American Rescue Plan Heads to the President’s Desk

COVID Relief

On Wednesday, March 10, the House passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, to incorporate amendments added by the Senate last week. The bill now heads to the White House for President Biden’s signature, successfully meeting the March 14 deadline, when expanded unemployment benefits will run dry.

Of note for FABBS members, the bill includes $600 million for the National Science Foundation to fund new and existing research to respond to COVID-19, and $100 million for

NIH Announces UNITE Initiative to End Structural Racism

On March 1st, the Director of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, announced a new NIH initiative called UNITE:

U — Understanding stakeholder experiences through listening and learning

N — New research on health disparities, minority health, and health equity

I — Improving the NIH culture and structure for equity, inclusion, and excellence

T — Transparency, communication, and accountability with our internal and external stakeholders

E — Extramural research ecosystem: changing

February Proves a Busy Month for NIH Advisory Councils

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Advisory Council met on February 2, 2021(Videocast). Director Diana W. Bianchi, M.D, began with the customary “directors report” providing a funding update, NICHD will receive $1.59 billion for fiscal year (FY) 21, a $66 million increase from the previous year. Of this money, $12.6 million is allocated for the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act and another $65 million for INCLUDE (INvestigation of Co-occurring

Clinical Trial Definition Continues to Cause Confusion

February 12, 2020

Towards the end of January, FABBS started receiving emails from worried researchers saying their proposals to NIH had been withdrawn before review because they were not classified as clinical trials, and perception was that they should have been. As readers may recall, in October 2014, NIH expanded their definition of clinical trials to include Basic Experimental Studies involving Humans (BESH). While the enforcement of registration in grants.gov for BESH had been