that type of research center, center members often have R01 and other grants. Centers are also often a location for training in interdisciplinary or translational research of physicians, postdoctoral students, and graduate students who are supported by other means, such as NIH training grants. The principal investigators of clinical research networks and groups are often members of centers, and the centers are usually part of the infrastructure for clinical trials.

Examination of recent invitations to submit proposals for center support (i.e., Requests for Applications [RFAs] and Program Announcements [PAs] published by NIH between 2001 and 2003) yielded the following synthesis of the major justifications offered for centers or center programs:

  • Centers enable a stable, long-term institutional focus on a complex set of problems that cross disciplinary lines that is not likely to occur through R01s alone, because the multidisciplinary milieu of a center fosters scientific interactions and collaborations that can stimulate scientific creativity and speed new developments in an area of research more effectively than would be possible with individual investigators working in relative isolation.

  • Centers can support translational, clinical, behavioral, and epidemiological research that has not typically fared well in the discovery-oriented system for peer review of investigator-initiated research proposals, thus hastening translation of fundamental knowledge into clinical advances and clinical advances into practice.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×
  • By making expensive resources accessible, centers can enhance the quality, facilitate the productivity, and promote the cost-effectiveness of R01, P01, and other externally supported research projects, while encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration.

  • Some center programs fund pilot research projects, which help investigators develop preliminary data to support innovative R01 applications, or support new investigators until they successfully compete for an R01 grant or other independent support.

  • Designation as an NIH-supported research center confers distinction on the area of research and thus helps attract additional competitive research funding from private as well as public sources, facilitates fund raising, increases the interest and support of medical school leaders and colleagues, and supplies a valuable incentive in recruiting new faculty, staff, and trainees.

  • Located in academic medical centers across the country, centers can be an important mechanism for facilitating the transfer of clinical research results into community practice by developing and then demonstrating the latest techniques. They can also develop and disseminate consistent definitions and standardized research methods, conduct demonstration projects, and conduct community and professional education and outreach.

  • Supporting research centers is a means of building research capacity in institutions and regions that have not competed well for peer-reviewed grants from NIH or other funders of research. Broadening the distribution of research funding across the country is the purpose of a number of center programs, such as NCRR’s Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence and Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network, Specialized Neuroscience Research Programs at Minority Institutions of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and the Cooperative Reproductive Science Research Centers at Minority Institutions of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

  • A network of similar centers can combine their resources to ask questions that no one institution could address alone, and technology is making this easier. The most obvious case is that of large clinical trials, in which such a network can take advantage of a greatly expanded patient pool to conduct the trial faster and more efficiently than would be possible in any single site. Networks of centers are becoming more important in basic research as well, because researchers are trying to understand complex biological systems that require the participation of many kinds of expertise that previously have not interacted.

  • Center awards are a way to build research infrastructure to respond to public health emergencies, as is being done with the rapid imple-

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

mentation of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ (NIAID’s) Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research.

Chapter 5 describes some of the challenges to determining whether these laudatory goals are actually met. In addition, the center mechanism as a research strategy is not without critics, who argue that, as in any complex human endeavor, not all of these goals will be realized in every center. For example, long-term support may actually detract from a productive research program if substantial sums of money are committed to centers that are only moderately productive, money that might otherwise be available to fund traditional R01 grants and other externally conceived research that are peer reviewed individually for merit (NIAMS, 1997). Critics might also point out that, although core grants may enable a center to promote interactions among researchers from diverse disciplines, those researchers must already have individual, and commonly single-discipline, grants of their own, usually from the same institute funding the center, which may inhibit interaction.

