IE-005 - Rethinking Research: Navigating the Congressional Proposals to Restructure the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency. Its mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. In carrying out its mission, NIH funds more biomedical research than any other public institution in the world, allocating more than 90 percent of its budget to research.

House and Senate Republicans have proposed separate plans to reorganize the National Institutes of Health. Both the House and Senate have proposed major changes as to how the agency conducts its day-to-day research. The Senate’s proposal stresses the importance of increased collaboration between NIH, public health agencies, healthcare institutions, and the private sector in identifying how NIH policies can be adapted to most effectively support potentially transformative research. The Senate’s proposal does not include a significant restructuring. The House’s proposal, however, would eliminate the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) as a free-standing institute and consolidate NIDCR into the National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research, a new institute comprised of NIDCR, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and the National Eye Institute (NEI).

This session will provide an overview of the House and Senate proposal’s and provide perspectives on both proposals from the dental education community, the dental research community, the medical research community, and Congress.