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Home > Institutes, Centers & Offices > Office of the Director > Freedom Of Information Act Office > Selected NIH Institute and Center Director's Meeting Minutes

IC Directors' Meeting Highlights

November 7, 2005

To: IC Directors
From: Director, Executive Secretariat
Subject: IC Directors Meeting Highlights — May 12, 2005

Discussion Items

I. Clinical and Translational Research–A Transformation

Dr. Zerhouni discussed the current challenges to the clinical research enterprise:

  • difficulty in recruiting and retaining clinical researchers
  • increasing regulatory burden and overhead costs
  • fragmented training programs
  • limitations /barriers owing to NIH funding mechanisms, review, and program structures.

The NIH strategy for addressing and overcoming these challenges will be for the NIH Clinical Roadmap to provide the “bricks” with which individual institutions can build academic homes tailored to their own needs and strengths and can integrate resources to advance the new intellectual discipline of clinical and translational sciences. The NIH effort, to be led by NCRR, will support and enable local institutional communities to innovate, build, and nurture new types of entities for clinical and translational research science that will facilitate the research to bedside bridge.

Dr. Zerhouni asked the group for input on this effort’s effects on IC programmatic activities and its relation to the Roadmap initiatives as well as funding issues. A number of IC Directors joined in the discussion, and Dr. Zerhouni said that he would keep the advice, questions, and suggestions in mind as the rollout of this “invitation to change” approaches.

II. System for Enterprise Records and Correspondence Handling (SERCH) Digital Signatures Update

Star Kline, Project Officer for this new NIH and HHS enterprise-wide electronic system, explained and demonstrated the digital signature component. She will be working with individual IC Directors as the implementation date approaches.

Scientific Presentation

III. From John Fogarty to Margaret Mead and Beyond: A Vignette

Dr. Hrynkow presented a brief biography of the FIC’s namesake, Congressman John Edward Fogarty, and summarized the Center’s legislative history and mission. She then traced and highlighted the activities and interconnections of several extramural scientists supported by NIAID with complementary FIC training support for international collaborations–illustrating the mutually reinforcing nature of science, training opportunities, and collaborations with scientists in developing countries. She focused in particular on Brazil and Haiti, two countries that have built cadres of trained scientists with FIC and NIH support and that have made research and public health gains because of it. After an anecdote about Margaret Mead’s tenure as a Fogarty Scholar in Residence, she closed her presentation with the following quotation from Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Dale Johnson

cc:
OD Senior Staff

 

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