New DHHS Rate Agreement

COEUS Training in May

Click here to view training dates for May. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Research/ora/
training/COEUS_Training_Schedule.html

Efforts to Increase the Level of NIH Funding

Working closely with the Dean's office, the Office of Marketing and Communications, and a number of our faculty, the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs has been engaged in a variety of advocacy activities to increase the level of federal research funding available from the National Institutes of Health. We have recently produced a report with 8 other leading institutions (University of California, Columbia, Harvard, Partners Health Care, University of Texas -Austin, Washington University, University of Wisconsin, and Yale) entitled, "Within our Grasp - Or Slipping Away? Assuring a New Era of Scientific and Medical Process." This report is available at: http://www.jhu.edu/
news/univ07/mar07/pdf/within_our_grasp.pdf

This report was released at a recent press conference (which included Dr. Ed Miller) held at the conclusion of a hearing held by the U.S. Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the NIH. The hearing included testimony by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni and four of the researchers featured in the report, including Dr. Robert Siliciano from Johns Hopkins. Other Hopkins faculty highlighted in the report include Drs. Carol Greider, Dan Lane, and David Nichols.

As a next step in our campaign to have Congress increase funding to the NIH for the upcoming fiscal year, we are gathering data and anecdotes from faculty that demonstrate the impact of declining paylines and shrinking size of grants upon our research enterprise. Faculty willing to contribute to this effort should contact: Beth Felder in the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs at bfelder@jhu.edu or 443-287-9918.

Here is the text of the press release from March 19, 2007:

Johns Hopkins Joins Seven Other Institutions to Warn Congress about Dangers of Flat Funding of Biomedical Research
New Report Outlines Threat to Medical Progress in Combating Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, Spinal Cord Injuries and Other Conditions

The Johns Hopkins University and a consortium of seven other leading U.S. scientific and medical institutions today warned Congress that persistent flat funding of biomedical research could thwart advances in treatments for such diseases as cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and erode U.S. dominance in science.

In its 21-page report, "Within Our Grasp - Or Slipping Away? Assuring a New Era of Scientific and Medical Progress," the consortium said years of stagnant budgets for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) also has interrupted promising research and forced young investigators to leave their scientific careers.

The group calls on Congress to provide more consistent and robust NIH funding levels to maintain U.S. global leadership in biomedical research. Other members of the consortium include the University of California system, Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin Madison, and Yale University.

According to the report, the doubling of NIH's budget between 1998 and 2003 transformed science in important fields and fueled advances in basic research.

The report describes recent seminal advances in basic research, fueled by earlier rounds of robust federal investment in NIH-sponsored research related to Alzheimer's disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes, and spinal cord and brain injury. Consortium members say momentum and advances will be lost and difficult to reverse if flat funding continues.
The impact of flat funding already is serious, the report notes. Eight of 10 quality research grant applications are going unfunded, and such NIH components as the National Cancer Institute say they can only fund 11 percent of research project grant applications, rejecting many of exceptional quality.

"Warning bells should be sounding loudly in Congress and among the public," says Edward D. Miller, M.D., dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. "The world's premier biomedical research engine is at risk."

The bleak funding situation, the report warns, already is driving many of the brightest young minds from science careers and diminishing the potential for new treatments even if funding levels rise unless the damage is stemmed quickly. Equally troubling, the consortium report says, scientists are abandoning some of their most innovative research in favor of more conservative projects with more predictable results that are more likely to be funded. Principal investigators also must spend increasingly enormous amounts of time raising funds rather than conducting research.

Frustrated by funding lags, U.S. scientists are following research dollars to countries in Europe and Asia that are making investment in biomedical sciences high national priorities and actively recruiting star scientists, according to the report.

Return to top of Grant and Contract Procedures