• 2021 Science Advocacy Summit Agenda and Speaker Bios
• Talking Points Worksheet — Using the information on this page, please fill this out to help prepare for your meetings in advance. 
• Contact Information for APA Advocacy Staff: 
  • The RISE Act - Pat Kobor
  • The Early Career Researchers Act - Joe Keller
  • OBSSR - Angela Sharpe
  • Misc. Logistical Questions - Raegina Likewise 
  • Hill Meeting Scheduling (Soapbox) - Michael King
• APA Advocacy Training Videos — Helpful for first-time advocates!

Request #1: Co-sponsor the RISE Act (H.R. 869/S.289) [Fact sheet]

Background: 

• The Research Investment to Spark the Economy Act of 2021 (RISE) Act (H.R. 869/ S. 289), bipartisan bills led by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would authorize $25 billion to federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), to offset costs resulting from reductions in research productivity in connection with the COVID-19 global pandemic.
• This legislation acknowledges that while agencies have provided flexibility to awardees during COVID-19 pandemic, the threat to existing research remains significant as projects has been slowed down or stopped due to modified campus and laboratory operations.

What's the Problem? 

• Over the past year, research institutions have enacted substantial changes to experimental protocols which have resulted in social distancing guidelines in the lab, virtual data collection, facility closures, and diminished research activities.
• “The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects on all sectors of society. Academic medical centers have not been spared, and research faculty within these institutions are uniquely affected not only because of their contributions to COVID-19–related clinical operations but also because of barriers to non–COVID-19–related research operations. Among these research faculty, underrepresented minority faculty are especially vulnerable given baseline disparities in research, operational, and network support. Whereas many research programs have been allowed to resume operations, many are still not at 100% capacity due to public health restrictions and the impact of the loss of personnel or funds.” (Carr et al., 2021)
• Without additional funding, future advances in health, science, technology, and education will be significantly harmed as federal agencies are forced to use future appropriations intended for new research to cover existing awards.
• APA is also very concerned that the research workforce and future health and strength of the US research enterprise are at risk during this time.

Sample Talking Points: 

• The RISE Act must be passed to ensure future innovations and to remain competitive in the global research environment.
• Specifically, the RISE Act would provide additional relief to Federal agencies and researchers by facilitating research at institutions disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It would also provide the resources to support research on the effects of COVID-19 and future pandemics. The legislation would also:
  • Provide supplemental funding to extend awards disrupted by the pandemic while offering flexibility on any prior or subsequent awards impacted by limitations due to COVID-19
  • Enable students, post-doctoral researchers, research scientists and associations, staff, and principals to complete ongoing research efforts, and extending the training of students or post-doctoral researchers because of disruption in the job market
• The scientific research funded by US federal agencies has been vital to combat the global pandemic and spur recovery. The U.S. must sustain and invest in the critical human infrastructure that undergirds the scientific research enterprise – it has made the U.S. the global leader in innovation, strengthened the health of US citizens, and catalyzed economic development.

Testimonials from NIH/NSF-Funded Psychologists: 

• “Overall, [COVID-19] has been extremely stressful, affected staff (reduced jobs), drained financial resources, and reduced the integrity of the funded studies. We will continue to deal with the financial stress to the projects in the future as we try to catch up on the projects where we had to postpone data collection…This has been a mess financially because we have salaried and wage research staff, so we’ve had to juggle and reorganize workloads and funding sources (often scrapping and patching together funds). Also, we have not replaced any staff who left the project.“
• “I am a single mother homeschooling two elementary-aged children, my oversight of the grant has not been as detailed and consistent as it should have been. Consequently, the postdocs and graduate students on the grant have not received the level of mentoring they deserved, the preliminary data have not been cleaned and analyzed, mistakes may exist that I am unaware of.”
• “But particularly the postdoctoral scholar is in a bad situation — no jobs, way fewer publications than originally planned, fewer opportunities for networking, etc.”

FAQs: 

• Why is the bill necessary if these agencies already received emergency funding to support scientific research during the COVID-19 pandemic?
  A: Emergency funding is not sufficient to prevent long-lasting harm to the scientific research enterprise, more is needed. Those resources have been exhausted and research remains disrupted by the pandemic. Projects have stalled and research, paid for by the American taxpayer, may never come to fruition.