A third point offered by critics stems from the initiation of center programs by NIH institutes rather than by the extramural scientific community. That is, the institutes issue an RFA or PA describing in some detail what they expect to see in the proposals for centers that are submitted. Many observers (e.g., Teitelbaum, 2003) attribute the success of NIH over the past four decades to its deliberate policy of relying on the judgment of the scientific community as a whole, through investigator-initiated proposals, to determine the scientific agenda and identify the areas in which progress is most likely. Table 2-1 and Figure 2-2, above, show that NIH continues to rely primarily on investigator-initiated research project grants (of which R01s are a large majority) to take advantage of the expertise and creativity of the nation’s scientific community. Although funding for center awards has been growing steadily over the past decade, as Figure 2-2 shows, the share of the NIH budget devoted to center awards has been stable at between 8 and 9 percent.

Center grants and other institute-initiated programs also differ from most individual-investigator-initiated and program project grants in the way that proposals applications are solicited and evaluated, and that difference also can be a source of friction within the scientific community. NIH sets its research priorities through a complex process that incorporates both scientific opportunity and the health needs of the nation (NIH, 2001; IOM, 1998). To address both opportunity and need, evaluation of individual research proposals is conducted through a two-stage review process. In the first stage, investigator-initiated proposals are reviewed by appropriate panels of outside experts, called study sections, organized by NIH’s Center for

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

Scientific Review (CSR). Study sections are established according to scientific disciplines or current research areas, and their members are recruited by CSR from among the active and productive researchers in the extramural biomedical research community. The objective of this initial peer review is to evaluate and rate the scientific and technical merit of the proposed research. Each proposal is assigned a priority score by the study section, and the scores, together with the written reviews and a summary of the section’s discussion and recommendations, are transmitted to the appropriate institute for funding consideration. A second-stage review then is done by the institute’s national advisory council (also an external group), the focus of which is importance to the institute’s programmatic priorities, which, in turn, reflect the institute’s view of the health needs of the nation, as well as research opportunities, within the institute’s mission. Most applications for funding reviewed by CSR are initiated by the investigators or are responses to broad program announcements. The peer review process is highly competitive, and on average only about 30 percent of investigator-initiated proposals submitted are funded, most of them in strict order of scientific priority score.3

The review process for institute-initiated proposals (i.e., responses to RFAs, PARs, and PASs) is also designed to take into account both health needs and scientific opportunity through a two-step process, but the initial peer review is conducted by an institute-appointed group rather than a CSR study section.4 The institute’s initial review group is charged with considering the institute’s program priorities as well as scientific opportunity and excellence. The RFAs and institute-reviewed PAs also contain requirements for an acceptable proposal that embody the institute’s priorities. In cases in which the award will fund individual research projects as well as infrastructure, reviewers are generally asked to provide not only a recommendation on the proposal as a whole but also on the merit of each proposed project. As a result, the proposal could conceivably be partially funded, without funds for one or more of the proposed research projects. Some skeptics argue that sometimes a research proposal that would not have been funded if reviewed by a CSR study section is nevertheless funded as part of a larger

3  

Each institute has a procedure for funding some applications of high program relevance whose priority scores would otherwise put them below the funding cutoff point.

4  

A PAR is a PA (program announcement) in which the first-stage review is conducted by an institute peer review group rather than a CSR study section. A PAS is the same as a PAR except, like an RFA, a stated amount of funding is set aside. It should also be noted that some well-established center programs (e.g., Cancer Centers and Environmental Health Science Centers) do not employ solicitations. As with investigator-initiated grants, the institute posts a periodic submission date. Unlike with investigator-initiated grants, however, applicants for these center grants must follow rather detailed guidelines published by the institute.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

proposal that includes mostly meritorious activities (NICHD, 1999; NIAMS, 1997). The success rate of proposals in the initial round of funding may be low, for example, when 10-12 applicants vie for, say, three center grants, but subsequent success rates for center applications are usually higher than for individual-investigator renewal applications.

The large size and diverse nature of many centers also make both proposals and performance more difficult to evaluate than individual grants (see Chapter 5), and the prestige that helps attract outside funding and new researchers can make them highly sought-after awards independent of any analysis of whether they are an appropriate tool at that time and place (Korn, 2003).

