The Research Advocate April 2010

In this Issue of The Research Advocate

From Washington

Champions Support Research as Health Reform Passes
Public Health Research Capitol Hill Briefing 
NIH and FDA Announce Collaboration to Fast Track Innovations

From Research!America

2010 National Forum and 14th Annual Advocacy Awards Insert (PDF)
Research!America Welcomes Five New Board Members 
Global Health R&D Advocacy

Regular Features

President's Message
Member Spotlight: Elsevier
Spotlight on Congress: Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA)

In the News

Media Matters

Download the entire April 2010 Research Advocate and the 2010 Advocacy Awards and National Forum insert as PDFs.

Champions Support Research as Health Reform Passes

Research!America has been working to make research a priority in the health reform debate and will continue to do so as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act goes into effect. The House of Representatives passed the bill on March 21, and President Obama signed it two days later. On March 25, the Senate and House approved the accompanying package of revisions.

Prior to the Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform that was convened by the White House on February 25, Research!America released a statement urging lawmakers to make research part of the discussion. The health reform legislation does include some provisions that will impact research, including the establishment of the Cures Acceleration Network at the National Institutes of Health, a framework for comparative effectiveness research and a temporary tax credit for small companies developing therapeutics.

Although health reform has been the top issue on Capitol Hill, Congress has started work on the FY 2011 budget and appropriations process. Reps. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Susan Davis (D-CA), Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) invited their colleagues to join them on a letter to the House Appropriations Committee in support of increased funding for NIH in FY 2011. The letter stated that the advocacy community is recommending $35 billion for NIH and that the congressional members are "seeking an increase for NIH of at least 7%, with some of us believing that the appropriate funding increase would be as much as 12%." The 12% increase would result in $35 billion for NIH. A similar letter to the House Appropriations Committee requesting continued support for NIH funding was circulated by Reps. Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Michael Castle (R-DE).

Visit www.researchamerica.org/advocacy for updates.

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2010 National Forum and 14th Annual Advocacy Awards

Download a PDF about our March 16 events

Public Health Research Capitol Hill Briefing

The Campaign for Public Health Foundation, in partnership with the Congressional Study Group on Public Health, hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on March 12 that focused on the role of public health research in addressing our communities' health needs.

Speakers included Anne Schuchat, MD, director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC; David Jernigan, PhD, associate professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and executive director, Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth; Joanne Bartkus, PhD, director, Public Health Laboratory Division, Minnesota Department of Health; and Richard A. Crosby, PhD, director of a University of Kentucky Prevention Research Center.

Thanks to a generous grant from Pitney Bowes, the CPH Foundation developed a concise booklet describing the diverse field of public health. "Where is Public Health?" will help to facilitate a greater understanding of this often misunderstood topic. Download it at www.cphfoundation.org/documents/PublicHealth_4pg.pdf.

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NIH and FDA Announce Collaboration to Fast Track Innovations

The National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration announced a new initiative in efforts to speed the translation of scientific discovery to health care practice.

In a statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the collaboration "will go a long way toward fostering access to the safest and most effective therapies for the American people."

A Joint NIH-FDA Leadership Council will be established to tackle important public health issues and fund projects that provide new ways to evaluate the safety and efficacy of medical products. This effort to fast-track innovations is built upon the NIH's experience of supporting new discoveries in the laboratory and the FDA's experience in regulating drugs and medical devices.  

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Research!America Welcomes Five New Board Members

At our March 16, 2010, Annual Meeting of members, Research!America elected five new members to the Board of Directors.

Susan Dentzer is editor- in-chief of Health Affairs, the nation's leading journal of health policy. She is also an on-air analyst on health issues with "The PBS NewsHour," where she served as health correspondent for a decade.

Victor J. Dzau, MD, serves as chancellor for health affairs, Duke University, and president and CEO, Duke University Health System. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and director of Molecular and Genomic Vascular Biology. Previously, he was the Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic (Medicine) at Harvard Medical School.

