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.

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?