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Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
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Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
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Page 24
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 25
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 26
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 27
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 28
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 29
Suggested Citation:"IV. Other Program Aspects of Concern." Institute of Medicine. 1985. Stabilizing the Funding of NIH and ADAMHA Research Program Grants: A Background Paper. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9928.
×
Page 30

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IV. OTHER PROGRAM ASPECTS OF CONCERN l A. Variations Among the Institutes in Award Rates and Paylines Table 7 shows that there are wide variations among the NIH institutes on award rates and paylines. For example, at one extreme, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development had award rates under 30 percent in F.Y. 1984, and, at the other, the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences had award rates of over 49 percent in that year. Paylines in F.Y. 1984 for the individual institutes of NIH ranged from 163 to 224. Such variations are largely the products of the separate appropriation histories of the individual institutes. To what extent, if any, they represent significant disparities in resource allocations and distortions of priorities is a question beyond the scope of this paper. The NIH director takes account of these variations when he has an opportunity to distribute budget increases among the institutes, but it has been NIH's view over the years that only a little fine tuning is feasible from year to year. Table 8 for ADAMHA's three institutes shows that the award rates and paylines for the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse are very similar. The award rates for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism are below those of the other two institutes, but its paylines are slightly higher. On the whole, the differences among the figures of the three institutes are not striking. B. Support of New Investigators In the planning exercise of 1979 and 1980, both the HHS Steering Committee For the Development of A Health Research Strategy and the TOM review committee expressed concern about the possible effect a stabilization initiative might have on the support of young research investigators. Table 9 contains the latest data (through F.Y. 1982) on new Principal Investigator (PI) applicants for the traditional investigator-initiated research (Rot) grants. It shows that the number of new PI applicants declined nearly 18 percent from the peak year of 1979 to 1982. The award rates for approved new PI applicants (through F.Y. 1983) also declined in these years, but their success rates were much higher than those of other applicants. More recent data would be needed to ascertain any definitive trends. In 1984, the NIH established a new category of awards for new investigators (R23 awards) with criteria for considering the proposals of "relatively inexperienced investigators with meritorious ideas". Approved R23 applications are incorporated into the over-all priority system and no funds are set aside for this purpose. In other words, the outcome of the applications for these awards is basically determined by the actions of the study sections, as are other applications. Some institutes, such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, have tried to stimulate the study sections supporting their programs to give these applications some special consideration, while others feel that the record to date does not indicate the necessity for such action under the current budget constraints. Some institute officials are of the opinion that new investigators fare just as well in submit tin' regular R01 applications as they would by submitting the R23 application, but the majority of the institutes believe that the R23 awards do make a difference. Some advisors, on the other hand, have advanced the position that the emphasis should be placed on those investigators who are already in the system, that providing them with greater stability is a more efficient use of funds. The *Many new principal investigators continue to submit applications for the standard R01 awards. 23

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Office of the Director, NIH, is studying various policy alternatives for the extramural programs, including the means for making research project grant awards more attractive to new applicants, perhaps by replacing the present 3-year limit on R23 awards with a 5-year award and raising the ceiling on the award amount*. However, there is also concern at NIH about the "half-life" of established investigators--i.e., an apparent decline in the number of first-time investigators who go on to'receive their second or third awards--and the possible need for enhancing the stability of mid-career investigators and even well-established investigators by providing longer-term support than the typical three-year awards**. There would be difficult trade-offs; these steps would add to the total amounts of funds required for continuation grants and average costs per grant and, thus, make it more difficult to obtain further increases in funds to keep pace with increases in applications for new awards. C. Support for Elements of the Science Base other than Research Projects The 1979-80 health research planning documents of the department took note of the concerns expressed by the IOM committee and other observers about the possible deleterious effects of stabilizing research projects on other elements of the science base, including research training. Table 10 indicates that the percentage share of total NIH funds allocated to research project grants has risen--from approximately 39 percent in F.Y. 1977 to 54 percent in F.Y. 1985. Over half of this rise came at the expense of research contracts, which declined in this period from about 15 to 7 percent. The shifts toward research-project grants and away from research contracts began well before the advent of the stabilization policy in F.Y. 1981; it will be noted that Table 10 shows a drop in the proportion of funds allocated to research contracts from 14.9 percent in F.Y. 1977 to 11.8 percent in F.Y. 1980. The National Cancer Institute, which has by far the largest contract program in NIH, had in earlier years been using contract funds for grant-like projects and, partly as a result of criticisms it received about this practice, started#to reclassify these projects as grants and generally to cut back on contracts . Added to this were such general factors as the growing burdensomeness of the contract device as a result of added regulations and an increasing caution about the perceptions in the extramural community that NIH might be using the contract device for activities that could be performed as well or better under grants awarded through the standard peer review process. *At this writing (August 1985), NIH is definitely moving ahead with a plan to establish the 5-year award as the basic instrument for the support of new investigators. **For a discussion of these alternatives, see the minutes of the 50th meeting of the Advisory Committee to the Director, National Institutes of Health, November 19, 1984. #The percentage of the total NCI budget allocated to research contracts dropped from 27.5 percent in F.Y. 1977 to 20.4 percent in F.Y. 1981 and, since F.Y. 1981, to 11.9 percent. There were also significant declines in the percentages for' NHLBI and other institutes as well. 27

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With respect to research training, Table 11 indicates that the number of trainees funded by NIH fellowship awards and training grants dropped only slightly from F.Y. 1980 to F.Y. 1984. There was a bigger decrease in F.Y. 1985, but in this year a 38 percent increase in funds was provided to raise trainee stipends. The President's F.Y. 1986 budget would maintain the same program level for the coming fiscal year*. It is noteworthy that the percentage of funds devoted to intramural research remained quite stable through this period, gradually increasing from 10.5 percent in F.Y. 1977 to 12.1 percent in F.Y. 1984. Certainly, preferential treatment given research-project-grant funding, combined with the prospects and realities of increasingly tight budgets, did force some degree of fund shifting, both before and after F.Y. 1981, but this is, after all, the essence of priority setting. *These figures do not include funding of training (graduate students and post-doctoral salaries) supported through research grants. 29

TABLE 11 NIH Research Training Grants and Fellowship Awards F.Y. 1978 - 1976 Trainees Thousands of Dollars Fiscal Year Number Amount Average Cost 1978 11,123 S143,926 S12.9 1979 11,197 143,661 12.8 1980 10,644 176,388 16.6 1981 10,695 175,172 16.4 1982 10,406 150,493 14.5 1983 10,577 164,764 15.6 1984 10,514 166,462 15.8 1985 9,891 217,943 22.0 1986 est. 9~891 217,943 22.0 Source: NIH 30

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