APPROPRIATIONS ENDGAME IN SIGHT
Despite some predictions following
September 11 that Congress would move the FY 2002 spending bills swiftly, the
usual haggling over funding priorities between the Democrats and Republicans
has once again stretched the process almost two months into the fiscal
year. After passing five Continuing
Resolutions to keep the government running, it appears that sometime after
Thanksgiving this year’s budget game will end.
As of November 19, five of the thirteen
bills have been signed into law. Three
more, which are discussed below, have been sent to the President. Four others, including the Labor, HHS,
Education bill, are in conference.
Finally, the Defense bill is still under discussion since it will be the
vehicle for further September 11 emergency relief spending.
NSF
Gains 8.4 Percent Increase;
SBE
Receives Small Boost
The VA, HUD Conference Committee
provided $4.789 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF) for FY
2002, a $363 million or 8.4 percent increase over FY 2001. The House had provided a 9.4 percent boost;
the Senate, only 5.6 percent.
For
the Research and Related Activities account, Congress appropriated $3.598
billion, up from $3.35 billion in the FY 2001 current plan, a 7.4 percent
raise.
For
the first time in recent years, the conferees provided funding figures for each
of the research directorates. The Social,
Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate (SBE) received $168.9 million,
a $4.5 million increase over last year.
This small 2.7 percent increase compared unfavorably to an 8.4 percent
boost for Mathematics and Physical Sciences, an 8.6 percent raise for
Geosciences, and an 8.7 percent increase for Engineering. The Biological Sciences received a 5 percent
increase, including $75 million for further research on plant genomes, a
favorite of Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), Ranking Republican of the Senate’s VA,
HUD, Independent Agencies Subcommittee.
One explanation provided for these disparities was an
attempt by the conferees to restore “balance” to the science portfolio. Many spokespersons, including former
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Harold Varmus and MIT President
Charles Vest, have argued in recent years that the large increases in federal
spending for the life sciences, particularly at NIH, have come at the expense
of the physical sciences and engineering.
They have argued further that the major advances in the medical sciences
could not have occurred without scientific breakthroughs in the physical
sciences and engineering.
The
conference report did not include any language on the Children’s Research
Initiative. This means that the House
report language stands and removes the privileging language from last year’s report
(see Update, June 18 and July 16, 2001).
The Education and Human Resources Directorate
received $875 million, up almost $100 million from the FY 2001 current
plan. The Experimental Program to
Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCOR) increases to $80 million, with another
$30 million to come from the research directorates to help faculty in
universities in certain states enhance their capacity to conduct basic science
research. The President’s Math and
Science Partnership program, requested at $200 million, was appropriated $160
million.
Two new programs – Noyce Scholarships and a new
undergraduate workforce initiative – received funding for the first time. Both programs encourage undergraduates to
enter science and engineering careers.
Finally, the conferees increased NSF’s
graduate student programs to $105 million.
This would allow NSF to raise the graduate fellows’ stipend level to
$21,500.
In other action, the VA, HUD conferees
provided $50.3 million for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office
of Policy Development and Research.
This is a $3.7 million decrease from the FY 2001 level. A significant portion of the decrease comes
from funding for the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing initiative
(which is lowered from $10 million to $7.5 million). The administration had requested the elimination of the program.
Slight
Increases for Justice Research
The House and Senate approved the
conference report for the $39 billion Commerce, Justice, State FY 2002 appropriations
bill, on November 14 and 15, respectively.
The National Institute of Justice
(NIJ) would receive $54.9 million, identical to the President’s request and
$15.1 million less than FY 2001 (reflecting elimination of an earmark). This does not include transfers. NIJ, as in previous years, would receive
another $5.2 million for research and evaluation on violence against women and
$20 million for technology research and development from the Local Law Enforcement
Block Grant. The conferees also appropriated
$251.5 million for counterterrorism, of which $47 million is for research and
development.
The President’s request of $54.9 million
included funds for the expansion of NIJ’s Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring
Program (ADAM). NIJ’s new Director,
Sarah Hart, will review the specifics of this and other programs.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics
would receive $32.3 million, the same as the request and $3.5 million more than
last year (see related note in Announcements on page seven).
The Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention would receive $305.9 million, about $7.3 million
more than last year. This includes $11
million for grants, contracts, cooperative agreements, and other assistance for
developing, testing, and demonstrating programs designed to reduce drug use
among juveniles. Elsewhere, the
conferees expressed their concern about the effectiveness of the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE) program, the most widely implemented youth drug
prevention program in the country (see Update, January 29, 2001). The program is to receive $2.8 million in FY
2002. The conferees encouraged DARE to
continue the restructuring effort currently underway.
ACS
Continues to Move Forward
The Bureau of the Census is to receive
$544.4 million (which includes $54 million in deobligated funds from prior year
decennial census activities). Periodic
Censuses and Programs would receive $375.4 million. This also includes $65 million for expenses related to planning,
testing, and implementing the 2010 decennial census. Other Periodic Programs would be funded at $171.1 million, $27.1
million of which is for Continuous Measurement (the American Community Survey
or ACS).
Agriculture: NRI Sees Increase
The FY 2002 Agriculture and Rural Development bill has
cleared both Houses and is ready for the President’s signature. The conferees provided a significant boost
to the National Research Initiative (NRI) Competitive Grants Program,
from $105.8 million in FY 2001 to $120.5 million in FY 2002, an increase of
almost 14 percent.
The conferees funded the Hatch Act formula programs at
last year’s level of $180.1 million.
The Economic Research Service received the administration’s
request of $67.2 million, a slight increase over FY 2001’s $66 million. Included in the FY 2002 funding is $9.2
million for “food program studies and evaluation.”
The conferees allocated $113.8 million for the National
Agricultural and Statistical Service, again the same level as the
administration’s request and a 14 percent increase over FY 2001. Of that total, $25.3 million will go for the
Census of Agriculture.
Despite the arguments of the administration and
Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the appropriators’ prerogative to fund special
projects continued unabated. The
allocations for Special Grants, also known as pork or earmarking, accounted for
$97 million for FY 2002, slightly less than FY 2001’s $99.2 million. These included over $1 million for the Rural
Policy Research Institutes and $560,000 for the Rural Development Centers.
In addition, the conferees prohibited any funds from
this year’s appropriation to be used for new grants for the Fund for Rural
America and the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems, essentially
killing both programs for the moment.
Ass’t Secretary
for Elementary and Secondary Education Introduced to Research Community
Susan B. Neuman, the new
Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
(OESE), introduced herself to the research community at the latest education
policy forum of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) on
November 9.
Neuman is the first “bona
fide education researcher in this position,” observed Jerry Sroufe, AERA’s
Director of Government Relations, introducing the new Assistant Secretary. (In the past, this position has been held
most often by superintendents of schools.)
Neuman was Professor in Educational Studies at the University of
Michigan and Director of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading
Achievement before joining the Education Department. Like other Bush administration Education appointees, Neuman is a
specialist in literacy.
OESE is charged with
promoting academic excellence, enhancing educational opportunities and equity,
and improving the quality of teaching and learning by providing leadership,
technical assistance, and financial support.
It provides over $14 billion per year to “expand education opportunity
and excellence in the nation’s K-12 education system.” According to Sroufe, OESE has moved from
stressing the issue of equity to that of academic excellence.
Neuman described the
structure of OESE as “very bizarre.”
Rather than reorganize the office, however, she wants to try to get the different
components talking to each other. She
described the people at OESE as high-quality – many are Ph.D.s and most have
“true commitment” and want to work with a new agenda, she said.
Like Assistant Secretary
Russ Whitehurst at a previous AERA policy luncheon (see Update, October
22, 2001), Neuman placed her mission in the context of President Bush’s
education agenda. Research is one of
the agenda’s “four pillars,” and it is the job of OESE to apply that research,
she said. The bottom line, Neuman
stressed emphatically, is achievement.
She also expressed her
desire to build on current research – on “what we know” – and to “stop asking
the same questions.”