A further concern raised about centers is that the vertical integration expected to lead to increased interaction among basic, clinical and preventive, behavioral, and population-based research cited above may not always materialize. Evidence for this may be inferred from revisions in established programs directed at increasing this type of activity, e.g., the introduction of SPOREs to supplement NCI’s cancer centers in 1992 and reorientation of NHLBI’s 30-year-old SCOR (Specialized Centers of Research) Program in 2001, symbolized by renaming them SCCORs (Specialized Centers of Clinically Oriented Research).

Similarly, attempts to use a center program to attract new researchers to a disease or field may sometimes have the opposite effect. The few good scientists already working in the field have a strong advantage in the competition for the new centers, resulting in the centers program concentrating resources still further in a small cadre of scientists.5

The merits of these positions, or at least approaches to judging their merit, are examined in more detail in Chapter 5, which deals with how to evaluate center programs. Generally, however, the committee is of the opinion that center programs are a valuable addition to NIH’s array of funding mechanisms and provide an important source of support for clinical research aimed at translating basic science discoveries into useful clinical products and practices.

ALTERNATIVE RESEARCH MODELS

NIH currently employs a number of alternative mechanisms besides centers to foster and support interdisciplinary research, translational research, collaborations among researchers in different places, and research resources. In addition, there are or could be alternatives within the center model itself.

5  

There is a discussion of this issue with reference to the establishment of centers of excellence in autism research in NIH, 1999.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

One alternative is to fund research teams or groups without imposing a center structure. Traditionally, these enterprises have been smaller than centers tend to be, although a recent trend toward large research networks will be discussed below. The program project (P01) grant to support a small group of investigators conducting research with a common theme has a long history preceding centers (in fact, the first grants for centers, in the 1960s, were coded as P02 program projects). P01 funds support shared research facilities and services (cores) as well as the research projects.

More recent alternatives include Investigator-Initiated Interactive Research Project Grants (IRPGs), in which related R01 research project grants are submitted together, and “mini” core grants, in which R24 (or U24) research resource-related grants are used to encourage already-funded investigators to work together on a problem by providing resources not available where investigators are working separately. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), for example, sponsored a PA inviting applications for IRPGs for research integrating the basic behavioral sciences and public mental health.6 NIDDK recently funded R24 “mini” centers, called Digestive Diseases Research Development Centers, for investigators without access to P30 Digestive Disease Research Core Centers.7 NIGMS and NIDDK have issued a PA inviting consortia of funded investigators from different disciplines who want to collaborate on a multidisciplinary research problem to apply for R24 grants. According to the PA, the purpose of the R24 “consortium grant mechanism” is to “allow the participating investigators to (1) attract and coordinate expertise in different disciplines and approaches and (2) facilitate access to specialized resources and equipment.”8 The National Eye Institute (NEI), NCI, and NICHD are other institutes using R24 grants in this way.9

Another approach is to use cooperative agreements, such as the U01, U10, or U19, to facilitate collaboration among a number of individual investigators or small research groups in different locations and also provide for a steering committee to set overall priorities for all participants. An example is NIDDK’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Genetics Research Consortium, which consists of six “IBD genetics research centers” and a data coordinating center supported with U01 cooperative agreements.10

Some institutes promote interdisciplinary collaboration by providing supplements to RPGs to support such activities. The Division of Cancer

6  

“Integrating the Basic Behavioral Sciences and Public Mental Health,” PA-00-078.

7  

RFA-DK-01-030.

8  

“Integrative and Collaborative Approaches to Research,” PA-03-127.

9  

“Vision Research Infrastructure Development Grants,” PAR-02-050; “Shared Resources for Scientists Not at NCI Funded Cancer Centers,” RFA-CA-01-020.