Larry J. Shapiro, MD, is an internationally renowned research geneticist and pediatrician and serves as executive vice chancellor of medical affairs at Washington University in St. Louis, dean of the School of Medicine and Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor.

Ellen V. Sigal, PhD, is the founder and chair of Friends of Cancer Research, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit. Sigal holds leadership positions with a broad range of cancer advocacy and public policy organizations and academic centers. She has worked in cancer research for more than 20 years. Sigal received a Research!America Advocacy Award for Exceptional Contributions as a Volunteer Advocate in 2004.

John T. Watters, MD, is Pfizer's vice president for external medical affairs and is responsible for relations with medical societies, academic institutions, and government health bodies around the world. Watters also represents Pfizer on issues of corporate responsibility and human rights, especially relating to raising political will for the plight of people with HIV/AIDS. In recent years, he has been part of raising the medical voice of the pharmaceutical industry in civil society.

Read more at www.researchamerica.org/board_directors.

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Global Health R&D Advocacy

March 24 marked World TB Day, an annual international effort to raise awareness about this ancient disease that, even today, remains a public health threat. Worldwide, tuberculosis infects one third of the population and is responsible for nearly two million deaths each year. In the U.S., 13,000 TB cases were reported in 2007.

Research!America and the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development have extended an invitation to New Jersey's Governor and congressional delegation to tour the New Jersey Medical School Global TB Institute and meet with Executive Director Lee Reichman, MD, MPH. One of only four CDC-funded TB Regional Training and Medical Consultation Centers in the U.S., the Institute is internationally recognized for its effective treatment model for TB.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced a resolution to support World TB Day and emphasized the steps needed to overcome this disease. Reichman urged other congressional members to follow Brown's lead and take action against TB. "Our nation's leaders must get involved. We need more leaders to speak out and support global health research funding, because controlling TB here means controlling TB everywhere."

Read more from Reichman and TB in the U.S. at www.researchamerica.org/blog/?=1364.

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President's Message

Following our highly successful March 16 National Forum and Advocacy Awards and coinciding with the new era of health (insurance) reform, Research!America is prepared to aggressively pursue our objectives of linking research to cost-savings and quality improvement in health care delivery, strengthening the economic case for increased research investment, and building and supporting congressional champions for research. I reported on these and all our objectives at our March 16 annual meeting (see www.researchamerica.org/2010AnnualMtg).

Our recently updated fact sheet on research as an economic driver (www.researchamerica.org/issue_briefs) has become a useful new advocacy tool. New poll data will soon be released to help make the case for greater investment in research.

We will soon launch our 2010 Your Candidates-Your Health initiative for the run-up to the elections, to assure that congressional candidates, incumbents and challengers, are addressing our issues. This non-partisan voter education initiative is a unique, innovative tool that is having impact.

As demonstrated at our National Forum, we are well-aligned with leadership of the research-based federal agencies, voluntary health community, academic and industry, and like-minded advocacy groups. And they are aligned with each other-essential if we are to compress the estimated 17-year gap from discovery to patient and community while assuring that innovation is rapid in prevention and treatment.

I thank our board members Billy Tauzin, Advocacy Awards Corporate Host; Harry Johns, Advocacy Awards Committee chair; and all supporters of our 2010 Advocacy Awards and National Forum.

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Member Spotlight: Elsevier

As the world's leading publisher of science and health information, Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students and health and information professionals worldwide.

Elsevier's work is centered on the mission of advancing science and health-helping the scientific community to make discoveries, improve health and save lives.

"We do that by working with a global network of scientists, authors, editors and reviewers to turn research results into quality, useable scientific information," said David A. Ruth, senior vice president of global corporate relations. "Through the journals we publish, the work of researchers is peer-reviewed; published, protected and preserved; and disseminated to science and health communities worldwide."

Elsevier combines quality information with cutting-edge technology to make researchers, clinicians and other users more productive, helping them spend less time finding information and more time using it to produce better outcomes for patients and for science.