Specifically, Neuman wants
to “put reading first,” building upon the Reading Excellence Act, which is
designed to teach every child to read by the third grade, employing
scientifically-based reading research.
She referred to the President’s Reading First program, for which he has
requested $1 billion for fiscal year 2002, and Early Reading First, a program
to focus on reading in early childhood.
Legislation
note: Negotiations are still in
progress to resolve the differences between the House and Senate’s bills to
reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Rep. John Boenher (R-OH), chairman of the
House-Senate education panel, predicted the conference report will be completed
by the end of the year.
social
scientists discuss the Ethics of researching Humanitarian Emergencies
There are an estimated 53 million refugees and internally displaced
persons in the world today, more than three times as many as 20 years ago,
according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees.
On October 18, the National Research Council’s Roundtable on the
Demography of Forced Migration, held its fourth meeting to discuss research
ethics in complex humanitarian emergencies.
The roundtable, which is part of the Committee on
Population, represents a diverse group of disciplines. It is designed to open a dialogue around the
issue, explained Charles Keeley of Georgetown University, Chair of the
roundtable. He observed that there is
currently no single body of work addressing the topic. The group will survey the research that is
being conducted in various disciplines, what needs to be illuminated, and what
present humanitarian situations may reveal about the demography of current and
future complex humanitarian emergencies.
Ethical Issues and Social Science Research
William Seltzer of Fordham University discussed the
nature of social science research and the associated threats and ethical
issues.
Seltzer identified anthropology, economics,
political science, psychology, and sociology as some of the main social science
disciplines, with history, public health, and statistics closely related. With the exception of the medical side of
public heath and therapeutic psychology, he observed, all of the disciplines
are unlicensed and their practitioners unregulated by the state.
This has important implications for ethics, said Seltzer,
“in that ethical norms, standards, and sanctions – outside the area of
federally funded research – are in the hands of individual researchers, their
employers, and the relevant professional and scientific associations.” Unlike medical doctors and lawyers, social
science researchers have very limited legal grounds for asserting privilege in
legal proceedings to protect respondent disclosures, he remarked.
Seltzer identified other relevant aspects of the
social sciences that have ethical implications. Most social science disciplines have strong traditions in both
quantitative and qualitative research.
Many practitioners, he said, recognize the complementary importance of
both research traditions.
Social scientists use a variety of approaches to obtain
research material and subjects, including direct observation, obtaining
responses from research subjects in censuses or other surveys, and using
secondary information originally obtained at other times and places for wide
ranges of administrative, research, and other purposes.
Also, much social science research focuses on
understanding the behavior or the characteristics of groups or individuals,
Seltzer said. Most of it is not
experimental, although a few disciplines, such as psychology and to a far
lesser extent economics, have true experimental research.
Granting that on occasion some social science
research can pose stress risks, the bulk of it, according to Seltzer, is
minimally intrusive compared to research in the biomedical field. The primary purpose of most non-experimental
social science research is simply to collect information, he explained.
The threats that can pose real risks to research
subjects are “information threats,” Seltzer asserted, and social scientists
have only recently begun to study these in the context of social science
research ethics. “Much of the
information obtained is about the individual and his or her relationship to
groups. In some circumstances, this
information has been associated with major harms including genocide, forced
migration, and internment,” said Seltzer.
Historically, the risks posed by these information
threats, to both individual research subjects and other members of their group,
have had particularly serious consequences for those in small, politically weak
groups or in groups that were otherwise targeted. By explicitly addressing the more likely threats associated with
their research, Seltzer suggested, social scientists can better avoid the
ethical lapses and tragedies that have occurred in the past.
There are safeguards,
ethical and otherwise, in social science research, Seltzer informed the
group. Non-ethical safeguards can play
a very important role in reducing information threats. They include substantive, methodological,
technological, organizational, operational, and legal safeguards, he concluded.
The
Dynamics of Human Emergencies
Turning to the dynamics of humanitarian emergencies,
Felice Levine, Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association,
discussed research and ethics in these critical situations.
