Research!America

Ask the Experts Live Webcasts: Candidates’ Advisers on Health Reform Plans

Sen. Obama’s Adviser: Wednesday, October 8, 11 a.m. ET
Sen. McCain’s Adviser: Thursday, October 16, 1 p.m. ET

Join kaisernetwork.org’s Ask the Experts for live webcasts with advisers to presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama discussing the candidates’ health reform proposals, which differ significantly in their aim and approach. Sen. Obama has proposed a plan that builds on the existing employer-based system, while expanding public programs, putting in place new insurance regulations and providing new coverage options. Sen. McCain’s plan would replace the existing tax preference for employer-based coverage with a refundable tax credit for the purchase of private insurance, and allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. During these live webcasts, details of each candidate’s proposals and the rationale behind them will be discussed and questions from viewers will be answered by the candidates’ advisers.

Watch the live webcast on kaisernetwork.org.
After the live program, a podcast, transcript and an archived version of the webcast will be available for viewing at any time.

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has released its October 2008 issue of ASBMB Today, which features a cover story “The Presidential Candidates on Biomedical Research.”

The article includes a list of resources for finding out the candidates’ positions on biomedical research, including Research!America’s Your Candidates-Your Health.

An op-ed by former Research!America intern Andrew Gore, a third-year medical student at Vanderbilt University, appears in today’s The Tennessean.

With the presidential debates coming to town today, Nashville gets to show that it is more than just a city of great music.

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Only four of the 30 Tennessee candidates have responded to Research!America’s questionnaire at www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org to share their positions on issues affecting health care and research.

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The only way to find out if our elected officials are going to support NIH funding is to ask them.

I have. Have you?

Many thanks to Andrew for getting this important information out to the readers of The Tennessean. Tune in to the debate tonight to see if Andrew’s question gets asked to the candidates!

In the must-read for research advocates “Where’s the Biomed Bailout?,” Rick Weiss writes today on Science Progress, “Congress last week passed a continuing resolution that will keep the National Institutes of Health budget flat-out flat for the fifth year running. The policy is flat-out wrong, as Americans who have diseases that five or ten years from now should be curable are going to have to wait a lot longer.”

And while the negative impacts may not be as obvious or immediate as the fallout from the housing, credit and stock market crises, the repercussions of this pound-foolish parsimony promise to be massive.

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Like cars hitting their brake lights on the Washington beltway as they come upon a rush-hour traffic jam, scientists who have just gotten up to speed on projects taking aim at humankind’s greatest causes of suffering—diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and infectious diseases—have had to stop what they were doing, scramble for temporary funding from their universities or research institutes, and in many cases start looking for other work. For those who stick with it, as postdocs or other underlings laboring in the low-paid laboratorial labyrinth, the years tick by with little in the way of rewards.

Because of the public opinion polls we commission at Research!America, we know that Americans want the National Institutes of Health to receive more funding. In a recent survey, 45% said investment in NIH should be increased (see the finding from our Your Candidates-Your Health survey).

Americans are also willing to pay more in taxes to fund medical research (57% said they would be willing to pay $1 per week more in our 2007 National Survey, available in our Poll Data Summary.

So, Americans want more research and are willing to pay for it. And we also know that investment in research can save money in the long run and has positive impacts on the economy. (We’ve collected examples of this positive impact in all 50 states in our Economic Impact by State tool.)

An important editorial by Research!America President Mary Woolley and Jim Wells, PhD, of the University of California at San Francisco, appears in today’s issue of Science magazine.

The editorial (”A Populist Movement for Health?”) calls on the scientific community to launch a bold strategy to stimulate innovation and enlightened public policy patterned after Al Gore’s successful efforts to highlight the perils of global warming.

Wells and Woolley write that the most important element of such a strategy “is to identify the ‘Al Gore(s)’ of basic science. This requires increased efforts and funding from scientific societies and advocacy organizations that are empowered to deliver compelling messages to media and elected officials and can identify and provide financial support for communicators for basic science. The research community needs champions who can articulate a compelling long-term vision for research that can accelerate the needed transition from a crisis/symptom mode to a prevention/cure mode of health care.”

They conclude, “Now is the time to take bold actions both personally and through advocacy groups to accelerate public awareness in support of basic research. By failing to do so, we consign ourselves and future generations to a world with little hope for dramatically improving human health and well-being.”

Read the full text online (registration required).

