The Research Advocate January 2012

In This Issue of The Research Advocate

Garfield Award Winners Lauded in Washington

Eugene Garfield, PhD; Amanda Kowalski, PhD; Al Hunt; and Mary Woolley

The authors of a landmark study that measured the effects of intensive medical care for at-risk newborns were feted at an event in Washington, DC, in December.

Amanda Kowalski, PhD, of Yale University, represented her three co-authors-Douglas Almond, PhD, of Columbia University; and Joseph Doyle, PhD, and Heidi Williams, PhD, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-in receiving the 2011 Garfield Economic Impact Award. The four wrote "Estimating Marginal Returns to Medical Care: Evidence from At-Risk Newborns," which appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Kowalski summarized her findings at the event in Washington. After an introduction by Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, a Research!America board member, Kowalski explained that her group's research had found that despite the cost of the intensive treatment for newborns weighing less than 1,500 grams, that cost is still well below most value of life estimates.

She then joined a panel discussion with Alan Guttmacher, MD, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Tomas Philipson, PhD, public policy professor at the University of Chicago and 2007 Garfield Award winner; and Billie Short, MD, chief of neonatology at Children's National Medical Center. Al Hunt of Bloomberg News served as the panel's moderator. For more information on the Garfield Economic Impact Awards, visit our website at www.researchamerica.org/economicimpact_award.

Johnson & Johnson, The Geoffery Beene Foundation Become Advocacy Award Sponsors

Johnson & Johnson and The Geoffrey Beene Foundation are the latest sponsors for Research!America's Advocacy Awards. Johnson & Johnson will be the 2012 Advocacy Awards Corporate Host, while The Geoffrey Beene Foundation has agreed to support the Builders of Science Award.

Johnson & Johnson is one of the country's largest medical companies, with interests in consumer goods, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. The Brunswick, NJ-based company is also a Research!America member.

The Geoffrey Beene Foundation is the benefactor for the Builders of Science Award through 2016. The award, established in 2007, recognizes those who have provided inspiration and determination in building an outstanding scientific research organization.

This year's winner is Donald Lindberg, MD, director of the National Library of Medicine; previous honorees include Nobel laureate David Baltimore, PhD; inventor and physicist Dean Kamen; Richard A. Lerner, MD, president of The Scripps Research Institute; Robert Mahley, MD, PhD, president emeritus of The J. David Gladstone Institutes; and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Policy Update

Congress has finally concluded the appropriations process for FY12, passing an omnibus spending bill that includes increases for the National Institutes of Health ($299 million) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ($25 million). The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was cut slightly, by $3 million, in FY12. The spending bill also includes a 0.19% across-the-board cut, which will slightly reduce enacted budgets in FY12. Earlier in the year, both the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration received modest budget increases of $173 million and $50 million, respectively.

Overall, this is welcome news at a time when the fiscal climate is especially challenging. While these increases do not make up for previous cuts in FY11, increases are a step in the right direction at a time when the U.S. is falling behind other nations and grant funding rates are at an all-time low.

In the wake of the failure of the supercommittee, discretionary spending still faces the specter of an 8% across-the-board cut starting in 2013. Should these cuts be enacted, it would devastate funding for health research, cutting billions from agency budgets.

Budget discussions for FY13 are already under way between the Office of Management and Budget and the executive agencies. The president's budget is scheduled to be released in February.

CPH Foundation Update

As of 2012, the Campaign for Public Health Foundation has become the primary organization in place of the Campaign for Public Health.

CPH was founded in 2004 as a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization to fight for increases in funding for the CDC. Early on, CPH found Members of Congress needed to bolster their knowledge of the CDC's work and portfolio. As a result, several targeted educational programs were launched to support those advocacy efforts. Fact sheets, tours of the CDC for congressional leaders and educational briefings focused on public health and the work of the CDC are just a few of the efforts that have been undertaken.

Three major external events culminated late in 2008, leading CPH staff and Board to shift strategies: The onset of the recession impacted fundraising, particularly to advocacy organizations; revamped lobbying regulations made educational programs under our (c)(4) nonprofit tax structure increasingly difficult to manage; and corporate donors, working to comply with these and other guidelines, began directing nonprofit support toward specific educational programs rather than lobbying campaigns.

To adjust to these changes, the Board and staff of the Campaign for Public Health began transitioning CPH's nonadvocacy programs over to a new sister 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization early in 2009, and The CPH Foundation was born.

As of January 1, 2012, The CPH Foundation has taken over as the primary organization, the culmination of a two-year effort.

United Health Foundation Releases the 22nd Edition of America's Health Rankings

United Health Foundation has released the 22nd edition of America's Health Rankings: A Call to Action for Individuals and Their Communities.

