US NIH Director Collins lays out his goals for the future of the agency

Newly-appointed US National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins shared his vision for the NIH. During a recent meeting. Although he has been in the director role less than one month, Dr Collins is familiar to many at NIH and in the scientific community through his leadership of the Human Genome Project, commented the Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA).

A physician-geneticist, Collins is noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his service as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at theNIH from 1993-2008.

During the meeting, Dr Collins outlined five opportunities for NIH in the years ahead:
1. Applying unprecedented opportunities in genomics and other high throughput technologies to understand fundamental biology and to uncover the causes of specific diseases such as cancer, heart disease, autism, and obesity.

2. Translating basic science discoveries into new and better treatments. This includes an emphasis on private-public partnerships.

3. Putting science to work for the benefit of healthcare reform by utilizing such methods as comparative effectiveness research, pharmacogenomics, personalized medicine, and health care research economics.

4. Encouraging a greater focus on global health.

5. Reinvigorating and empowering the biomedical research community.
The NIH received $10 billion in stimulus funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and $400 billion for comparative effectiveness research. Dr Collins stated that NIH funding has been beneficial for the US economy, with each NIH grant creating on average seven jobs, and every grant dollar paying back $2 in terms of helping patients. He also indicated that the peer review process used to award funding would be undergoing significant revision under his leadership.

Dr Collins asked NIH constituents, including the CHPA, for help in the following areas: 1) propagate a common and consistent voice in support of the importance of medical research by telling compelling stories, 2) identify new ways to describe NIH research to decision makers and the public, and 3) keep communication channels between the NIH and its constituents open. Collins also encouraged constituents to develop a brief summary of the issues that their organization believes the NIH director and the Institutes' center directors should know about.