This blog was co-authored by Dr. Carrie D. Wolinetz, Director of the NIH Office of Science Policy (OSP). More information about OSP can be found at https://osp.od.nih.gov.

On July 20, 2018, the NIH released Guide Notice NOT-OD-18-212, “Delayed Enforcement and Short-Term Flexibilities for Some Requirements Affecting Prospective Basic Science Studies Involving Human Participants.”

“Let’s not fly blind” has been a frequent call to action at OBSSR in recent years. We are responsible for coordinating the behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) at the NIH but that is a difficult task without the data and analytics to determine what types of BSSR are being funded or not and why.

Congratulations to our 11th NIH Matilda White Riley Distinguished Lecturer and our Early Stage Investigator Paper Awardees.

Each day, more Americans die from drug overdoses (175) than from motor vehicle accidents (110). Many of these overdoses are accidental, and some are intentional, but nearly all are the result of social and behavioral factors.

April is National Autism Awareness Month. Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurological and developmental disorder marked by challenges with social interaction and communication that begin in early childhood. Although relatively rare, ASD is sufficiently prevalent (one in 68) that most people know of someone, or the children of someone, affected by ASD. I have two nephews diagnosed with ASD, which provides a personal perspective for the importance of advancing research and clinical services for the children and families dealing with ASD.

NIH receives many meritorious grant applications for which there are inadequate resources to fund. Thanks to the Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR), there is now a second chance at funding for these applications. Leidos Health’s Life Sciences has partnered with NIH to accelerate health research by matching high-scoring (e.g., those within the 30th percentile), unfunded NIH applications with private biomedical foundations and/or industries seeking to fund promising research via OnPAR. The list of research of interest to OnPA

February 2 is National Wear Red Day, kicking off American Heart Month. We join our colleagues at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in The Heart Truth program to increase awareness that heart disease is the leading cause of death among women and to increase awareness of the risk factors for heart disease. A few of the risk factors for heart disease are out of our control—getting older, having a family history of early heart disease or a history of preeclampsia during pregnancy—but most of the risk factors for heart disease are modifiable behaviors.

If you offered people on the street $100 to name a living scientist or an institution where medical or health research is conducted, most could not. A recently released Research! America nationwide survey on Americans’ attitudes about the visibility of scientists and the scientific community found that 81 percent could not name a single living scientist and over two-thirds could not name a single institution, company, or organization where health research is conducted.

On December 8, 2017, we held our second annual NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival on the NIH campus. This one-day festival, a combined effort of the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Coordinating Committee (BSSR-CC) and OBSSR, highlights recent advances in NIH-supported behavioral and social sciences research in fiscal year 2017 (FY17) and provides NIH staff with the opportunity to network and discuss future collaborations. We were honored to have Dr. Larry Tabak, NIH Principal Deputy Director, give the welcome and opening remarks for the festival this year.