Project description:The extent to which federal investment in research crowds out or decreases incentives for investment from other funding sources remains an open question. Scholarship on research funding has focused on the relationship between federal and industry or, more comprehensively, non-federal funding without disentangling the other sources of research support that include nonprofit organizations and state and local governments. This paper extends our understanding of academic research support by considering the relationships between federal and non-federal funding sources provided by the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey. We examine whether federal research investment serves as a complement or substitute for state and local government, nonprofit, and industry research investment using the population of research-active academic science fields at U.S. doctoral granting institutions. We use a system of two equations that instruments with prior levels of both federal and non-federal funding sources and accounts for time-invariant academic institution-field effects through first differencing. We estimate that a 1% increase in federal research funding is associated with a 0.411% increase in nonprofit research funding, a 0.217% increase in state and local research funding, and a 0.468% increase in industry research funding, respectively. Results indicate that federal funding plays a fundamental role in inducing complementary investments from other funding sources, with impacts varying across academic division, research capacity, and institutional control.
Project description:This article assesses US government funding in 5 domains critical to strengthening health security: biodefense programs, radiological and nuclear programs, chemical programs, pandemic influenza and emerging infectious disease programs, and multiple-hazard and preparedness programs. This year's article also highlights the emergency funding appropriated in FY2015 to enable the international and domestic response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Project description:Primary care and rural physician shortages are a present and growing concern to policy makers. We assessed three Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions that changed the maximum number of residents teaching hospitals could be reimbursed for, an element of graduate medical education (GME) funding known as the resident cap. The results show that an increase in a hospital's resident cap of one slot under one of these ACA provisions in 2010 is associated with an increase in residency program size of approximately one full-time equivalent resident. We find important heterogeneity in the magnitude of the association between resident cap changes and program growth across ACA provisions, as well as in whether these associations are driven by changes in primary or non-primary care program growth. These results suggest that targeted changes to GME funding may be an effective tool in helping address physician shortages.
Project description:Scientific progress runs on the intellect, curiosity, and passion of its practitioners fueled by the research dollars of its sponsors. The concern over research funding in biology in general and genetics in particular led us to survey the membership of the Genetics Society of America for information about the federal support of genetics at the level of individual principal investigators. The results paint a mosaic of circumstances-some good, others not so good-that describes some of our present challenges with sufficient detail to suggest useful steps that could address the challenges.
Project description:Introduction Opioid overdose deaths in the United States have climbed sharply over the past two decades. Simultaneously, increased awareness of inadequately treated chronic pain has resulted in increased opioid analgesic prescribing. The correlation between these two phenomena has led policymakers to posit that they are causally linked, and to implement policy changes supporting safe opioid prescribing. Purpose To evaluate the impact of its Opioid Analgesic Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested the opioid manufacturers responsible for implementing that program provide information regarding opioid policy changes from 2016 to 2018. FDA also requested a survey of state requirements for pain and opioid prescribing continuing education (CE), the number of prescribers affected by those requirements, the extent to which a REMS-compliant CE program would meet each state’s requirements, and the number of relevant CE programs available. Results Results indicate that 527 federal and state opioid-related policies (statutes, rules/regulations, and guidelines) were approved during the 2016–2018 study period. While the largest number of these policies focused on prescription drug monitoring programs, 170 specifically imposed limits on opioid prescribing and an additional 35 specifically referred to, or incorporated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opioid prescribing guideline. We also found that 46 states and the District of Columbia mandated some amount of pain or opioid prescribing CE for prescribers renewing their licenses. These mandates potentially affected as many as 1.7 million prescribers. In 69% of cases, a REMS-compliant CE program would fully meet the state mandates for various types of prescribers. Conclusion The severity and complexity of the problems of pain management and opioid overdose have led to large-scale intervention by policymakers. Assessing the impact of these changes is difficult, at best, but will be necessary if interventions are to be refined to increase their effectiveness.
Project description:IntroductionEmergency physicians face multiple challenges to obtaining federal funding. The objective of this investigation was to describe the demographics of federally-funded emergency physicians and identify key challenges in obtaining funding.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective database search of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (NIH RePORTER) to collect data regarding the distribution and characteristics of federally-funded grants awarded to emergency medicine (EM) principal investigators between 2010-2017. An electronic survey was then administered to the identified investigators to obtain additional demographic data, and information regarding their career paths, research environment, and perceived barriers to obtaining federal funding.ResultsWe identified 219, corresponding to 51 unique, mentored career development awardees and 105 independent investigators. Sixty-two percent of investigators responded to the electronic survey. Awardees were predominantly White males, although a larger portion of the mentored awardee group was female. Greater than half of respondents reported their mentor to be outside of the field of EM. The most common awarding institution was the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Respondents identified barriers in finding adequate mentorship, time to gather preliminary data, and the quality of administrative support.ConclusionThe last five years have showed a trend toward increasing grants awarded to EM investigators; however, we identified several barriers to funding. Initiatives geared toward support and mentorship of junior faculty, particularly to females, minorities, and those in less heavily funded areas of the country are warranted.
