All employees of Research!America members are eligible to join alliance member meetings. If your organization is not a Research!America member and you’re interested in more information about the alliance, email Katie Goode at kgoode@researchamerica.org

Upcoming Meetings

Past Meetings

Research!America Alliance Member Call with Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable

Date: Monday, July 27, 2020, 2:30 p.m. - 3 p.m. ET

Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, MD, Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), discussed that the groups of his institute’s focus -- racial and ethnic minorities, those from low socio-economic status, underserved rural residents, and sexual and gender minorities -- have a shorter life expectancy than other Americans. COVID-19 has spotlighted this dramatically.

Access his recent opinion piece on this in JAMA. Dr. Pérez-Stable also discussed funding opportunities for scientists -- of particular interest for those working alongside NIMHD-- through NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative. 

The full recording and slides are here.

Research!America Alliance Member Meeting with Dr. Judith Salerno

Date: Thursday, July 23, 2020, 1:30 p.m. - 2 p.m. ET

Judith A. Salerno, MD, MS, President of The New York Academy of Medicine, shared her experience returning to clinical work at Bellevue Hospital during the height of the COVID-19 crisis in New York City. Dr. Salerno joined the palliative care unit, connecting families with loved ones in the ICU, which was logistically difficult given that most of her patients were intubated, and family members could not visit in person. When Dr. Salerno arrived at Bellevue, there were seven ICUs full of intubated COVID-19 patients. The vast majority were people of color, and about half of Dr. Salerno’s patients’ families did not speak English, so she had to speak through a translator. Many of the patients had worked in environments like kitchens or construction sites and lived in apartments with many other people. Some delayed seeking care because they did not know they were entitled to care no matter their legal status; others had to keep working because they needed the money.

Dr. Salerno also discussed the severe PPE shortage. On her first day, Dr. Salerno received just one N95 mask to use, though she eventually accumulated five masks that she rotated through -- one for each day of the week. Dr. Salerno noted that she saw many unanticipated symptoms given that doctors thought COVID-19 was an acute respiratory syndrome; these included kidney failure, strokes, and clotting such that limbs required amputation. Dr. Salerno and her colleagues also saw guidance shifting early on because there was no clear understanding of best practices at the beginning of the pandemic. Now, Dr. Salerno says, there is much clearer guidance, like using anticoagulants, acquiring dialysis machines, and implementing new treatment regimens.

Research!America Alliance Member Meeting with Dr. Gary Gibbons

Date: Monday, July 13, 2020, 1 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Gary Gibbons, MD, Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) discussed NHLBI's COVID-19 response given the significance of heart and lung conditions, racial and ethnic disparities in the pandemic’s impact, and the effect of COVID-19 on research outside the pandemic’s sphere. Dr. Gibbons explained how COVID-19 is affecting many of the organ systems under the umbrella of NHLBI. The institute is working to understand the pathophysiology of COVID-19, test new treatments, promote blood safety, and test behavioral, social and community-based interventions. Dr. Gibbons also explained that COVID-19 seems to specifically affect the blood, leading to blood clots which can damage the heart and lungs. Dr. Gibbons has high hopes for serum treatment from recovered patients being used to prevent the disease from worsening in other patients. NHLBI has also launched a collaboration called connect, which does just that among different clinical trial sectors within the NHLBI. Dr. Gibbons also touched on Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) Associated with COVID-19 and how NHBLI is investigating this disease. See the recording here.

Research!America Alliance Member Meeting with Dr. Chris Austin

Date: Thursday, July 9, 2020, 4 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Chris Austin, MD, Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health joined us to talk about NCATS's new Open Data Portal, National COVID Cohort Collaborative and other NCATS priorities. Also on the live video call was Dr. Joni Rutter, Deputy Director of NCATS, who discussed the current open science initiatives at NCATS in the context of COVID-19. The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) is a centralized, secure platform to store and study data. The goal is to collect and harmonize up to 1-2 million U.S. clinical health records. Then, collaborative analytics will be performed to develop treatments and answer questions like “Can we predict who might have severe outcomes?”

Another initiative, SARS-CoV-2 OpenData, is speeding the identification of drugs for COVID-19 by sharing results and methods from ongoing research of drug repurposing. The idea is to run as many experiments as possible across all drugs and to make the data immediately available to the world. 

Finally, CURE ID is a mobile app created from a collaboration between NCATS and the FDA. The app allows health care workers to share their clinical experience using approved drugs to treat diseases other than the one they were originally intended for.

See the recorded meeting here.

Research!America Alliance Member Webinar with Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)

Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2020, 11:30 a.m. ET

Featuring: Congressman Tom Cole

Research!America members met virtually with Congressman Tom Cole, the ranking member of the Labor-H subcommittee. Rep. Cole explained that Congress is working on both the appropriation markups and another supplemental bill. Congressman Cole expects that the supplemental will be completed by late July or early August. It will include financing for personal assistance, NIH, state and tribal assistance, and school and daycare funding. The congressman expressed the need for Congress to set aside emergency money and to build up the CDC’s infrastructure to prepare for a future crisis. Equating COVID-19 to a “biomedical Pearl Harbor,” Rep. Cole emphasized that we “need to spend billions to save trillions” and prioritize strengthening our public health system and research enterprise during this appropriations season. Overall, Rep. Cole thinks that NIH will receive increased funding but that in the next year they may see a dip in funding since most of this year’s funding is coming from supplements.

Research!America Alliance Member Webinar with Dr. Tom Frieden

Date: Monday, June 29, 2020, 1:30 p.m. ET

Featuring: Dr. Tom Frieden, CEO, Resolve to Save Lives

Former CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, joined alliance members to discuss a proposal he and other public health leaders have developed to expedite the resources needed when pandemics and other national public health emergencies arise. Dr. Frieden advocated for a balanced portfolio of research that spans basic to operational across a range of agencies, to achieve the maximum possible health benefit. He argued that research should not just be led by the NIH -- it should include the FDA, CDC, BARDA, HHS, and Department of Agriculture. Dr. Frieden stated that the federal government has not stepped up to lead during this emergency, emphasizing that public health must guide us forward. He advocated for sustained support for public health through funding and public messaging, disease surveillance, more nuanced reopening strategies, and use of the “Box-it-in” approach, which includes widespread testing, contact tracing, isolating infected people, and quarantine periods. Dr. Frieden mentioned a resource for state-level data: covidexitstrategy.org, which was created by Resolve to Save Lives.

If you are a Research!America alliance member, click here to see the recording.