America's Health Rankings has been tracking and observing the health challenges faced by individuals in every state. Unfortunately, the results showed that since 1990s the annual improvement in America's health has declined by 69%. This year's edition shows that Vermont is at the top of the list of healthiest states for a second straight year. New Hampshire is second and Connecticut is No. 3, followed by Hawaii and Massachusetts. Mississippi is the least healthy state, followed by Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Alabama.

To see the full report, go to www.americashealthrankings.org.

Sebelius Speaks Out on Health, Health Disparities

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius During a recent speech, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the good health of Americans is "really an issue of national security."

"Seven out of 10 deaths are caused by chronic disease conditions, and 70 cents of every health care dollar is spent treating chronic diseases," Sebelius said later in a press conference, according to the Associated Press. "We spend eight cents-less than a dime-keeping people healthy in the first place."

Sebelius was one of the keynote speakers at the Fifth Annual Conference on Health Disparities, held in Charleston, SC. During her remarks, she said the country has a "moral and economic imperative to begin narrowing ... gaps in health." Racial and ethnic health disparities, she said, cost the U.S. economy more than $300 billion each year just in lost productivity.

National Cancer Act 40th Anniversary

The National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the National Cancer Act.

The National Cancer Act became law in 1971. Since then the 5-year survival rate for all cancers combined has risen; it's now at 68% for adults and 80% for children and adolescents.

The act was sponsored in the House by The Hon. Paul Rogers of Florida, Research!America's chairman emeritus, and in the Senate by The Hon. Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts.

Study: Data Network Could Shorten Time from Research to Clinical Use

A new report from the National Research Council has found that a new data network could drastically speed the application of research in clinical settings. The new network would integrate cutting-edge molecular research on diseases with clinical data on individual patients, leading to "a new taxonomy" that identifies disease by their molecular causes, not just physical symptoms.

The report also predicts improving biomedical research by giving researchers access to patients' clinical data while also maintaining patient privacy.

"Currently, a disconnect exists between the wealth of scientific advances in research and the incorporation of this information into the clinic," said Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, co-chair of the committee that authored the report and chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco. "Overall, opportunities are being missed to understand, diagnose and treat diseases more precisely, and to better inform health care decisions."

Advocacy & Action

Ask Our Next President About the Future of Health Research

As the presidential campaigns heat up, it's time to find out where the candidates stand on health research issues. Research!America has launched our award-winning voter education initiative, Your Candidates-Your Health 2012. This initiative, which can be found at www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org, gets candidates on the record with their views on health research and displays their responses to a questionnaire on our website.

We need your help TODAY to reach out to the candidates and ask them to complete this short questionnaire. Research to improve health is a critical issue for our nation, and Americans deserve to know where candidates stand. Together, we can put the spotlight on health research in the 2012 elections.

Member Spotlight: The American Society of Hypertension

The American Society of Hypertension (ASH) was founded in 1985 to facilitate communication among basic scientists, clinical researchers and others involved in the study of hypertension. Today, the New York City-based organization publishes two journals and provides resources for practitioners.

The organization's membership is made up of researchers and clinicians; soon to be leading the way is President-Elect William B. White, MD, professor of medicine and chief of the Hypertension and Clinical Pharmacology Division, Calhoun Cardiology Center at the University of Connecticut Health Center, who has been with the society since its founding.

ASH aims to take the latest biomedical research and understand how it can help hypertensive patients and their families. It does so with an annual scientific meeting, various regional and satellite symposia, and through the production of two journals: The Journal of Clinical Hypertension, which focuses on clinical treatment, and the Journal of the American Society of Hypertension, which focuses on translational research. In addition, the society has expanded its focus to the management of comorbid illnesses seen often in patients with hypertension, such as obesity, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and heart, kidney and brain disease.

Research!America plays an important role in ASH's mission.

"Our major mission at this point in time is to disseminate the latest medical knowledge from research to physicians in practice and the patients who they treat," White said. "So we do need the visibility that [Research!America] has in order for people to be aware of all the things we do."

To learn more, visit www.ash-us.org.

President's Message

As a momentous election year gets into full gear, Research!America is well positioned to help our members call on every candidate running for Congress and the presidency to make research for health a signature issue. Your regular attention to our voter education initiative, Your Candidates -Your Health, is critical in the months ahead. Feedback on our questionnaire to presidential hopefuls, and from President Obama, is posted as it is received; congressional candidates will be approached as their contests approach. I am calling on you to do more than observe what is posted, however, as the stakes are high: Those candidates who are ultimately elected are unlikely to be champions for research if they haven't heard from many members of the research stakeholder community during the campaign. We want candidates to see that support for research is a winner-for the country and for their chances of election. And we want to help you make the case. We have helped many of our members in the past few months; won't you get involved? Make it a New Year's resolution to do so. Call or email Max Bronstein at 571-482-2704 or mbronstein@researchamerica.org.

