Sneak Preview: NIH Releases New Grant Funding ‘Strategy’
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article). To improve the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) “stewardship” of taxpayer dollars, NIH Director Jayanta (Jay) Bhattacharya, M.D., announced a new “unified strategy that aligns our priorities and funding approaches … to fund the most meritorious science, address urgent health needs and sustain a robust biomedical research workforce.”
Bhattacharya is establishing a dozen priorities to ensure that his agency’s mission is fulfilled and implemented through funding decisions consistently made across all NIH funding institutes and centers, and that his agency supports “quality projects” selected based on the scientific merit of the proposal. He went on to underscore that the strategy attempts to balance “scientific opportunity with mission-critical objectives.”
The new strategy highlights 12 specific funding priorities. However, Bhattacharya also states that this list is not exhaustive, and NIH will continue to support projects “across the full spectrum of biomedical research topics.” The priorities align the administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission Report and the recent executive order on “gold standard science,” according to Bhattacharya (see “OSTP Issues Standards for Research Guidance”).
In an internal memo to NIH institutes and centers that is circulating on the internet, Bhattacharya told staff, “I recognize that several new initiatives and policies have been implemented in a short period of time, and there have been some confusion due to inaccurate media reports and rumors. Therefore, I have outlined select agency priorities.” He went on to direct staff members “to use this guidance when reviewing your intramural and extramural research portfolios and making decisions about your future funding priorities.”
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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