Additional Resources:

1. Carr, R.M. et al. (2021). Academic careers and the COVID-19 pandemic: Reversing the tide. Science Transl Med, 13(584), DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abe7189
2. Prinstein, Mitchell. (2021). Science is rescuing us from COVID – it’s time for the US to return the favor. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/546129-science-is-rescuing-us-from-covid-its-time-for-the-us-to-return-the-favor?rl=1
3. American Sociological Association. (March 2020). ASA Statement regarding faculty review and reappointment processes during the COVID-19 crisis. https://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/statement_regarding_faculty_review_and_reappointment.pdf
4. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2021). The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Washington, DC. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26061.
5. Myers, K.R., Tham, W.Y., Yin, Y. et al. (2020). Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nat Hum Behav 4, 880–883 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y

Request #2: Vote YES (House)/Co-sponsor (Senate) the Early-Career Researchers Act (H.R. 144/S.637) [Fact Sheet] 

Background: 

• The Supporting Early-Career Researchers Act (H.R.144/S.637), bills introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK), and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), would create a new fellowship program through the National Science Foundation (NSF) for early-career researchers to help mitigate the negative effects from COVID-19 on the US research workforce.
• This legislation would establish a funding opportunity for investigators conducting independent research efforts with a priority for broadening participation of those researchers from underrepresented groups in scientific research and those carrying out work at minority-serving institutions. 

What's the Problem?

• Over the past year, research institutions have enacted substantial changes to experimental protocols which have resulted in social distancing guidelines in the lab, virtual data collection, facility closures, and diminished research activities.
• While scientists across career stages have been upended by this monumental shift, early-career scientists such as graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty are particularly vulnerable.
  • The interruptions to science during the COVID-19 pandemic threaten the research careers of an estimated 668,000 graduate students and 64,000 postdoctoral fellows according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

Sample Talking Points:  

• Destabilizing fluctuations in research productivity, faculty positions in academia, and funding opportunities will impact early-career scientists in the immediate and late phases of their careers.
• Recent evidence indicates that female researchers and scientists of color are disproportionately affected. For women in academic sciences in particular, recent research illustrates the pandemic has had a negative impact on productivity, networking and community building, and mental well-being.
• Targeted aid to early-career scientists is needed and will yield broad benefits to the research community.
• The harm to early-career scientists of color is also devastating as many are forced to cope with the intersectionality of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black and Latino communities and the stress of being a productive scientist – this may negatively impact their collective job stability and future capacity to obtain research funding.

FAQs: 

• The bill references support for “early-career researchers,” but to whom does that specifically apply?
  The text provides greater flexibility for science funding agencies like NSF to award the most relevant groups so it may be up to NSF’s discretion to define who’s eligible when funds are authorized, to best serve the mission. It is uncertain, at this point, how NSF plans to implement this program, but, often this description includes senior graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or associates within 5 years or their degree, or untenured assistant professors.

Additional Resources:

1. Termini, C.M., Traver, D. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 on early career scientists: an optimistic guide for the future. BMC Biol, 18(95), https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-020-00821-4.
2. Prinstein, Mitchell. (2021). Science is rescuing us from COVID – it’s time for the US to return the favor. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/546129-science-is-rescuing-us-from-covid-its-time-for-the-us-to-return-the-favor?rl=1
3. Harrop, C., Bal, V., Carpenter, K., Halladay, A. (2021). A lost generation? The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early career ASD researchers. Autism Research. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2503
4. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2021). The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Washington, DC. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26061.
5. Myers, K.R., Tham, W.Y., Yin, Y. et al. (2020). Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nat Hum Behav 4, 880–883 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y
6. Mandavilli, Apoorva. (2021). Could the pandemic prompt an ‘epidemic of loss’ of women in the sciences? The New York Times.

Request #3: Support $48.9 million for the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) in FY22 [Fact Sheet] 

Background: 

The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR) was congressionally authorized in 1993 and established in 1995. Housed within the NIH Office of the Director, Congress created OBSSR to coordinate and promote basic, clinical, and translational research in the behavioral and social sciences to support the NIH mission. In partnership with other institutes and centers (ICs), OBSSR co-funds highly rated grants that the ICs cannot fund alone. OBSSR's priorities are to: 

• Promote collaboration to increase basic behavioral and social sciences research by identifying promising and emerging lines of basic behavioral and social sciences research relevant to the health research mission of the NIH, stimulating new areas of basic behavioral and social sciences research that address important research questions, and facilitating the translation of these findings to applied research.
• Enhance research infrastructure, methods, and measures, a need that the OBSSR is uniquely positioned to address. To take full advantage of the data being produced, a robust and open research infrastructure, including common data elements must be developed and refined.
• Facilitate adoption of behavioral and social sciences research findings in health research and in practice.

What's the Problem?

• OBSSR funding remained stagnant over the last five years despite the significant increases provided to NIH. The increase in OBSSR’s budget would address the lack of resources OBSSR needs to accomplish its mission.
• In addition, OBSSR did not receive supplemental appropriations to address and support COVID-19-related activities to address the urgent public health emergency.
• Below inflation increases over the last five years has reduced OBSSR’s ability to coordinate trans-NIH social and behavioral research.

Why Support Increased Funding for OBSSR?