10  

RFA-DK-02-011.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

Biology at NCI, for example, does this through a program called Activities to Promote Research Collaborations.11 Seven NIH institutes and two National Science Foundation divisions have sponsored a PA inviting applications for R01 grants to develop and support tools for collaborations that involve data sharing.12

In some types of clinical research (e.g., clinical trials), coordinated activities by multiple clinical centers are needed, rather than direct interactions between basic researchers and clinical investigators for translational research purposes. In these cases, NIH often uses cooperative agreements (e.g., U10, U01, and U19 awards) or contracts. NHLBI supports a series of clinical research networks to conduct clinical trials in, for example, resuscitation from cardiopulmonary arrest (U01), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (U10), and asthma (U10).13 In FY2002, U-series awards accounted for more than 9 percent of the NIH budget ($1.8 billion), compared with the $1.7 billion spent on center awards (not counting NCRR funding of research resource centers).

In recent years, it has become possible to conduct large-scale biomedical research efforts in certain areas of science, for example, genomics and proteomics, where complex problems must be tackled with large interdisciplinary teams or large-scale facilities and resources are needed, or both. One example of interactive research networks or teams is NIGMS’s Large-Scale Collaborative Project Award, known as the “glue grant” program. This program is supporting large consortia of researchers working on complex biological phenomena such as cell signaling, cell migration, and the body’s response to trauma and burn injuries. Although glue grant consortia are supported with U54 center grants, the local organizational entities are not really centers in the traditional sense. NCI is using U54 center grants to develop several networks of translational research teams, one to focus on molecular targets for cancer drug development, another on optical imaging.

In other cases, institutes are using a combination of grants to create an integrated research initiative. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), for example, is creating consortia addressing various problems, for example, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and alcoholism. The consortia consist of a set of integrated research projects, each funded by a U01 cooperative agreement; several core facilities, each funded by a U24 research resource-related cooperative agreement; and a consortium

11  

NOT-CA-03-035.

12  

PAR-03-134.

13  

“Clinical Research Consortium to Improve Resuscitation Outcomes,” RFA-HL-04-001; “COPD Clinical Research Network,” RFA-HL-03-002; “Asthma Clinical Research Network,” RFA-HL-02-029.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

coordinator.14 NCI’s Early Detection Research Network consists of 18 biomarker development laboratories, 3 biomarker reference laboratories, 9 clinical epidemiology and validation centers, and a data management and coordinating center, each funded with a U01 or R24 award and all governed by a steering committee consisting of the Principal Investigators and a representative of NCI.15

It should also be noted that the center model itself has not been static. It has been evolving from the concept of a problem-focused organizational structure that cuts across disciplinary department lines within a research institution to a concept of centers as a network involved in collaborative as well as center-specific research. The concept is that if the centers are networked to share information and conduct collaborative studies, they are more effective than when each center works on its own. The recent autism, muscular dystrophy, and rare diseases center programs have been structured so that, in addition to traditional within-center interdisciplinary and translational research activities, there is between-center collaboration coordinated by an overall steering committee. In some cases, the institute provides a separate research fund for multicenter collaborative research.

Another alternative has been to use existing centers rather than create new ones for a specific disease or other problem. Some emerging research opportunities or health emergencies are met by providing supplements to centers. In another case, centers for research on fragile X syndrome, the centers are being located at centers for research on mental retardation and will become, in effect, a component of the existing centers. These alternatives have the virtue of speed and ease of implementation and take advantage of the technical and administrative experience of mature research institutions.

NIH has also been experimenting with Web-based virtual laboratories, also called “collaboratories.” NCRR has funded seven collaboratories through supplemental awards to some of its existing P41 biotechnology resource centers (NCRR, 2000, 2002). One of these, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, is developing the network, data-storage, and software tools needed for geographically separated investigators conducting research involving neuroimaging to share and use large sets of data on brain images from the molecular scale to the whole brain.16

The committee discussed some additional alternatives. One would be to allow individual investigators to apply for support of center projects

14  

“Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders,” RFA-AA-03-002; “Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism,” RFA-AA-01-002.