Sign-on to Letter to the Candidates

The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of American Universities are inviting organizations to sign-on to a letter to Senators John McCain and Barack Obama urging them to appoint a science adviser before taking office. Research!America has endorsed this letter and we encourage your organization to do the same.

The text of the letter is below. AAAS and AAU are collecting the signatures. Learn more about the letter and sign-on your organization now. The deadline to participate is October 10.
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To Senators John McCain and Barack Obama:

The next President of the United States will face a wide range of domestic and international challenges, from financial and regulatory reform, to health care and rising energy costs, from global climate change to ensuring U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. These challenges share one thing in common: long-term solutions that will be impossible without groundbreaking scientific and technological advances. It is therefore critical that the next President seek out and rely upon sound scientific and technological advice early and often in the new Administration.

Your responses to the ScienceDebate2008 questions reflect your acknowledgment of the important relationship that science will play in a new Administration. With this in mind, it is essential that you be prepared to quickly appoint a science adviser who is a nationally respected leader with the appropriate scientific, management and policy skills necessary for this critically important role.

For these reasons, the undersigned organizations representing the business, education and scientific communities urge you to pledge now that if elected President, you will appoint your White House science advisor by January 20, so this individual can participate immediately in coordinating relevant policy and personnel decisions relating to science and technology.

We further urge that the next President give the science adviser the title of Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and assign the position a cabinet rank, the same status given to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Trade Representative.

The next President must lead our country in addressing the national issues of concern to us all. To do so effectively, science and technology must be part of the solution. Only by ensuring that a science adviser is in place early and has adequate stature and authority within the White House can the new President effectively address the challenges we face.

In the first presidential debate, not much was said about science or research, except by implication. Sen. John McCain had said that as president he would cut spending on everything except for defense, veterans care and entitlements.

However, those items plus service on the national debt, consume 82 percent of the budget, so it wasn’t as big a saving as he he would like to have voters believe. This week, McCain said almost the same thing, promising a one-year spending freeze “on every agency of the federal government, excepting only national defense, the care of our veterans and a few critical priorities.”

The question now for voters to consider is what constitutes “a few critical priorities.” Is funding biomedical research among them? The public seems to think so (see our public opinion poll data), but it probably wouldn’t turn up high on the list of either candidates’ “critical priorities.”

It should, because combined with Congress’ deferring the Labor-HHS appropriation most likely till next May, funding at the National Institutes of Health, for example, will remain flat for a sixth year. How critical is that?

AARP has named the National Institutes of Health as one of its “Best Employers for Workers Over 50.” NIH is the first federal agency to make the AARP list, placing eleventh in the 2008 rankings. The annual list evaluates and recognizes organizations that have workforce practicies and policies beneficial to workers older than 50. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2016, one in three workers will be 50 or older; up from 28 percent of the workforce in 2007.

From the NIH:

NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said, “NIH is honored to be among the organizations recognized for forward-looking approaches to maintaining a skilled staff as the number of younger workers entering the labor market declines, and as more workers nearing retirement age elect to stay on the job. NIH set out to adjust creatively to the new demographics, and this award shows how effective those efforts have been.”

NIH was recognized for its recruitment program, which uses a broad array of methods, including newspapers, the Internet, job fairs, scientific publications and referrals to reach qualified potential applicants. Varied training programs, health benefits, pension plans and flexible work arrangements also contributed to NIH’s selection as a top-performing employer for the over-50 age group. The recognition program is featured in the AARP magazine, which reaches millions of American homes this week.

From the ONE blog:

In the last 2 weeks, we’ve gotten an astounding 120,463 signatures for our “Just ONE Question” campaign, demonstrating that well over our goal of 100,000 Americans believe global poverty is a critical issue Obama and McCain should address in a major media forum.

If you haven’t signed on, please sign the petition by clicking the link below.

http://www.one.org/debates

And if you have signed on already, please tell a friend.

Next week’s presidential candidate debate is unique - a town hall format that will include opportunities for participants to question the candidates without actually being in the same room. Just another marvel of the Internet.

MySpace, the online social network, is collecting the questions, and you don’t have to be a MySpace member to participate.

Visit http://www.myspace.com/mydebates and make your voice heard. Be sure to educate yourself on the candidates’ positions on health, research and science at our voter education initiative Your Candidates-Your Health.

Your Candidates-Your Health Provides Insight for FY09

Although FY09 starts today, the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will be funded at their current levels through March 6.