A budget of $48.9 million in FY 2022 would allow OBSSR to:

• Coordinate and co-fund, in partnership with NIH 27 Institutes and Centers (ICs), highly rated grants that the ICs cannot fund alone, including research on violence and social connectedness.
• Co-fund with ICs meritorious applications in community and population-level research proposed by underrepresented racial/ ethnic investigators that align well with institutes and centers’ strategic priorities.
• Plan for, continue to support, and co-fund research examining the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated mitigation efforts surrounding it efficiently and effectively. OBSSR would continue to investigate what COVID-related actions and interventions were successful and discern which were not effective despite our current knowledge. Additional resources are needed to support the necessary level of research to optimize mitigation strategies and demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions to blunt the public health crisis.

OBSSR & COVID-19:

OBSSR has provided critical leadership in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In FY 2021, OBSSR:

• Led the development of a COVID survey repository (NIH Public Health Emergency and Disaster Research Response and PhenX Toolkit) that allows researchers to share COVID-related survey items as they are developed for others to use. The repository facilitates data comparisons, data sharing, and data integration across survey studies.
• Coordinated an OBSSR-led supplement Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) to rapidly stimulate research on social and behavioral research relevant to COVID, including social, behavioral, and economic research not addressed by some of the Institutes and Centers.
• Provided $2.8 million, 10% of its total FY 2020 budget to co-fund COVID initiatives. The Office has set aside $2 million in FY 2021 to fund COVID-related initiatives.
• Initiated the NIH cross-cutting COVID initiative on the Social Behavioral and Economic (SBE) Impacts of COVID.  OBSSR, collaborating with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), leads the executive committee of this initiative. Initially, the members of the SBE Impacts COVID funded supplements across the NIH. The group subsequently issued funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) on digital and community interventions to ameliorate impacts,  followed by a COVID data science consortium announcement. (It is important to note: the funding for these initiatives was from pooled institutes and centers FY 2021 funding -- none of it is from supplemental appropriations).
• Led the development of recommendations to RADx-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) for common data elements to facilitate data sharing across the consortium. OBSSR is a member of the governance committee of RADx-UP.  The overarching goal of the RADx-UP initiative is to understand the factors associated with disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality and to lay the foundation to reduce disparities for those underserved and vulnerable populations who are disproportionately affected by, have the highest infection rates of, and/or are most at risk for complications or poor outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Collaborated, developed, and implemented a community-based mass at-home COVID testing project in Greenville, NC, and Chattanooga, TN, as a member of the NIH Office of the Director group. The project is testing the hypothesis that mass at-home testing will reduce transmission, via behavior change.

FAQs: 

• Why shouldn’t Congress let NIH director Francis Collins decide whether to increase OBSSR’s budget? 
  Unfortunately, despite NIH’s receiving significant budget increases over the past five years, OBSSR has received minimal budget increases. Congress created OBSSR to coordinate social and behavioral  research across the NIH. Despite not receiving COVID-19 relief resources, OBSSR has shown how important the coordination the office is providing in supporting research designed to understand the mitigation efforts that have been instituted to combat COVID. The proposed increase in OBSSR’s budget would allow it to continue to address the insufficient evidence base and provide the infrastructure to allow policymakers to make precise projections in the current pandemic and future public health emergencies.
   
• How is this funding request align with what was requested by the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research?
  We think it aligns perfectly. APA joins the scientific community in supporting a recommendation of at least $46.1 billion for FY 2022. Of this sum, we are requesting a budget of $48.9 million for OBSSR.
   
• Have you submitted an appropriations request form?
  APA Advocacy Staff is submitting all appropriations request forms. If your office has a form you would like APA to fill out, please let me know and I can forward their staff your link. 
   
• Is there a 'Dear Colleague Letter' for OBSSR?
  No, however Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) are circulating their annual letter in support of a robust NIH budget, including OBSSR, for FY 2022. The letter urges appropriators to “maintain a strong commitment to funding for the National Institutes of Health.” The deadline to sign the letter was Friday, May 14th.

Additional Resources:

1. FY22 Science Appropriations Factsheet
2. Presentation by William Riley, PhD at the APASI Advocacy Summit: Update on the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research
3. Riley WT, Borja SE, Hooper MW, Lei M, Spotts EL, Phillips JRW, Gordon JA, Hodes RJ, Lauer MS, Schwetz TA, Perez-Stable E. National Institutes of Health social and behavioral research in response to the SARS-CoV2 Pandemic. Transl Behav Med. 2020 Oct 8;10(4):857-861. doi: 10.1093/tbm/ibaa075. PMID: 32716038; PMCID: PMC7529099
4. COVID-19 Specific Survey Items Now Available on PhenX and the NIH Disaster Research Response (DR2) Platforms
5. Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) regarding the Availability of Administrative Supplements and Urgent Competitive Revisions for Research on the 2019 Novel Coronavirus and the Behavioral and Social Sciences
6. Digital Healthcare Interventions to Address the Secondary Health Effects Related to Social, Behavioral, and Economic Impact of COVID-19 (R01 - Clinical Trial Optional)
7. Emergency Award: Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research on COVID-19 Consortium (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
8. Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP)
9. RADxSM Underserved Populations (RADx-UP)