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.

Suppose you are bitten by a spider and the chance of death from the bite is quite small (1 in 100,000), how much would you pay to receive the antidote?  Now suppose instead you are recruited to participate in a study in which this spider venom is being studied and the consent form says that you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying from the experiment.  How much would you want the researchers to pay you to participate?

Some may be surprised to learn that there is a small but thriving cadre of behavioral and social sciences researchers in the NIH intramural program.  At this year’s NIH Intramural Research Festival, held September 13-15, 2017, a social and behavioral sciences category poster session included 17 presentations by intramural researchers across a range of NIH Institutes and Centers. Examples of these presentations included:

Some may be surprised to learn that there is a small but thriving cadre of behavioral and social sciences researchers in the NIH intramural program. At this year’s NIH Intramural Research Festival, held September 13–15, 2017, a social and behavioral sciences category poster session included 17 presentations by intramural researchers across a range of NIH Institutes and Centers.

In July 2017, the National Academies held a public event on their recent publication, “The Value of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences to National Priorities: Report for the National Science Foundation.” This report provides many examples of the impacts of social, behavioral, and economic sciences on business, industry, welfare, and prosperity of our country. The report also describes the impacts of social, behavioral, and economic sciences on the health of the nation. These impacts include a better understanding of how environmental factors interact with genetic influences to impact he…

The Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee and the Office of Pain Policy at the National Institutes of Health recently released the draft Federal Pain Research Priorities, followed by a period of public comment and a symposium to discuss these draft research priorities. Given the modest effects of our current pain management strategies and the contributions of our limited ability to manage pain on the opioid abuse epidemic, every social and behavioral scientist should read this report and consider how to advance our ability to better manage pain.