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Public Affairs Update
NIH peer review system being considered for improvements . . . .
Concerns about the efficiency of peer review expressed by the scientific
community have prompted NIH leadership to consider as a priority reengineering
the peer review system. The debate is not whether peer review
is still important and necessary, but what to do to revamp the system.
Antonio Scarpa, Director of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR), emphasized
at a recent public meeting the “strategic national importance of
peer review” and called it the “heart and soul of NIH.” Major concerns
from the scientific community relate to the peer review process being too
slow and lacking sufficient senior and experienced reviewers. Scarpa said
that part of the problem is intellectual and part of it is structural, given
that the process was designed for face-to-face meetings of reviewers. One
of the challenges and opportunities facing NIH peer review is a mechanical
issue—reassigning and improving administration and organizational
systems and procedures. The second challenge is cultural—facilitating the
identification and advancement of more significant, innovative, and high
impact research. NIH plans to shorten the review cycle, improve study
section alignment and performance, increase recruitment and retention
of high-quality reviewers, and decrease the burden on applicants and
reviewers. NIH also wants the input of the scientific community. For more
information, visit www.nih.gov.
New website allows exploration of data on metropolitan areas . . . . Diversitydata.
org allows visitors to explore how metropolitan areas throughout
the United States perform on a diverse range of social measures that
comprise a well-rounded life experience. Diversitydata.org, developed by
the Harvard School of Public Health and the Center for the Advancement of
Health and support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, provides a dataset
of socioeconomic indicators for metropolitan areas in the form of tables,
thematic maps, and customizable reports. Some domains used include
housing, neighborhood conditions, residential integration, education, and
health factors such as disability rates, health insurance, births to teenager
mothers, births to unmarried mothers, prenatal care, smoking during pregnancy,
preterm births, and low birth-weight rates. To accompany the new
website, Diversitydata.org has planned a series of reports based on the data
indicators. The first report, released in conjunction with the launch of the
new website, is titled Children Left Behind: How Metropolitan Areas Are Failing
American Children. The report examines the well-being of children in the
100 largest metropolitan areas and scores those areas for the living conditions
they provide to white, black, Hispanic, and Asian children based on
indicators of health, family income, home ownership, residential and school
segregation, and neighborhood and school socioeconomic environment.
Using a summary measure of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, the
report shows the metropolitan areas with worst and best neighborhood
environments for children of different racial/ethnic groups.
Two social scientists are appointed to NIH Advisory Committee of the
Director . . . . The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected seven
new members to serve on the 13-member Advisory Committee to the
Director (ACD). Two of those new members—Alan I. Leshner, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and Barbara L. Wolfe, University
of Wisconsin-Madison—have strong social science backgrounds. The
ACD advises the NIH Director on policy and planning issues important
to the NIH mission of conducting and supporting biomedical and behavioral
research, research training, and translating research results for the
public. Leshner is chief executive officer of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of its journal,
Science. Previously, Leshner had been Director of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse at the NIH, and Deputy Director and Acting Director of the
National Institute of Mental Health. Before that, he held a variety of senior
positions at the National Science Foundation. In 2004, he was appointed by
President George W. Bush to the National Science Board. Wolfe is Professor
of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs and Faculty
Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, where she also is currently serving as Director of the La
Follette School of Public Affairs. Her research focuses broadly on poverty
and health issues. Her current projects examine the effect of expansions in
public health insurance on health care coverage and labor force outcomes
and the role of income on health. Additional information is available at
www.nih.gov/about/director/acd/index.htm.
Recommended improvements in federal statistics on STEM workforce
. . . . While the federal statistics community does an admirable job
of producing data on science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) professionals, opportunities exist for improvement according to
a Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) report.
The white paper, released in January by CPST and titled Improving Federal
Statistics on the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Workforce,
is a product of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded STEM Workforce
Data Project. It makes several recommendations, including changes to the
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes and improvements in
implementations of the new North American Industry Classification System
(NAICS). Check online for the white paper www.cpst.org/STEM_Report.cfm and related press release www.cpst.org/STEM_Press.cfm.
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