15  

See http://www.cancer.gov/edrn.

16  

http://birn.ncrr.nih.gov/birn/birn.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

whose form and structure are designed by the applicant rather than specified in a PA, RFA, or institute guidelines. This could lead to centers organized differently or addressing problems differently (or different types of problems) than those solicited by NIH. It might encourage collaborative translation, clinical, and population projects that investigators believe are too risky or novel to submit to study sections more oriented toward basic science projects. Another would be to broaden initiatives to reduce health disparities to encourage partnerships between centers in research-intensive institutions and rural health facilities. NIAID’s Alzheimer’s Disease Centers, for example, are affiliated with satellite diagnostic and treatment clinics that recruit minority, rural, and other underserved patients to increase the diversity of study volunteers.

PROBLEMS WITH THE DATA ON CENTERS

The data reported in the previous sections probably include most centers funded by NIH and are therefore useful for aggregate analysis of trends, but there are some problems:

1. Not all centers are funded by center awards. A perusal of the institute websites, RFAs, and PAs issued by the institutes, and the Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects (CRISP), NIH’s database of funded awards, revealed a number of projects called centers by NIH, but funded by awards not classified and counted as center grants. For example, during calendar year 2002, NIH issued 48 RFAs and PAs with the word “center” in the title. Of the 50 grant types offered in these RFAs and PAs,17 11 (22 percent) were coded as RPGs or other research grants rather than as center grants. Examples include NHLBI’s Centers for Reducing Asthma Disparities, which are being funded through U01 cooperative research project agreements; NIAID’s Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence, funded through U19 cooperative research program agreements; NIAID’s Asthma and Allergic Diseases Research Centers, funded by P01 program project grants; and NICHD’s Population Research Centers, which are being switched from P30 core grant support to R24 resource-related research project grants. NIAID’s Biodefense Proteomics Centers will be funded by contracts. These anomalies may reflect in part the fact that early in the formulation of the NIH budget, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health and Human Services provide NIH with guidance on the amount of funding NIH should request. That guidance is specified

17  

Several of the RFAs offered several types of awards, for example, a P50 center grant and a P20 planning grant.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

by mechanism. This constrains the “centers line” in the budget, and new center initiatives might therefore be funded through other mechanisms, for example, U19 or P01 awards in the RPG line or U10 awards in the other research line.

2. Not all entities supported by center awards are called centers although they function as centers. NCI, for example, supports Interdisciplinary Research Teams for Molecular Target Assessment to develop methods for preclinical and clinical research to use in assessing the effects of interventions directed at specific molecular targets. They are funded by U54 specialized center cooperative agreements. NCI also has P50 centers called SPOREs. The NIH initiative in biomedical computing is National Programs of Excellence in Biomedical Computing (NPEBC). Although called programs, NPEBCs will function like centers and be supported by U54 center grants. “NPEBC will provide a formal framework through which scientific synergy can occur on a stable and continuing basis, and will provide: (a) an organizational structure specifically designed to facilitate intellectual cross-fertilization between seemingly disparate groups of investigators; (b) core facilities to support research activities; (c) developmental funds for feasibility testing of new projects; (d) career development opportunities for new and established investigators; and (e) a broad range of educational activities, from formal undergraduate and graduate programs to courses and seminars for students and researchers, visiting scientists program or other types of training, cross-training, or educational approaches.”18

3. A number of NIH programs without “centers” in their titles and not using awards with research center activity codes share some of the features of many programs that have centers in their titles and employ awards with research center activity codes. These programs fund research entities referred to by names such as “programs,” “networks,” “consortia,” “research units,” or “clinical centers.” In many cases, these entities serve primarily as nodes in a network of sites intended to facilitate clinical trials by increasing the pool of potential patient-subjects. Funding can be by N01 R&D contracts, P01 program project grants, U01 cooperative research project agreements, U10 cooperative clinical research agreements, or U24 cooperative resource-related research project agreements; local research as well as participation in multisite projects is encouraged and sometimes included in the requirements for funding; and training clinicians and junior investigators is sometimes specified. Examples include NHLBI’s Programs of Excellence in Gene Therapy (U01), NIAID’s Acute Infection and Early Disease Research Network (U01), NIAAA’s Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Consortium (U01 and U24), NIMH’s Re-