Innovation and investment have made quality scientific information available to more users than ever before.

"We've worked to extend the benefits of research information to new audiences and communities, supporting programs such as Research4Life that make journal articles available to researchers and clinicians in countries that could not otherwise have afforded it," Ruth said. "We see firsthand the power and potential of public and private investment in research to produce breakthroughs in both knowledge and practice."

Learn more at http://www.elsevier.com/.

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Spotlight on Congress: Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) 

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) recognizes that investing in research can improve health. He was first elected to serve Washington's 8th district in 2004. At the beginning of the 111th Congress, Reichert was appointed to the Committee of Ways and Means, putting him at the forefront of the current health care debate.

Reichert has been a consistent supporter of health research funding. The past few years, he has led a bipartisan effort with Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA) to gather a large coalition of congressional members calling for strong increases for National Institutes of Health funding.

Emphasizing the importance of strengthened investment, Reichert said, "The NIH represents our greatest hope for finding cures and treatments for the chronic diseases and debilitating conditions that afflict millions of Americans. NIH research is also essential to containing soaring medical costs that threaten the viability of our nation's health care system. A substantial portion of projected health care spending comes from expenses associated with managing diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, and many other chronic or life-threatening diseases."

Reichert is an active leader on advancing children's health care issues. He founded and serves as a co-chair for the Congressional Children's Health Care Caucus.

Reichert also recognizes the importance of math and science education to U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. He serves as a member of the House Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Caucus and supports continued investment in STEM education at all levels.

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Media Matters

Francis Collins on NIH Priorities and Post-ARRA Research

Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health, discussed his priorities for NIH on the "Charlie Rose" show on PBS, the Earth & Sky science radio show and "The Diane Rehm Show" on NPR. In all three interviews he expressed concern about the drop-off in research funding once American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds are obligated. He also discussed results and promising potential discoveries from NIH-funded science. According to Science magazine's blog ScienceNow, Collins recently said that he was worried innovative research would slow down once the ARRA funds are gone. Collins also authored an article in PARADE magazine on advanced medical imaging technologies.

Research in Health Reform

The Honorable Bill Frist, MD, former U.S. Senator from Tennessee; Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution and a Research!America board member; James Pinkerton, FOX News Channel contributor; Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development; and The Honorable Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote a collection of op-eds in The New York Times on health care reform. A few of the op-eds emphasized the role of research.

Research!America's Mary Woolley wrote a guest post on Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation blog as part of the American People's Online Health Summit. She wrote that investing in research has provided an estimated 50-fold return to the economy and significantly increased life expectancy, and should be a centerpiece of health reform. Woolley and The Honorable John Edward Porter, Research!America chair, were quoted on the essential role of research in health reform in the Biotechnology Industry Organization's blog I Am Biotech.

Research!America Advocacy Awards In the News

Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and NIH Director Francis Collins gave a musical performance at Research!America's Advocacy Awards (see insert). The event and performance received coverage in The Hill's Washington Scene section twice and The Hill's Capital Living section. Geoffrey Beene Foundation CEO G. Thompson Hutton, Esq.'s Advocacy Award was cited in MR Magazine, and Obey's Advocacy Award was featured in the Rhinelander Daily News (Rhinelander, WI).

New Books on Research Advocacy

The Scientist magazine covered the release of a new guidebook on communications for scientists: Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance your Work. Research!America's Mary Woolley wrote a jacket quote in a recently published guidebook by James Thomas Williams: The Patient Advocate's Handbook.

An Interview with Tadataka Yamada

The New York Times featured an interview with Tadataka Yamada, MD, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Program and a Research!America board member, on his work style and career advice.

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Special Thanks to New and Renewing Research!America Alliance Members

Not yet a member? Join Research!America today at www.researchamerica.org/become_member.

Download the entire April 2010 Research Advocate and the 2010 Advocacy Awards and National Forum insert as PDFs.