Human emergencies involve the displacement or
destruction of populations due to civil or international war or gross attempts
to restructure society or the state, Levine explained. More broadly, they might include natural
disasters, epidemics, or unforseen accidents of catastrophic scope; external
attacks by other nations; terrorist operations that are national, regional, or
transnational in scope; and internal threats, including state-sponsored and
political repression.
Levine, who is also the Co-Chair of the Social and
Behavioral Science Working Group of the National Human Research Protections
Advisory Committee, noted that in considering research ethics in humanitarian
emergencies, it may be instructive to reflect on lessons learned about human
subjects research in other contexts.
She also recommended studying the range of work on complex humanitarian
emergencies and how they are handled.
This includes needs assessments and evaluations, programmatic
interventions, experimentation, case and field studies, surveys, and even the
preservation of extant records and indicators data, she stressed.
In complex emergency circumstances, such research
may have unique risks and, of course, unique benefits, as it may help to protect
people’s very lives from threat, Levine informed the workgroup.
In addressing research ethics in this area, Levine underscored the importance of
considering:
·
The
full spectrum of research activities or research data that may be initiated or
used
·
How the deployment of
multiple research activities in the same or proximal time and place may
interact
·
How risk, harm, and
benefits can and should be assessed in circumstances far different from
non-emergencies
On this last point, Levine suggested the importance
of fully characterizing the range of harms, benefits, and risks as well as the
probability of occurrence.
She explained that harms can be physical,
psychological, social, economic, legal, or – particularly in this case –
political. The most common risks of
harm from behavioral and social science research, Levine noted, are to the
subject’s identity and confidentiality.
In humanitarian crises, she observed, they may have far greater
physical, political, or legal consequences.
At the same time, it may be necessary to think
differently about research risks in emergencies, Levine explained. What is reasonable, customary, or acceptable
may be different. Although human
subjects should continue to have comprehensible information on risks and the option
of whether to participate, it may be tricky to determine what voluntary means
in a social context that is less voluntary, where the risks are far less clear,
and when alternatives may not be readily available.
Finally, Levine remarked, how to characterize the
benefits of such research can be challenging.
Benefits can range from lowering the probability of harm to the
population to “getting the word out” in the troubled area in order to help
overcome ignorance or address silence, and to improving the conditions for
social groups (e.g., refugees).
Conversely, research on humanitarian emergencies offers fewer of the
more traditional benefits of social science research.
Human
Subjects Protection System
In protecting human subjects in humanitarian emergencies,
a more flexible, dynamic process may be required than would be the case under
non-emergency situations, said Levine.
The human subjects protection system, including Institutional Review
Boards (IRBs) and research investigators, Levine urged, needs to develop
decision strategies with the awareness that complex humanitarian emergencies
can change rapidly.
According to Levine, her recommendation is not
designed to encourage new or more regulations but to develop pathways for
ongoing field advice. Peer advisory
committees could be available to researchers, research teams, and even clusters
of research teams for guidance and counsel in the face of highly ambiguous or
unusual circumstances, she suggested.
Levine likened these committees to consensus panels
rendering “best” diagnoses or intervention strategies. This approach or some similar strategy,
maintained Levine, has the virtue of providing expeditious assistance to
researchers when and where they need it and in a way that is respectful both of
participants in research and of the importance of scientific knowledge being
produced.
Next
Steps
As
the goal of the meeting was to stimulate further research, the expected outcome
is a report that excludes recommendations.
Established in 1997 upon recognition of the need for more and better
demographic information, the Roundtable has held a series of workshops on
specific aspects of the demography of refugee and refugee-like situations. For more information see www4.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/cpop.nsf.
DEVELOPING A RESEARCH AGENDA ON STIGMA AND GLOBAL HEALTH
Stigma is a pervasive
problem that affects health globally, threatening individuals’ psychological
and physical well-being. It prevents
people from coming forward for diagnosis and impairs their ability to access
care or participate in research designed to find solutions for these
conditions. In response to the health
and social ramifications of stigma in the U.S. and other parts of the world in
particular, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently held a three-day
international conference, Stigma and Global Health: Developing a Research Agenda.