18  

PAR-00-102.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

search Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology (N01), NIAID Tropical Disease Research Units (P01), and NICHD’s Cooperative Multicenter Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network (U10).

4. Alternative means are used to achieve some of the goals of center grants. NIH can and often does fund coordinated multi-investigator research through other types of support, although these are usually smaller scale and not necessarily interdisciplinary. These projects are not called centers and are usually not solicited by an RFA, as most center grants are. Alternatives to centers for supporting team research, including interdisciplinary and translational research, include P01 program project grants (intended to support multiple investigators conducting research with a common theme); R24 infrastructure development grants (used like small core grants); U01, U09, and U19 collaborative research projects; and IRPGs (coordinated submission of related R01 and R29 applications).

Several institutes (e.g., NIAID and NINDS) publish guidelines for multiproject applications, including P01s, P50s, and U19s, regarding them all as efforts with a central focus or theme in which collaboration and interaction among investigators are expected to result in a greater contribution to the program goals than if each investigator pursued his or her project separately.

5. Some large-scale research questions are being investigated through multi-institutional networks or consortia rather than centers. In recognition of the impact of networking on certain kinds of complex research questions that cannot be addressed by a single center, some recent center programs (e.g., Autism Research Centers of Excellence) are setting aside funds from the center awards to support collaborative activities among the centers. In addition, new organizational models for conducting coordinated research by large interdisciplinary teams are emerging. One example is NIGMS’s glue grant program, which is supporting consortia investigating complex problems that benefit from the interaction among and coordinated effort of many kinds of scientists and types of research. NIGMS calls it “the next evolutionary stage of integrative biomedical science.” The glue grant is used to fund the interactions among the numerous and far-flung researchers involved in an area of research such as cellular signaling and cell migration.19 The glue grant program uses a center award—the U54 cooperative agreement—after an initial organizational phase using an RPG award—the U24 planning grant. Other examples are the cross-disciplinary networks that NINDS is forming of scientists interested in studying the neural mecha-

19  

The Alliance for Cellular Signaling (http://afcs.swmed.edu/), for example, involves some 50 researchers in 20 academic institutions and several biotechnology companies, although the Alliance will have specially designed laboratory facilities at a half-dozen institutions (http://www.nigms.nih.gov/news/releases/gluegrant_release.html).

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
×

nisms of cognition and other complex behaviors. These Multimodal Integration Research Networks in Cognitive Neuroscience are funded by R01 grants. NIAAA has funded several interdisciplinary consortia of researchers from multiple sites as part of its Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism. The consortia are supported by a coordinated set of U01 cooperative agreements and distributed core facilities funded by U24s, led by a consortium coordinator and steering committee representing the principle investigators and NIAAA staff.

One solution to the problems of identifying and tracking center programs is to look at what they are intended to do, regardless of what they are called or the funding mechanism used. That is, one can identify the distinctive attributes of existing center grants and attempt to sort and track them on that basis.

The NIH Glossary of Terms provides the following definition:20

Center grants are awarded to institutions on behalf of program directors and groups of collaborating investigators. They provide support for long-term multidisciplinary programs of research and development.

A more detailed definition is that contained in the NIH document called National Institutes of Health FY2001 Investments:21

Research Center grants are awarded to extramural research institutions to provide support for long-term multidisciplinary programs of medical research. They also support the development of research resources, aim to integrate basic research with applied research and transfer activities, and promote research in areas of clinical applications with an emphasis on intervention, including prototype development and refinement of products, techniques, processes, methods, and practices.

