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FY 2003 SPENDING BILLS MOVING MORE SWIFTLY With much discussion about a lame-duck session following the November elections, with the most recent Federal budget deficit projection indicating a ballooning shortfall in the next few years, and with the battle over spending as part of the jockeying for advantage in the congressional elections, both Houses of Congress have suddenly picked up the pace in considering the FY2003 appropriations bills. Senate Democrats have begun to push legislation, including the huge Labor, Health and Human Services, Education (Labor-H) appropriation and the Commerce, Justice, State spending bill, which previously had been thought unlikely to come up for consideration until September at the earliest. In addition, the Senate VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Subcommittee will mark up its bill, which includes funding for the National Science Foundation, on July 23. Furthermore, House conservatives, concerned about the possibility of increased spending after the election, have elicited a commitment from the House leadership to take up their version of the Labor-H bill in early September, right after the traditional August recess. The following stories report on what has happened so far. Senate Labor-HHS On July 18, the Senate Appropriations Committee, following the lead of its Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-H), passed the Fiscal Year 2003 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill which provides $27 billion in funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $3.7 billion and $25 million more than the President requested. The proposed funding for the agency completes the five-year plan to double the agency’s budget. The Senate bill also provides substantial funding increases for education programs. Overall, the bill appropriates $136.6 billion - a seven percent increase over last year - in discretionary funding for the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Labor. The bill, which has not been numbered, restores the $421 million cut proposed by the President to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and provides the agency with a budget of $4.3 billion. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is funded to the tune of $308.6 million, including $5 million set aside for bioterrorism and $5 million for patient safety. The bill also eliminates the proposed $10 million transfer from AHRQ to the Bureau of the Census and completely funds AHRQ with budget authority. For the Head Start program, the legislation provides $6.87 billion, an increase of $322 million, allowing for the participation of 17,000 additional children. The Committee’s action clears the massive funding bill for consideration by the full Senate but no further action is expected until September. The House, with an allocation of $5 billion less than that of the Senate, is not expected to mark up its version of the bill until September. Senate CJS The Appropriations Committee also cleared the FY2003 Commerce-Justice-State (CJS) appropriations bill, following Subcommittee action, on July 18. Like its Labor-H counterpart, the legislation, which allocates a total of $43.5 billion to the three Departments and a handful of related agencies, is still unnumbered. The Office of Justice Programs (OJP), which oversees the National Institute of Justice, was appropriated $4.8 billion. This is a boost of $1.2 billion over last year’s funding, owing to an increase for the Office of Domestic Preparedness, which oversees programs related to homeland security. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, which is also a part of OJP, was funded at a level of $298.4 million. This is slightly less than last year’s level of $305.9 million, but it compares favorably with the $257.8 million president’s request. The Bureau of the Census, which is overseen by the Department of Commerce, was hit hard by the bill. Total funding for the Bureau is $496.8 million. While this number is $6 million larger than the FY2002 figure, it represents a sizeable decrease from the Administration’s requested budget of $737.6 million. Turning to the State Department, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs was appropriated $237.8 million, a minimal increase from last year’s $237 million figure, and a slight decrease from the president’s $245.3 million request. It’s unlikely that further action will occur on the legislation in either house of Congress until September. House Agriculture Markup On July 11 the House Appropriations Committee held a markup for the still unnumbered FY2003 Agriculture Appropriations bill and reported the measure to the full House. The legislation, which was first approved by the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies on June 26, lays out total FY2003 funding of $17.601 billion. This number compares favorably with both the FY2002 funding level ($16.553 billion) and the president’s request ($17.421 billion). Looking at specific accounts within the bill, the Hatch Act formula funds program, which is located within the Cooperative State, Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), was allocated $182 million. For the last several years, the program has been level funded at $180.1 million, which was the amount recommended by the Administration’s FY2003 budget. Also within CSREES, the National Research Initiative Competitive Grants program (NRI) received $130 million, $9.5 million more than last year. The president’s request was $240 million, but that figure is distorted because the amount was also meant to compensate for the zero funding of the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems (IFAFS). The House Committee again prohibited funding for IFAFS in this year’s bill. The CSREES Special Grants category was stocked with $102.8 million worth of goodies, down from $112.2 million in the current year funding. As with all Administrations, the Bush team tried to severely limit the number, calling for only $18.3 million in the proposed budget. Looking at other social and behavioral science research agencies with the Department of Agriculture, the bill appropriates $73.3 million to the Economic Research Service (ERS) and $137.9 million to the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The