NIH Extramural Center Programs Criteria for Initiation and Evaluation (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-14
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The committee makes recommendations to improve the classification and tracking of center programs, clarify and improve the decision process and criteria for initiating center programs, resolve the occasional disagreements over the appropriateness of centers, and evaluate the performance of center programs more regularly and systematically. The report concludes by noting that recent changes in the nature of biomedical research, which involve opportunities to understand complex biological systems through collaborations among multiple investigators in different fields and different institutions and by assembling large-scale research infrastructures and databases, will probably result in the expanded use 1
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NIH has supported research centers for many years as a means of encouraging interdisciplinary basic, clinical, and population-based research on scientific problems not being adequately addressed by individual investigator grants alone. Center programs are also popular with the public, organizations representing patients, and Congress, because they can bring focus, visibility, and more funding (private and public)
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Sometimes, however, Congress directs NIH to establish centers despite NIH's view that the funding could be better spent through other mechanisms of research support. The occasion of several of these congressional mandates in recent years led to this study of the conditions in which the establishment of new center programs is appropriate.
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In some cases, they may also support additional activities such as community education, screening and counseling programs, and educating medical and allied health professionals about state-of-the-art diagnostic, prevention, and treatment techniques. · Research Resource Center awards develop and provide specialized research resources, services, and tools to researchers across the country.
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INITIATION AND MANAGEMENT OF CENTER PROGRAMS The impetus for NIH support of research centers comes from many sources. Centers established since the beginning of 2002 have been suggested by external advisory groups, NIH institute strategic plans, scientific workshops supported by NIH, NIH program staff, a federal interagency coordinating group, advocacy organizations, Congress, a national commission, and an IOM report.
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Proposals to establish center programs originate from many sources within and outside NIH, including scientific workshops, internal program reviews, national advisory councils and other advisory bodies, NIH professional staff, professional scientific societies, citizen groups, the
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The national advisory councils are currently required to review all initiatives, but given the small amount of time they can devote to the task, effective arrangements for soliciting external advice in the approval process and clear and consistent criteria for program approval (see next recommendation) are critical elements of center program initiation.
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area? Research Center Programs Should Meet the Following Additional Criteria.
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larger-scale, more critical methods and coordinated research problems. program to make or accelerate progress.
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Each ongoing as well as proposed center program must justify itself in the annual planning and budgeting process. In addition, some of the institutes engage in a formal "visiting committee" process, that is, an external panel of experts, usually a subcommittee of the institute's national advisory committee for a major program division that reviews the division's programs on a regular schedule.
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From time to time, institutes conduct internal program reviews or appoint external review panels, but usually these ad hoc responses are done in response to a perception that the program is no longer effective or appropriate rather than as part of a regular evaluation process. Most of these reviews relied on judgment by experts rather than systematically collected objective data, although some formal program evaluations have been performed by outside firms using such data.
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; additional research funding from NIH and oth er public agencies, nonprofit organizations, and commercial industry. CONCLUDING COMMENTS Center programs are a small but important element in NIH's array of tools to address its dual mission of pursuing fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and of bridging the gap between basic science discoveries and the application of that knowledge to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.
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. As expected, new center programs will play a prominent role in implementing the Roadmap objectives.
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. At least three more center programs are planned: Nanomedicine Centers, Bioactive Small Molecule Library and Screening Centers, and Regional Translational Research Centers.
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