Director's Voice
Expanding the Role of the Behavioral and Social Sciences in Population Health: OBSSR 2011–2014
As we celebrate 25 years of OBSSR, we have asked the former Directors to reflect on their time at OBSSR. This guest blog was authored by OBSSR’s fourth Director, Robert Kaplan, Ph.D.
It was a great honor to serve as the fourth OBSSR Director between 2011 and 2014. I came from academia having served as a professor and administrator at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). For 35 years, I had been continuously funded by the NIH and, like most grantees, I had been through the struggles and mood swings associated with keeping a research enterprise alive. I brought that empathy for the grantee with me to Bethesda.
I was humbled to serve following three very distinguished OBSSR directors and a series of exceptionally talented acting directors. All three of the previous directors (Norman Anderson, Raynard Kington, and David Abrams) were friends and colleagues who I had admired for years. During one job interview visit, I had a particularly memorable breakfast with Drs. Anderson and Abrams. They candidly and accurately forecasted the considerable challenges and opportunities facing the office. In addition to the directors, former acting directors, including Deborah Olster, Christine Bachrach, and Peter Kaufman, provided unwavering support and guidance.
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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder in which there are impairments in social communication skills and behaviors. Typically, ASD is not diagnosed until at least age 3 years, despite the emergence of behavioral symptoms between the ages of 1 and 2 years. In a recent publication, research supported by the NICHD, NIGMS, Autism Speaks, the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, and the University of California Los Angeles investigated if there are differences in brain function and connection in early infancy during language processing that could predict symptoms of autism, including language outcomes.
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Adverse experiences in childhood can have long-term consequences on physical and mental health that continue to persist into adulthood. Present hypotheses suggest that these experiences induce lifelong changes by impacting neural mechanisms in the brain. Different adverse environments, such as violence exposure and social deprivation, have distinct neural correlates in the brain related to emotion, fear, and reward processing. A recent study supported by the NIMH, NICHD, NCRR, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the Jacobs Foundation sought to determine if violence exposure and social deprivation during childhood are associated with long-lasting brain network connectivity into adolescence.
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During the current COVID-19 pandemic, many experts are asking the question about why Americans choose to (or choose against) using vaccines? Research sponsored by the NIGMS aimed to address this question. Vaccine propensity is defined as a change in the willingness to vaccinate with a change in perceived risk of infection—holding fixed other considerations such as vaccine confidence and convenience. The purpose of this study was to better understand how risk perception can influence vaccine willingness. The authors used an online survey instrument that presents seven vaccine-preventable “new” diseases to a sample of 2,411 Americans in 2018.
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December 1–2: Register for the Virtual NIH OBSSR Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). Join OBSSR virtually on December 1–2, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET each day, as we celebrate 25 years as an Office at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Register to attend and view the festival agenda and speaker biographies: https://www.scgcorp.com/OBSSRFest2020/Registration. Join the conversation on social media using #OBSSR25.
This annual festival brings together behavioral and social scientists across the NIH extramural and intramural communities to network, collaborate, and share scientific ideas; highlight recent NIH funded behavioral and social sciences research; and explore ways to advance behavioral and social sciences research across biomedical and health-related fields.
NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., will deliver welcome and opening remarks at the festival and will followed up by notable behavioral and social sciences researchers including:
- Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D., Professor, Director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, The Ohio State University
- David Mohr, Ph.D., Professor, Director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
- Yasmin Hurd, Ph.D., Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the Director of the Addiction Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Kathleen Carroll, Ph.D., Professor, Director of Psychosocial Research, Yale School of Medicine
- Rick Antonius Kittles, Ph.D., Professor, Associate Director of Health Equities in the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Director of the Division of Health Equities, City of Hope
- Nancy Schoenberg, Ph.D., Marion Pearsall Professor of Behavioral Science, Associate Vice President for Research on Health Disparities, and Director of Center for Health Equity Transformation, University of Kentucky College of Medicine
- Esther Duflo, Ph.D., Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, Massachusetts Institute for Technology
Visit the NIH BSSR festival website to register and view the festival agenda and speaker biographies. Free registration for this event is required. Registration closes on November 30, 2020.
If you have questions about the festival or require reasonable accommodations, please contact Dana Schloesser at 301-451-3975 or dana.schloesser@nih.gov and/or the Federal Relay at 1-800-877-8339.
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Applications for Mixed-Methods Research Training Program Now Open
The OBSSR-funded Mixed-Methods Research Training Program (MMRTP) for the Health Sciences is now accepting applications for 2021. The submission deadline is Tuesday, January 19, 2021, at 5 p.m. ET. The MMRTP Retreat will be held in the Summer of 2021.
The program fulfills a national need for training in mixed methods and is a natural next step following the publication of the OBSSR "Best Practices for Mixed Methods Research in the Health Sciences." Selected scholars have access to webinars, resources, come to an in-person retreat to discuss their research project, and are matched with mixed-methods expert consultants. This program has reported results in three peer-reviewed publications.