The first of these two definitions is not specific enough to be useful in the present context. The second is specific enough to reveal that center grants are intended to support several different types of activities. An analysis of RFAs and PAs issued over the past few years confirmed that centers and center programs vary greatly in size, purpose, and organization, reflecting in part differences among research areas, for example, in the state of the knowledge, the amount of infrastructure needed for cutting-edge research, and the nature and burden of the health problem addressed. However, the committee believes that center awards fall into three broad categories, based on the kind of activity they support.

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
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  1. Center Infrastructure awards, or “core” grants, fund a center’s director and core services, administrative and technical, to support a group of investigators whose research is funded by independently obtained research grants. The primary goal of center infrastructure awards is to facilitate the conduct of research on a particular disease or scientific issue by enabling interactions and collaborations among investigators and by eliminating duplication and increasing efficiency in the provision of common and often expensive research tools and services. P30 core grants are the prototype, although some center programs use other types of awards to support center infrastructure (e.g., R24 resource-related research project grants).

  2. Research Center awards fund not only core services but research projects as well. In some cases, they may also support additional activities such as community education, screening and counseling programs, and educating medical and allied health professionals about state-of-the-art diagnostic, prevention, and treatment techniques. Typically designed to encourage multidisciplinary or clinical research not being addressed by investigator-initiated projects, this group of centers includes many of the disease-based centers that Congress has mandated in recent years—e.g., Centers of Excellence for Parkinson’s disease, autism, and muscular dystrophy. P50 and P60 grants and U54 cooperative agreements are the prototypes for this category of awards, but some centers of excellence are funded with P30 core grants. Noncenter awards are also employed in some center programs—e.g., Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence (supported by U19 cooperative agreements) and Centers of Excellence for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (supported by P01 program project grants).

  3. Research Resource Centers develop and provide research resources and tools to any researcher in the nation. Many of these centers are supported by NCRR (e.g., nonhuman primate centers, mutant mouse and other animal resource centers, and islet cell resource centers), although more institutes are developing such resource centers (e.g., NHLBI’s proteomic centers, NIAAA’s mouse mutagenesis centers, and NIAID’s microbial genome sequencing centers). NCRR awards to resource centers are classified as center awards (e.g., P40, P41, P51, U41, and U42). Resource centers established by other institutes are supported by a variety of noncenter award types, although NHGRI and NIGMS use the P41 biotechnology resource grant.

Owing to the ambiguities of NIH’s award classification described previously, a precise estimate of how many center awards might fall into each of these categories is not possible, but a rough approximation might be:

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
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  • Center infrastructure (core) grants, 20-30 percent

  • Research centers, 45-50 percent

  • Research resource centers, 20-30 percent

Although the taxonomy developed by the committee identifies three categories of center awards, only the first two categories, those for center infrastructure and for research centers, are the primary subject of congressional interest and legislation. The third type of center, the research resource center, although not explicitly excluded from the charge to this committee, is not the type of center that led to the congressional language mandating this study. Accordingly, subsequent discussion of centers and center programs in this report will include only centers of the first two types listed above.

Both center infrastructure (core) and research center awards are intended to promote and support research organizations that conduct interdisciplinary research on a medical problem or condition, or on a set of health-related scientific questions, or both, that would not be done as effectively or at all by other modes of research. Many of these centers also have additional functions that are a prerequisite for an NIH center award, such as research training and career development, public outreach, and professional education.

Finding. NIH does not consistently apply either the term “center” or center award activity codes to centers. This inconsistency makes it difficult to describe accurately the extent of research funding devoted to support of centers or evaluate the relative effectiveness of center awards or how well center programs complement other NIH-funded activities.