ERS received $67.2 million in FY2002 appropriations and $82 million in the FY2003 president’s request. For the NASS, the respective numbers are $113.8 million and $149.1 million. It’s unclear when the full House will take up the measure; the Senate Appropriations Committee is set to do so the week of July 22. The FY2002 Agriculture Appropriation Act wasn’t signed into law until late November. NEW DEPARTMENT EMERGES FROM SELECT COMMITTEE: S&T GETS UNDERSECRETARY At a day-long markup on July 19, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, chaired by Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), forged the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Despite recommendations from House Committees and Democrats on the Select Committee to alter the proposed legislation (H.R. 5005), the bill emerged pretty much along the lines of the President’s request. One difference is the creation of an Undersecretary for Science and Technology. The position had been recommended by the House Science Committee, chaired by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), following its markup of the proposed department-creating legislation on July 10. In testifying to the Select Committee on July 17, both Boehlert and Ranking Science Committee Democrat Rep. Ralph Hall (D-TX) emphasized the need for a separate component in DHS to coordinate research and development. As Boehlert told the Select Committee: “The Science Committee felt…the bill did not spell out the R&D responsibilities or activities of the new Department, did not give them a central focus, and did not designate a senior official who would be accountable for - or for that matter, have the background to run - the Department’s R&D programs. We thought that was a recipe for failure, and we can’t afford failure in this area.” During the Science Committee markup, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) continued to press his interest in the social/behavioral research and training aspects of homeland security (see Update, July 8, 2002). Baird succeeded, both with the Science Committee and the Select Committee, in adding to the section of H.R. 5005 dealing with Emergency Preparedness and Response language providing for “interventions to treat the psychological consequences of terrorist attacks or major disasters and provision for training for mental health workers to respond effectively to such attacks or disasters.” A provision that would have made explicit that the DHS R&D efforts should include the social and behavioral sciences was not accepted because, according to committee staff, there was no explicit mention of the other sciences in the legislation. The Science Committee did include the following language in its report to the Select Committee: "Activities conducted under [the Undersecretary for Science and Technology] shall include research on behavioral and social issues related to homeland security, which may include research on psychological stresses on victims of and responders to terrorist acts and on effective treatments, human factors associated with the interface between technology and human behavior, assessment and evaluation of biometric identification technologies, and decision making and management under extreme conditions." An amendment to the bill initiated by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to establish university-based centers “to provide a coordinated, university-based approach to enhance the Nation’s homeland security,” survived the Science Committee markup by a vote of 17-15. When the Select Committee took up H.R. 5005 this provision was not in the Chairman’s mark. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), however, sponsored a version of the amendment that would fund one center and it returned to the bill. In competition for this Center the applicant university must meet numerous criteria, including having an agricultural college. This would eliminate many top research universities from the competition, including Yale, as noted by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) during the discussion on DeLay’s amendment. The Science Committee also voted to create a Homeland Security Institute (HSI) following the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences report: Making the Nation Safer (see Update, July 8, 2002). Rep. David Wu (D-OR) sponsored a successful amendment to make disaster decisionmaking part of the HSI’s agenda. The Select Committee rejected the HSI, with DeLay arguing that it was unnecessary to create another quasi-governmental, independent R&D entity to provide advice to the new Department. The legislation does, however, allow the DHS to contract with already existing R&D entities such as the RAND and MITRE corporations. H.R. 5005 will go to the House floor the week of July 22 with approval expected, although many of the issues discussed at the Select Committee markup will surface again on the House floor, especially civil service protection for DHS employees. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), will begin to provide input on this issue, also the week of July 22. The House will recess at the end of that week until after Labor Day. The Senate will remain in session an extra week before leaving for recess. The goal is still to get the DHS legislation to the President before September 11, which means a lot of work for congressional staff during August. senate help committee approves nomination of carmona as surgeon general On July 17 the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee unanimously approved Richard Carmona's nomination for the position of U.S. surgeon general. At Carmona’s July 9 confirmation hearing Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA) noted that the position “is one of the most important jobs in our national government. . .The Surgeon General promotes and protects the health of all Americans, whether it’s providing care through the Public Health Service, addressing the threat of bioterrorism, urging our citizens to adopt healthy lifestyles and to stop smoking, or helping young mothers nourish healthy children.” Kennedy emphasized the need for a “strong and independent” surgeon general “who will put public health first, and leave politics and ideology well behind.” Noting Carmona’s background (trauma surgeon, decorated police