Consider, for example, if one member of a team that received an NIH grant committed just one hour of effort to public education (which includes voter education, not lobbying), that would be 50,693 hours of new attention to our issue. Add to those hours of impact the hours of others conducting, administering and supporting research, plus patients and their advocates, and it's not hard to envision an undeniable presence for research this election year. Let's do it!

Media Matters

Coverage of Your Candidates-Your Health, Opinion Polling

President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich shared their views on medical research by participating in Research!America's voter education initiative, Your Candidates-Your Health. Their responses were covered in articles published by UPI, The Hill, News Medical, Medical Daily, emaxHealth.com and the American Association for Dental Research. It was also mentioned in The New York Times comment section and in a letter to the editor authored by Research!America President and CEO Mary Woolley in the Des Moines (IA) Register in response to an opinion article by Raynard Kington, MD, PhD. Kington is currently president of Grinnell College and is the former acting director for the National Institutes of Health.

UPI and Medical Daily featured results from Research!America's latest national public opinion poll. The findings highlight Americans' overwhelming support for health research, including research support for job creation, chronic illness and prevention.

Greider On Risks of Reduced Research Funding

Carol Greider, PhD, Nobel laureate, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Research!America board member, wrote about the risks and consequences of reduced NIH funding in an opinion article in The Baltimore Sun. She indicated that funding must increase to match current demands to support the next generation of scientists and innovation.

Woolley Guest Column on Inside Science News Service

Inside Science News Service published a guest column by Woolley, "Where's the Recognition for Budding Nobel Laureates," to coincide with the Nobel awards ceremony. Woolley said this is not the time to scale back our investment in research, as scientists are on the brink of major scientific breakthroughs that could dramatically reduce the prevalence of life-threatening disease and disability in the U.S. and abroad.

Brinkley, Hotez Write Op-Ed on U.S. Competitiveness

Research!America emeritus director William Brinkley, PhD, cowrote an op-ed with Paul G. Rogers Society Ambassador Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, in the Houston Chronicle, stating that the "scientific impact of research papers originating from the U.S." has fallen to third place for the first time in 30 years, behind Germany and the United Kingdom. They claim flat funding from federal health agencies during the past eight years may have factored into these outcomes, and that something should be done to reverse this trend.

Akil: Is U.S. losing its ‘mojo' for science, innovation?

Huda Akil, PhD, past president of the Society of Neuroscience, a Research!America member, recalled her experiences as a young scientist entering the profession in the United States in an op-ed in The Washington Times. She expressed her deep concern that graduating scientists may not have the same experiences or zeal for the profession, because the U.S. may be losing its "mojo" in science and innovation.

Partnerships for Global Health Success: Spotlight on USAID

Wendy Taylor of USAID; Rick King, PhD, of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative; Hugh Chang of PATH; and Emily Moore of Temptime Corporation

This month's newsletter insert is Research!America's latest and concluding installment in the Global Health Agency fact sheet series. Featuring the U.S. Agency for International Development, it was released at a briefing that spotlighted USAID's contributions to global health R&D and demonstrated how public-private partnerships have contributed to the agency's success. The event was co-sponsored by and featured panelists from the Global Health Technologies Coalition, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), PATH, Temptime Corporation and USAID. Health Affairs editor-in-chief and Research!America board member Susan Dentzer moderated the discussion.

The discussion revolved around how USAID's public-private partnerships have helped it create and apply "game-changing innovations" to its global health work worldwide. These partnerships have brought together a diverse mix of scientific and logistical expertise; reduced individual risk through the sharing of technical resources; and, as in the case of vaccine vial monitors, produced health technologies to improve health while making current health systems more efficient. The discussion ended on how these partnerships encourage domestic economic growth and help improve American health by engaging in research and development that produces health technologies with universal benefits.

A video of the webcast can be viewed at www.researchamerica.org/app/webroot/blog/?p=3710.

Global Health R&D Advocacy

Thought leaders in global health gathered at the offices of The Atlantic in Washington, DC, in December to discuss the latest breakthroughs and what it's going to take to advance global health research and development. Measuring the return on investment by lives saved, global health R&D will yield some of the greatest accomplishments of our lifetime.

Product development partnerships (PDPs) were one of the key topics discussed at the thought leader gathering. These partnerships have taken the best resources from academia, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, philanthropy, and governments to address some of the world's most pressing health problems. Advancing PDPs will require funding from multiple sources and the continued collaboration of a variety of public and private stakeholders.

As we foster new global health R&D dream teams to get the job done, let's think big and act big-and encourage our neighbors and friends to join in the push. Global health breakthroughs have iterative effects that extend far beyond their lifesaving benefits for the world's poorest populations; for example, these breakthroughs foster global stability and advance medical science to the benefit of developed and developing nations alike. We should make sure that in 2012, our elected officials know how important research and development for global health is. Whether the motivation is philanthropic, diplomatic or patriotic, we're all in the business of better health.

January 2012 Principal Partners