Recommendation 1. NIH should adopt or develop a coherent classification system with functional criteria that should be uniformly applied across all institutes for the categorization of all NIH-funded centers. The three functional categories of centers offered above by the committee represent one possible system of classification. All activities that fit in one of the categories in the classification system adopted or developed by NIH should be identified as centers, regardless of the name of the program or mechanism of funding.

Consistent identification of center programs and allocation to uniform categories will benefit NIH in terms of more informed public debate and understanding, greater NIH accountability, and better program evaluation. At the same time, a broad classification system such as the one we offer (NIH can adopt, revise, or replace it with its own), which includes just three types of center programs, leaves enough flexibility within the categories to

Suggested Citation:"2 Current Use of Center Awards." Institute of Medicine. 2004. NIH Extramural Center Programs: Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10919.
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design each center program in the most appropriate way to achieve its particular goals.

REFERENCES

IOM (Institute of Medicine). 1998. Scientific Opportunities and Public Needs: Improving Priority Setting and Public Input at the National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.


Korn D. 2003. Statement of the Association of American Medical Colleges to the IOM Committee on NIH Centers of Excellence. Presentation to the IOM Committee on Centers of Excellence at NIH, Washington, DC.


NCRR (National Center for Research Resources). 2000. NCRR Biomedical Collaboratories Workshop Report. [Online]. Available: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/biotech/btcollabwrkshprpt10-2000.pdf [accessed December 15, 2003].

NCRR. 2002. Data and Collaboratories in the Biomedical Research Community. [Online]. Available: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/biotech/collabmtg2002.asp [accessed December 15, 2003].

NIAMS (National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases). 1997. Executive Summary, Report to the Institute Director of the Centers Working Group II. [Online]. Available: http://www.niams.nih.gov/ne/reports/sci_wrk/1997/cenrptfn.htm [accessed December 15, 2003].

NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development). 1999. “Report of the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch Population Centers Review.” [Online.] Available: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/cpr/dbs/pubs/report.pdf [accessed December 15, 2003].

NIH (National Institutes of Health). 1995. NIH Extramural Trends, Fiscal Years 1985-1994. Bethesda, MD: Division of Research Grants, NIH.

NIH. 1999. Report of Integrative Issues Working Group. Summary of workshop: Treatments for people with autism and other pervasive developmental disorders: Research perspectives. Bethesda, MD: NIH Autism Coordinating Committee. [Online]. Available: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research/autismworkshop.cfm [accessed December 15, 2003].

NIH. 2001. Setting Research Priorities at the National Institutes of Health. Revised edition. [Online]. Available: http://www.nih.gov/about/researchpriorities.htm [accessed December 15, 2003].


OMB (Office of Management and Budget). 2003. Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2004. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.


Teitelbaum S. 2003. Statement to the IOM Committee on Centers of Excellence at NIH, Washington, DC.


U.S. DHHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). 2003. NIH (National Institutes of Health) FY2004 Congressional Budget Justification. [Online]. Available: http://www.nih.gov/news/budgetfy2004/fy2004presidentsbudget.pdf [accessed December 15, 2003].

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Grants for research centers located in universities, medical centers, and other nonprofit research institutions account for about 9 percent of the National Institutes of Health budget. Centers are popular because they can bring visibility, focus, and increased resources to bear on specific diseases. However, congressional debate in 2001 over proposed legislation directing NIH to set up centers for muscular dystrophy research highlighted several areas of uncertainty about how to decide when centers are an appropriate research mechanism in specific cases. The debate also highlighted a growing trend among patient advocacy groups to regard centers as a key element of every disease research program, regardless of how much is known about the disease in question, the availability of experienced researchers, and other factors. This book examines the criteria and procedures used in deciding whether to establish new specialized research centers. It discusses the future role of centers in light of the growing trend of large-scale research in biomedicine, and it offers recommendations for improving the classification and tracking of center programs, clarifying and improving the decision process and criteria for initiating center programs, resolving the occasional disagreements over the appropriateness of centers, and evaluating the performance of center programs more regularly and systematically.

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