Rock Talk: NIH Support of Biomedical Research

1. Rock Talk:NIH Support of Biomedical Research NIH Regional Seminar on Program Funding And Grants Administration February 2012 Sally J. Rockey, PhD Deputy Director for Extramural Research National Institutes of Health

2. Research Project Grants Applications, awards, and success rates

4. Options for Managing NIH Resources • Current Way of Managing • Bottom out success rates (doing nothing but letting the system correct itself) • Other Options • Reducing or limiting size of awards • Limiting number of awards held by an PI • Limiting the amount of funds an PI can hold • Limiting salaries of PIs

5. Option: Reducing Average Size of an Award FY 2010 Competing RPG Awards: 9,287 Total Cost: $3,732,077,099 Average Cost: $401,860 Average Cost - $25k: $376,860 Total Savings: $232,175,000 Example of effect on number of RPG Awards in FY 2010: FY10 Actual Estimated Effect Competing RPG awards: 9,287 9,903 RPG success rate*: 20.5% 21.7% * This RPG success rate is modified to exclude competing supplements, P01 awards and ARRA funding. There are of course many ways to reduce average cost. Flat dollar amount cuts would disproportionately affect smaller grants, while a flat or graduated percentage cut may be fairer.

6. Option: Limit Number of Awards per PIExamples FY 2010 – No Limits • Projecting 9,455 competing NIH RPGs with 20.6% success rate Limit to 5 RPGs per PI • Estimate 9,470 competing (+15) NIH RPGs with 20.6% success rate Limit to 3 RPGs per PI • Estimate 9,719 competing (+264) NIH RPGs with 21.1% success rate Limit to 2 RPGs per PI • Estimate 10,411 competing (+956) NIH RPGs with 22.6% success rate

7. Option: Limit Amount of Funds per PIExamples • Limit PI’s Total RPG Support to $1 Million • Affects 3,245 PIs with total current funding of $6.4 billion • Funding for these PIs reduced to $3.245 billion • Savings of $3.1 billion (estimated one-fourth available for competing awards in any given year, or approximately $800 million) • Allows for approximately 2,000 additional competing RPG awards at average cost of $400,000 • Limit PI’s Total RPG Support to $800,000 • Affects 4,629 PIs with total current funding of $7.6 billion • Funding for these PIs reduced to $3.7 billion • Savings of $3.9 billion (estimated one-fourth available for competing awards in any given year, or approximately $975 million) • Allows for approximately 2,400 additional competing RPG awards at average cost of $400,000 • Limit PI’s Total RPG Support to $400,000 • Affects 12,000 PIs with total current funding of $11.9 billion • Funding for these PIs reduced to $4.8 billion • Savings of $7.1 billion (estimated one-fourth available for competing awards in any given year, or approximately $1.8 billion) • Allows for approximately 4,400 additional competing RPG awards at average cost of $400,000

8. Option: Limiting Salaries of PIs Distribution of PIs by Level of Effort

9. Input from the Community • Received comments from 348 entities (individuals and institutions), with many people commenting multiple times on the blog. • Some commenters thought we should keep the current system, but many others supported implementation of one or more of the options described. • Many commenters suggested options that were not described in the presentation including among others limiting indirect costs, limiting certain programs (for example, large project grants), and providing more resources to small labs and individuals by limiting grants to large labs.

11. Distribution of Principal Investigators by Degree Type

12. R01-Equivalent Grants Awards, by gender

13. Tenure-track Status – PhDs in Basic Science Dept. at Medical Schools Figure 5 Tenure status for full-time newly hired PhD faculty in basic science departments at U.S. medical schools, in percent, 1985-2004. (Newly hired faculty are those at the rank of assistant professor and above, hired in the previous year.)Source: AAMC Faculty Roster database. Source: The Continued Evolution of Faculty Appointment and Tenure Policies at U.S. Medical Schools Bunton, Sarah A.; Mallon, William T. Academic Medicine. 82(3):281-289, March 2007.

14. Career Stages of Funding Programs

15. Kirschstein-NRSA Training Grants and Fellowships - Numbers

16. Kirschstein-NRSA institutional research training grants Applications, awards, and success rates

17. Estimated Number of NIH-Supported Graduate Students Sources: NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering and the NIH Data Book

18. Estimated Number of NIH-Supported Postdocs Sources: NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering and the NIH Data Book

19. In the Following Three Slides: Analysis of U.S. Trained PhDs • From the 1993 – 2008 Survey of Doctorate Recipients • These data are for U.S. Trained PhDs only • Biomedical Fields exclude: Clinical, Psychology and Social Science Fields

20. Relationship Between Science and Engineering PhD Field and Occupation Across S&E PhD fields, 50-80% of graduates are employed in occupations that closely match their PhD field. Source: NSF Survey of Doctoral Recipients

21. Relationship Between Life Sciences PhD Field and Occupation Within Life Sciences, Biological Sciences fields have the highest number of PhDs working in a related occupation. Source: NSF Survey of Doctoral Recipients

22. U.S. Trained Biomedical PhDs in Research Occupations, by Years Since Degree Over 70% of biomedical PhDs begin working in research occupations out of graduate school; by 11 YSD 60% still work in a research occupation.

24. Race and Ethnicity of Reporting Principal Investigators on Research Project Grants 2009

25. Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards, Ginther et al., http://www.sciencemag.org/hottopics/race-nihfunding/)Study Question Analyzed the probability of securing first-time NIH R01* funding (during 2000-2006) by race/ethnicity, controlling for observable characteristics such as NIH training, research experience, and institution. *The R01 is the most prevalent NIH grant award mechanism and is considered to be the “gold standard” by which many research institutions measure the success of faculty.

26. Main Conclusions of Ginther et al.: Differences in Award Rates CONLUSIONS • Black and Asian R01 applicants are significantly less likely to receive a Type 1 R01 award. • Differences in Asian applicant award rates related to US Citizenship. • Even after controlling for factors that influence the likelihood of success, Black applicants are still 10percentage points less likely than White applicants to receive a Type 1 R01 award

27. Diversity-related Action Items • Two high level groups have been formed by the NIH Director to recommend actions that help NIH achieve its goal of increasing the diversity of its workforce and creating a sustainable environment that supports diversity • NIH Diversity Task force – internal group of NIH leaders • Advisory Committee to the NIH Director Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce (http://acd.od.nih.gov/DBR.asp) • Funded several extramural grant programs, including the NIH pathfinder award, that are designed to study different interventions to strengthen the pipeline in a manner that will help improve workforce diversity • As review experience correlates with success, we have just established an “Early Career Reviewers” program to increase exposure of investigators from diverse institutions to the review process • Planning to conduct experiments on the review process to determine if bias exists, e.g.: • De-identify applications • Test reviewer ability to determine applicant race • Assess training against bias using programs such as Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)

32. Age Distribution of NIH Principal Investigators and Medical School Faculty 1980 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rL_J-Yl55K0

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