Notably, the conference is
the first international NIH meeting to address the relationship between stigma
and global health, the latter including infectious and noninfectious diseases
and behavioral and physical conditions rather than only one category of
disease. More exceptional is that a
significant number of the participants were from resource-poor countries where
stigma involves an enormous burden.
According to Fogarty
International Center (FIC) Director Gerald Keusch, health practitioners, medical
and social scientists, and policy and media experts from around the world met
to explore the relationship between stigma and public health, examine the
social and cultural determinants of stigma, explore how stigma prevents people
from seeking or getting treatment for disease, and determine future research
opportunities. The conference was
designed not only to better understand stigma’s social and cultural
determinants, but also to address the need to identify and test for effective
new behavioral interventions.
“Stigmatization of diseases
is universal, affecting all countries, all societies, all populations,” said
Keusch. It results from a belief that
there are differences between individuals; that belief is accompanied by fear,
he explained. Stigma research is
related to health because it deals with one of the major consequences of health
problems. While not all health problems
lead to stigma, he said, many of them do, and it has powerful consequences for
the people who are stigmatized, for the health care system, and for societies.
While focusing on a small
group of conditions (HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, mental health, alcohol and drug abuse,
and physical anomalies), the conference addressed a broad scope, addressing
such questions as: How does stigma contribute
to the disparities in care we often see in many societies throughout the
world? In what ways are the effects of
stigma tied to poor health? How do
differing levels of stigma in developed countries and resource-poor countries
affect health services?
According to Arthur Kleinman
of Harvard University, evidence is beginning to reveal the processes that
produce stigma. Additional research, he
said, is needed to address how to prevent or reduce it.
Led by the Fogarty
International Center, 14 NIH Institutes and Centers (including the Office of
Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and the Office of AIDS Research), the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, and the National Science Foundation cosponsored
the meeting.
The complete conference was
videotaped and is available on the NIH website. Continuing updates about stigma and global health research can
also be found at www.stigmaconference.nih.gov.
announcements
The President announced his intention to
nominate Lawrence A. Greenfeld to be Director of the Bureau of Justice
Statistics (BJS) at the Department of Justice on October 26. Greenfeld is presently Acting Director. He started as a staff statistician at BJS in
1982, and later served as Chief of the Correctional Statistics Programs, Deputy
Director of the National Statistical Programs, and Principal Deputy
Director. Greenfeld received his
Master’s degree from American University.
sources of research support
COSSA provides this information as a
service and encourages readers to contact the sponsoring agency for further
information. Additional application
guidelines and restrictions may apply.
National
Institute of Justice:
Investigator-Initiated
Research
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) receives and
reviews research proposals in response to the broad mandate of the Institute's
solicitation for investigator-initiated research. Proposals may be submitted under this program to explore topics
of relevance to State or local criminal justice policy or practice with
potential for informing policy and practice on a national basis, and proposals
to fill important gaps in the development of key areas of scientific knowledge.
In recent years, the investigator-initiated
solicitation has focused on concerns such as community crime prevention,
policing research, juvenile and criminal justice systems improvement,
corrections, alcohol- and drug-related crime and treatment, and criminal
behavior.
NIJ encourages researchers from all disciplines to
explore opportunities for collaborative efforts presented in this and directed
solicitations. Partnerships between
researchers and practitioners are encouraged.
Collaboration is a critical element of a researcher-practitioner
partnership.
Applications should address management of partnership
activities such as problem definition, development of assessment tools,
collection of data, and issues of privacy, confidentiality, and research
involving human subjects. Additionally,
while a proposed partnership may have State or local utility, it should also
have implications for national knowledge building.
NIJ's Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) is
providing some structure to the 2002 Investigator-Initiated Solicitation by
requesting that proposals be submitted under four broad topic areas: violence and victimization, drugs and crime,
crime control and prevention, and justice systems and criminal behavior
research, although any specific topic may be proposed.
For more information, see www.ncjrs.org/
txtfiles1/nij/sl000496.txt.
Applications are due January 16, 2002. The application package is available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/funding_app.htm.