President Bush signed the “Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act” (H.R. 2638) yesterday. The bill includes FY09 appropriations for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs and extends funding for all other programs at 2008 levels through March 6.

The length of the continuing resolution means that the next President and Congress will determine FY 2009 funding levels. Leaders in Congress are hopeful that the next president will approve increased funding for domestic priorities, such as research to improve health, that President Bush had threatened to veto. Make sure you know where your candidates for Congress and President stand by visiting www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org.

Tell friends, colleagues and associates interested in the future of America to join ScienceDebate2008 in Minnesota on October 20-21st for a very exciting national discussion at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy. Register now - space is limited.

Keynotes
Nobel laureate Peter Agre
Science broadcaster Ira Flatow

Topics
Discussions will cover Innovation and the economy, Science and the Elections, STEM and the education crisis in America, Energy Security & Sustainability - what’s missing from the debate, and Rekindling America’s love affair with Science. Visit www.innovation2008.com for more details. There will also be some very special high-tech art presentations.

Confirmed speakers and panelists
• Andrew Fire, Nobel laureate and Professor of Pathology and Genetics, Stanford University
• Bill Bates, Vice President of the Council on Competitiveness
• Darlene Cavalier, ScienceCheerleader.com
• Kei Koizumi, Director, R&D Budget & Policy, American Assn for the Advancement of Science
• Lawrence Krauss, astrophysicist, science policy speaker, and popular author
• Chris Mooney, Washington Correspondent for Seed and popular author
• Jan Morrison - Executive Director; TIES Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM
• Michael T. Osterholm, Director, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP)
• Shawn Lawrence Otto, screenwriter and CEO, Science Debate 2008
• Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education
• Alice Seagren, Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Education
• Susan Singer – Carlton College; Board on Science Education of the National Academies
• Manil Suri, Professor of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Maryland, Baltimore and popular author
• Susan Wood, former FDA Director of Women’s Health and Research Professor, GWU
• Mary Woolley, President of Research!America,
and many more, along with a few very special surprises.

The Obama and McCain campaigns have been invited.

“Clearly, the fundamental drivers of the U.S. economy need attention,” said Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO of Science Debate 2008, cosponsor of the event. “Innovation in science and technology has driven half of America’s economic growth since WWII, but the global landscape is changing. We need to forge a new path to remain a first rate economy.” Otto said national experts will meet at the conference to explore strategies the United States needs to take to retain and renew its global leadership in innovation into the future. “Most of the major challenges facing the U.S. revolve around 14 key questions of science and technology.”

Register today!

In a series of quips, rhetorical questions and strong policy statements, health policy advisers Dora Hughes, MD, MPH, of Barack Obama 2008 and Jay Khosla of John McCain 2008 spoke about the presidential candidates’ positions at Innovation and the Elections: Presidential Perspectives on Health on September 18, in Washington, DC.

Julie Rovner, National Public Radio health policy correspondent, moderated the 90-minute policy discussion co-sponsored by Scientists and Engineers for America and Research!America at The George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Hughes described the three basic tenets of the Obama health plan as coverage, quality and efficiency, and prevention and public health. Khosla detailed McCain’s health plan as having four main points: affordability, choice, security and quality.

According to their advisers, McCain and Obama both support embryonic stem cell research; though Khosla made it clear that McCain hopes that we can develop technologies that will render the ESCR debate moot.

Each campaign claims its plan will insure more Americans, and McCain and Obama support medical student loan forgiveness as a solution to the primary care physician shortage.

For more information about McCain and Obama’s positions on health, science and research, visit Your Candidates-Your Health 2008 at www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org. Both have also responded to science questionnaires at ScienceDebate2008.com and http://sharp.sefora.org.

Other forum sponsors were American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Public Health Association, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, IEEE-USA and The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services including the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy and the Department of Health Policy. View the video of the forum at http://sharp.sefora.org/candidateforum.

For John McCain 2008, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, PhD
For Barack Obama 2008, Tim Westmoreland, JD

This event will be moderated by The New York Times economic columnist, David Leonhardt.

The moderated conversation will be from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. on the seventh floor of the Knight Conference Center at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.
Space is limited, so RSVP as soon as possible.

Register online or by phone to Michelle Pangilinan at (703) 739-2577, ext. 12.

After the discussion, join us for the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact of Medical and Health Research Award luncheon.

Tell Bob Schieffer, CBS News correspondent and host of the third presidential debate, to ask the presidential candidates how they will strengthen public health.