officer, former health care administrator, former Green Beret, with a professional mark in the fields of trauma care and bioterrorism preparedness), he expressed his hope that the nominee will “bring the same commitment and same success. . . to promoting the health of our Nation.” Carmona explained to the Committee that while many have wondered about his seemingly “disjointed career paths,” for him his career choices were “always complimentary in regards to protecting the public’s health, safety and welfare.” According to Carmona, the events of September 11 and his five decades of careers “suddenly all merged and took on a new and even more significant meaning as ‘homeland defense and domestic preparedness’ became household words.” Carmona related that among his many discussions with members of Congress, a common thread emerged – prevention. “Maintaining health and wellness and preventing disease and injury is the highest priority for me,” said Carmona. The nominee related that per the direction of the President, the role of U.S. surgeon general has broadened significantly from the traditional public health responsibilities to now include an expanded leadership role as part of the team “addressing” homeland defense and domestic preparedness. A significant part of this new preparedness endeavor, he noted, is to build, strengthen, and expand the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. Carmona’s nomination now goes before the full Senate for consideration. NSF HOLDS WORKSHOP ON RISK ANALYSIS AND DECISION MAKING Reflecting the interest of John Graham, Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the National Science Foundation (NSF) invited 25 scientists to participate in a workshop on Integrated Research in Risk Analysis and Decision Making on July 17 and 18. Led by NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences’ Directorate (SBE) program in Decision, Risk and Management Science (DRMS), the workshop noted the solid foundation that decades of research in this field have produced. This foundation is built on studies of risk perception, communication and management; judgments under conditions of uncertainty; biases and framing processes that influence risk perceptions and subsequent behavior; comparisons of lay and expert perceptions of risk; individual, group, organizational, and societal responses to natural and technological hazards; individual and group differences that affect risk-related perceptions and behavior; processes involved in trade-offs among risks; the formulations, adoption, and implementation or risk-related policies; the economic dimensions of risk and its management; financial strategies for sharing and managing risks; and other related topics. With heightened awareness of risk in health and environmental policy, and most particularly, terrorism, the workshop participants discussed such issues as the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of risk; the politics and political processes in public institutions to deal with risk; the communication of risks; and the management of risks. NSF hopes to produce a report from the workshop and eventually a solicitation for increased research in this area. The participants were asked to think about potential NSF funding mechanisms outside the usual individual investigator grant and the large center. Among the suggestions were: small centers or groups; networks; or a national laboratory. The group also suggested holding a major national conference on risk and decision making. America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2002 The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics recently released its sixth report, America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2002. The report presents 24 key indicators on aspects of children’s lives (e.g. economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education). The 2002 report updates the information in the previous five reports. Highlights from the report include: · Children are projected to remain a substantial percentage of the total population. In 2000, there were 70.4 million children under the age of 18 in the United States. · The racial and ethnic diversity of America’s children continues to increase. In 2000, 64 percent of U.S. children were white, non-Hispanic; 15 percent were black, non-Hispanic; and 1 percent was American Indian/Alaska Native. The number of Hispanic children increased more rapidly than any other racial and ethnic group, growing from 9 percent of the child population in 1980 to 16 percent in 2000. · The poverty rate for children living with family members has decreased substantially since 1993. The decrease in poverty is apparent for children in female-householder families and is more pronounced for black children. · By 2000, 70 percent of children living in poverty and 84 percent of children living at or above poverty were in good or excellence health. Critical Gaps in Data America’s Children 2002 identifies critical gaps in the data available on children and youth. To compensate, the Forum is exploring ways to collect new measures and improve existing ones in some of the areas. In other areas, Forum agencies have “successfully fielded surveys incorporating some new measures but they are not yet available on a regular basis for monitoring purposes.” The report notes that current data collection systems at the national level “do not provide extensive detailed information on children’s lives, their families and their caregivers.” While certain topical databases provide some of this information, the report call for the collection of data across domains of child well-being regularly enough to discern trends in where, how, and with whom children spend their time. More data are also needed on: family interactions, time use, and children’s environments. According to the report, national indicators in several key dimensions of health are not yet available because of difficulty in definitions and measurements, particularly using survey research. Disability, mental health, and child abuse and neglect are health-related areas that have been identified as priorities for indicator development by the Forum. In the area of behavior and social environment, the report calls for the development of indicators for positive behaviors, neighborhood environment, and youth