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 health, the wealth of empirically-based strategies to promote health and prevent illness, and the role of social and economic factors on health.

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.

There are many benefits from living in more diverse and integrated neighborhoods, and a recently published study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) provides additional evidence that moving to more integrated neighborhoods has health benefits.

Last month in a report prepared for the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity titled “Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Anne Case and Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton provided a more in-depth analysis of their groundbreaking 2015 findings of increasing midlife mortality rates among working-class (high school or less education) Whites in the United States. In the context of continued declines in mortality rates for other age, education, and race/ethnicity groups, these increased mortality rates among midlife, working class Whites are particularly striking and reverse decades of progress in reducing mortality. In the 2015 paper, Case and Deaton noted that drug and alcohol overdoses, suicides, and liver disease/cirrhosis accounted for much of the increased mortality in this group. The authors have described this as “deaths of despair.”

Opioid Abuse has rapidly become a public health epidemic. The CDC reports that while the amount of overall pain that patients report has not changed, the amount of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1999.  Deaths from opioid overdose increased 200 percent between 2000 and 2014, and opioids are the leading cause of drug overdose in this country.

When I was named director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research in August, 2015, we had almost as many unfilled as filled positions in the office. We could have moved quickly to fill these positions, but I remembered the advice of one of my mentors in government leadership, “Hire slowly,” so we had a deliberate and thoughtful process for identifying candidates and making selections over the past 18 months. Before introducing OBSSR’s new staff, I want to thank the “stalwarts”—Bill Elwood, Attallah Hampton, Paula Roberts, Wendy Smith, Mike Spittel, Erica Spotts, and Deborah Young-Hyman—who have provided stability and continuity in the office through the director transition.

Earlier this month, the fiscal year 2014 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) were announced. PECASE is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

The Inaugural NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival was held December 2, 2016. This event was hosted jointly by the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Coordinating Committee (BSSR-CC) and the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). Thanks to these groups for organizing such a successful event. We had 185 attend in person with another 280 livestreaming the event. If you missed it, an archive of the videocast is available at https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=21386&bhcp=1 There were dual purposes for this event – 1) to highlight compelling recent behavioral and social sciences research supported by the NIH, and 2) to provide NIH behavioral and social sciences research staff and the broader research community with the opportunity to network.

Today, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) releases its Strategic Plan 2017–2021. 

Last month, the NIH released new policies and related efforts to improve our stewardship, accountability, and transparency of clinical trials. NIH is the largest funder of clinical trials in the United States, and these multi-faceted efforts are designed to address issues at multiple stages of the clinical trials process, from grant application through dissemination of results to the public. Although these policies and efforts were developed primarily with the traditional biomedical clinical trial in mind, they are applicable to social and behavioral trials as well.