On October 15, CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer will moderate the third presidential debate that will focus on domestic issues. Health reform is a very important issue for millions of Americans, but public health has been largely left out of the debate. Please take a minute to send a letter to Mr. Schieffer urging urge him to ask the presidential candidates questions about their plans to strengthen public health.

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research Ambassador and director of the Sabine Vaccine Institute, has an op-ed published in today’s Baltimore Sun.

Since 2001, the government has spent almost $50 billion for national biodefense at sites such as Fort Detrick and other specialty laboratories and universities, and this amount is likely to increase further with ambitious plans to build high-containment laboratories across the country. To be sure, there is an excellent rationale for improving our defense against biological threats. But the diseases that we are preparing against do not currently exist in our country. There is no inhalational anthrax, smallpox or bird flu, and it is unclear whether we are likely to face such biological threats any time soon.

Hotez’s is the perfect call for increased investment in U.S. global health research, and the message that global health is America’s health too.

The 2007 winner of the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact of Medical & Health Research Award, Tomas Philipson, PhD, is profiled in The University of Chicago Chronicle:

His recent award-winning study, “Who Benefits from New Medical Technologies? Estimates of Consumer and Producer Surpluses for HIV/AIDS Drugs,” found that the increased HIV/AIDS survival rate due to drug treatments developed between 1980 and 2000 had an overall estimated economic benefit of $1.4 trillion, only 5 percent of which was reaped by their innovators. Philipson and co-author Jena Anupam warned that these results could remove incentives for drug producers to continue HIV/AIDS research.

Research America awarded Philipson and Anupam the 2007 Eugene Garfield Award for the paper, considered the best in the field of health economics.

A terrific opinion piece by Research!America’s chair, The Honorable John Edward Porter, appears in today’s issue of Science magazine (subscription required).

Titled “If All You Do Is Vote …,” his editorial is a timely reminder that “elections have a way of sorting things out.” Yet he notes that it is far from certain that science will have a place at the table of the nation’s next president, and he presents a clear call-to-action to scientists to get involved now and help give science a stronger voice in our nation’s policies.

Free registration is required to download the PDF of the article.

$1.2 Billion for NIH and $46 Million for CDC Included

Urge your representatives and senators to support the stimulus funding package that includes $1.2 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $46 million for Centers for Disease Control. The bill could be voted on as soon as this weekend, so contact your congressional representatives today!

The increased funding for the NIH, included to offset the effects of biomedical inflation, will improve the purchasing power of the NIH and allow for 3,300 new research project grants that could lead to cures and treatments for diseases from heart disease to cancer. CDC funding has also been included to help their continuing efforts to combat infectious diseases and keep the America’s public health safe.

This week at a Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus briefing, Peter Pronovost, MD, a recent recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, presented on his work on patient safety involving checklists.

Pronovost had found that there was little knowledge about risks to patient safety, such as the original subject of his work, infections at the site of catheter insertion. While there was significant evidence behind the cause and prevention of these infections, they were still causing deaths and costing states millions of dollars each year.

Pronovost’s solution was to condense the evidence into a five-item checklist, lowering the barriers to use at the patient’s bedside. When doctors and nurses used and held each other accountable to this checklist, these infections were virtually eliminated in a study at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Next, Pronovost used an AHRQ grant to roll out the checklist system in the state of Michigan. After tracking the rates of infection, it was found that over two years, implementation of the checklist saved Michigan 1,800 deaths and $200 milion per year by eliminating the infections.

After this enormous success, Pronovost has faced challenges “bridging the gap” between his work in Michigan and federal coordination of these efforts. Pronovost made the point that translational research is inefficient because basic scientific research is a “feed forward” system. Implementing research into practice, on the other hand, is a “feed back” system. Pronovost proposed the creation of what he called a “knowledge market”, in which knowledge is shared and democratic. The use of these checklists achieves this democratization because everyone can understand and implement each of the five items to achieve safe care for patients.

The Hon. Rush Holt, chair of the Biomedical Research Caucus, was in attendance, and called for more funding for research. “Research can take all forms,” he said. “Funding research is not about funding people in lab coats. It’s about improving quality of life and saving lives.”

–Allison Bland

Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research Ambassador Wafaa El-Sadr was named one of 25 MacArthur fellows by The MacArthur Foundation this week. Recipients learned they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

Coverage of the announcement:

Boston Globe article announcement
Chronicle of Philanthropy
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Chicago Sun-Times