violence. While American’s Children 2002 offers indicators of young children’s exposure to reading and early childhood education, the report notes that a regular source of data is needed to monitor specific social, intellectual, and emotional skills of preschoolers over time. The 2002 report provides some information on economic and food security. Additional indicators needed in this area include: economic security, long-term poverty among families with children, and homelessness. At present, there are no regularly-collected data on the number of homeless children in the U.S. The Forum The Forum is a formal structure for collaboration among 20 Federal agencies that produce or use statistical data on children and families. Founded in 1994, it was formally established by Executive Order No. 13045 in 1997 to foster the coordination and integration of the collection and reporting of data on children and families. America’s Children 2002 can be found on the web at http://childstats.gov. 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. SSRC Sexuality Research Fellowship Program The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is seeking applications for its sexuality research fellowship program, providing dissertation and postdoctoral support for social and behavioral research on sexuality conducted in the United States. Funds are provided by the Ford Foundation. The SSRC expects to award approximately ten dissertation and four postdoctoral fellowships in 2003. As the program is designed to provide training experience, only joint fellowship applications will be considered – from the applicant and research advisor/associate who will be required to function in a monitoring capacity. The Council is looking for applications which: · Contribute to a more thorough understanding of human sexuality in order to inform programmatic/community efforts and public policy regarding current social and health issues; · Develop interdisciplinary approaches, both theoretical and applied, in which researchers from different social science disciplines participate; · Propose methodological diversity and innovation utilizing qualitative and/or quantitative research methods that generate new theories and test new methodology. Dissertation fellowships will provide 12 continuous months of support in the amount of $28,000 to cover direct research costs, matriculation fees, and living expenses. Postdoctoral fellowships will provide from 12 to 24 continuous months of support in the amount of $38,000 per year to cover research costs and living expenses. Either one or two year applications will be considered. A final report is due upon termination of the award for all fellows. Applications must be received on or before December 16, 2002. Women and members of minority groups are especially encouraged to apply. For more information, please contact the SSRC at (212) 377-2700 or srfp@ssrc.org. NSF International Research Fellowship Program The National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking applications for its International Research Fellowship Program (IRFP). The IRFP is designed to introduce scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers to research opportunities abroad, thereby furthering NSF’s goal of establishing productive, mutually-beneficial relationships between U.S. and foreign science and engineering communities. The awards are available for research in any field of science and engineering research or education supported by NSF. Applicants are encouraged to consider any site that will provide a unique and beneficial research experience. Appropriate organizations include: institutions of higher education, industrial research institutions/ laboratories, government research institutes/ laboratories/centers, foreign sites or centers of excellence and nonprofit research organizations. Support may be requested for residence abroad for three to 24 months. (This period must be specified in the proposal at the time of application so that it may be reviewed.) The 24-month period may include up to one year (or some portion of the total duration) at the foreign site and one year (or duration equal to the foreign tenure) as a "re-entry" component in the United States. The range of award amounts in the most recent competition was $60,000 to $150,000. Awardees are expected to work full time on their research projects. Support is not provided for teaching, writing textbooks, preparation of prior research results for publication, or similar activities. Applicants must have been awarded a doctoral degree within three years of the application date or expect to receive the degree by the award date. Applications are due by October 8, 2002. For more information contact Susan Parris, Program Manager for NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering, at (703) 292-8711 or sparris@nsf.gov. More information can also be found on the web at: www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02149/nsf02149.htm. Stigma and Global Health Stigma, when applied to health conditions, is a globally pervasive problem threatening psychological and physical health. It helps to perpetuate health inequalities. The National Institutes of Health, including the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, Fogarty International Center, and Health Research Services Administration, along with ten other NIH Institutes and Centers, are seeking to stimulate investigator-initiated research on the role of stigma in health, and on how to intervene to prevent or mitigate its negative effects on the health and welfare of individuals, groups and societies world wide. The request-for-applications (RFA TW-03-001) is designed to address the recommendations developed in conjunction with a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored International Conference on Stigma and Global Health: Developing a Research Agenda, September 5-7, 2001 (See Update, November 19, 2001). The objective of the RFA is to encourage research across a variety of disciplines including the biomedical, social and behavioral sciences, to study the etiology of stigma in relation to public health. Relevant issues include:
Other sponsors of the RFA include: the Office of AIDS Research, the Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. |
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