Project description:Background and objectiveThe digital transformation of healthcare requires changed competences in the nursing professions. The reform of nursing education opens up the opportunity to anchor the requisite content in vocational education. The framework curricula of the expert commission ("Rahmenpläne der Fachkommission nach § 53 Pflegeberufegesetz") form the basis for the federal states to create their own framework curricula. This paper examines to what extent and in what form the framework curricula take up digitalisation.Material and methodsThe framework curricula were investigated in an explicative-qualitative content analysis between August and October 2021. First, the frequency of previously defined keywords was determined. This was followed by a systematic context analysis.ResultsMerely six federal states had created their own framework curriculum; the others used the federal framework curriculum, which only addresses the acquisition of competences in the field of digitalisation to a small extent. Digitalisation was addressed to varying degrees in the federal state's own framework plans but only selectively overall. Recommendations for practical exercise formats were hardly given.DiscussionThe acquisition of competences in the area of digitalisation forms the foundation for later professional life and is an important component of the digital transformation. In the context of the possibility of modifying nursing education until 2024, the topic should be taken into focus more strongly. Improvements can also be made directly at technical and vocational schools as well as universities since the framework curricula are sometimes only of a recommendatory nature.
Project description:ImportanceBoth citation and funding metrics converge in shaping current perceptions of academic success.ObjectiveTo evaluate what proportion of the most-cited US-based scientists are funded by biomedical federal agencies and whether funded scientists are more cited than nonfunded ones.Design, setting, and participantsThis survey study used linkage of a Scopus-based database on top-cited US researchers (according to a composite citation metric) and the National Institutes of Health RePORTER database of federal funding (33 biomedical federal agencies). Matching was based on name and institution. US-based top-cited scientists who were allocated to any of 69 scientific subfields highly related to biomedicine were considered in the main analysis. Data were downloaded on June 11, 2022.Main outcomes and measuresProportion of US-based top-cited biomedical scientists who had any (1996-2022), recent (2015-2022), and current (2021-2022) funding. Comparisons of funded and nonfunded scientists assessed total citations and a composite citation index.ResultsThere were 204 603 records in RePORTER (1996-2022) and 75 316 US-based top-cited scientists in the career-long citation database; 40 887 scientists were included in the main analysis. The proportion of US-based top-cited biomedical scientists (according to career-long citation impact) who had received any federal funding from biomedical research agencies was 62.7% (25 650 of 40 887) for any funding (1996-2022), 23.1% (9427 of 40 887) for recent funding (2015-2022), and 14.1% (5778 of 40 887) for current funding (2021-2022). Respective proportions were 64.8%, 31.4%, and 20.9%, for top-cited scientists according to recent single-year citation impact. There was large variability across scientific subfields (eg, current funding: 31% of career-long impact top-cited scientists in geriatrics, 30% in bioinformatics and 29% in developmental biology, but 0% in legal and forensic medicine, general psychology and cognitive sciences, and gender studies). Funded top-cited researchers were overall more cited than nonfunded top-cited scientists (median [IQR], 9594 [5650-1703] vs 5352 [3057-9890] citations; P < .001) and substantial difference remained after adjusting for subfield and years since first publication. Differences were more prominent in some specific biomedical subfields.Conclusions and relevanceIn this survey study, biomedical federal funding had offered support to approximately two-thirds of the top-cited biomedical scientists at some point during the last quarter century, but only a small minority of top-cited scientists had current federal biomedical funding. The large unevenness across subfields needs to be addressed with ways that improve equity, efficiency, excellence, and translational potential.
Project description:ImportanceThe US leads the world in the raw number of incarcerated persons as well as the rate of incarceration, with detrimental effects on individual-, family-, community-, and population-level health; as such, federal research has a critical role in documenting and addressing the health-related impacts of the US criminal legal system. How often incarceration-related research is funded at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and US Department of Justice (DOJ) levels has a direct association with the public attention given to mass incarceration as well as the efficacy of strategies to mitigate negative effects and poor health related to incarceration.ObjectiveTo understand how many incarceration-related projects have been funded at the NIH, NSF, and DOJ.Design, setting, and participantsThis cross-sectional study used public historical project archives to search for relevant incarceration-related keywords (eg, incarceration, prison, parole) since January 1, 1985 (NIH and NSF), and since January 1, 2008 (DOJ). Quotations and Boolean operator logic were used. All searches and counts were conducted and double verified by 2 coauthors between December 12 and 17, 2022.Main outcomes and measuresNumber and prevalence of funded projects related to incarceration and prison keywords.ResultsThe term incarceration resulted in 3540 of 3 234 159 total project awards (0.11%) and prisoner-related terms resulted in 11 455 total project awards (0.35%) across the 3 federal agencies since 1985. Nearly a tenth of all projects funded at NIH since 1985 related to education (256 584 [9.62%]) compared with only 3373 projects (0.13%) that related to criminal legal or criminal justice or correctional system and 18 projects (0.0007%) that related to incarcerated parents. Only 1857 (0.07%) of all NIH-funded projects have been funded related to racism since 1985.Conclusions and relevanceThis cross-sectional study found that a very low number of projects about incarceration have historically been funded at the NIH, DOJ, and NSF. These findings reflect a dearth of federally funded studies investigating the effects of mass incarceration or intervention strategies to mitigate adverse effects. Given the consequences of the criminal legal system, it is undoubtedly time for researchers, and our nation, to invest more resources into studying whether this system should be maintained, the intergenerational effects of mass incarceration, and strategies to best mitigate its impact on public health.