Mixed-methods research is defined as the collection, analysis, and integration of both quantitative (e.g., RCT outcome) data and qualitative (e.g., observations, interviews) data to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a research problem than might be obtained through quantitative or qualitative research alone. Typical applications of mixed methods in the health sciences involve adding qualitative interviews to follow up on the outcomes of intervention trials, gathering both quantitative and qualitative data to assess patient reactions to a program implemented in a community health setting, or using qualitative data to explain the mechanism of a study correlating behavioral and social factors to specific health outcomes.
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NIH Awards Grants for Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research
The NIH is committed to understanding effective public health interventions to prevent violence, including firearm violence, and the trauma, injuries, and mortality resulting from violence. In response to funding provided to NIH through the FY 2020 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 1865) to conduct research on firearm injury and mortality prevention, NIH solicited applications for research to improve understanding of the determinants of firearm injury, the identification of those at risk of firearm injury (including both victims and perpetrators), the development and evaluation of innovative interventions to prevent firearm injury and mortality, and the examination of approaches to improve the implementation of existing, evidence-based interventions to prevent firearm injury and mortality.
We are pleased to announce the awards were made, totaling approximately $8.5 million. These awards build upon the existing NIH violence research portfolio and address gaps and emerging opportunities to understand and prevent firearm violence injury and mortality.
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Statement on Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing
The extraordinary effort to speed the development of treatments and vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief the need for the global science community to share scientific data openly. As the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, NIH is addressing this need with a new NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing. This policy requires researchers to plan prospectively for managing and sharing scientific data generated with NIH funds. This policy also establishes the baseline expectation that data sharing is a fundamental component of the research process, which is in line with NIH’s longstanding commitment to making the research it funds available to the public.
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Registration Open: NIH All of Us Researcher Onramp Event on November 12, 2020
The NIH All of Us Research Program is hosting the Researcher Onramp Event on November 12, 2020, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET. The event will enable researchers to learn more about the beta All of Us Researcher Workbench and how to leverage its powerful analytic capabilities. The Researcher Workbench is an accessible, cloud-based platform enables researchers to execute rapid, hypothesis-driven research on one of the largest and most diverse biomedical datasets of its kind. The event is geared toward current and prospective Workbench users, trainees, and early-career investigators who have experience with coding or with R/Python and an interest/background in data science.
About the Onramp Event
Researchers are invited to join this virtual gathering to:
- Learn about the program’s vision from All of Us CEO Dr. Josh Denny and University of California San Diego Professor of Medicine Dr. Lucila Ohno-Machado
- Experience a demonstration of the Researcher Workbench by Dr. Kelsey Mayo of Vanderbilt University
- Hear directly from users at leading research institutions about how they leveraged All of Us data and tools to power their studies
- Learn how to register, access, and analyze data within the All of Us Researcher Workbench
- Attend small group workshops to get started on the workbench and provide feedback directly to the support team.
Who Should Attend?
While open to a broad cross-section of attendees, this Researcher Onramp event will be of most use to current and prospective workbench users who have experience with coding or with R/Python. Researchers from groups underrepresented in the scientific workforce are encouraged to attend.
For additional information, and to register, please visit https://allofus.nih.gov/news-events-and-media/announcements/all-us-researcher-onramp-event. Workshop registration is on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Request for Information: Guidance on Current Research on the Prevention of Black Youth Suicide
Over the past several years, there has been a significant increase in the rate of suicide and suicidal ideation and behaviors (SIB) among Black youth. From 2001 to 2015, Black youth under 13 were twice as likely to die by suicide compared to their white peers, and the suicide death rate among Black youth was found to be increasing faster than any other racial/ethnic group. This Request for Information (RFI) seeks input from a variety of stakeholders including researchers, health care providers, community leaders, and individuals from other relevant organizations (e.g., schools, social welfare, justice, faith communities) around the risks for and prevention of death by suicide and suicidal ideation and behaviors (SIB) of Black children and adolescents. Specifically, this RFI seeks information on topics of epidemiology, etiology, trajectories, preventive interventions, treatment interventions, and services interventions. For consideration, comments must be submitted electronically via the NIH RFI website. Comments must be received by January 15, 2021. Response to this RFI is voluntary and may be submitted anonymously. While not required, NIMH strongly encourages respondents to include their name, the organization they are representing, and their role in the organization. The submitted information will be reviewed by NIH staff.
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Webinar Recording: Analyzing Complex Behavioral, Social, and Population Health Data for COVID-19
The Training in Advanced Data Analytics for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (TADA-BSSR) Webinar is virtual lecture series that covers advanced data analytics and data science underlying modern behavioral and social sciences research, with presentations from experts showing the basics of data management, representation, computation, statistical inference, data modeling, causal inference, and various other topics relevant to “big data” and teaching for behavioral and social sciences researchers. Presentations will be streamed live on Zoom, recorded, and archived on YouTube.
This video is a recording of the inaugural edition of the TADA-BSSR Webinar Series, which features a brief introduction of the new NIH/OBBSR-sponsored training program and highlights some of the exciting ongoing work at five of the training sites involving complex data related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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