Special Issues

Advocacy work can be either short- or long-term.  Some of the issues that we address are able to be resolved relatively quickly, while others, which we call "Special Issues," are active for years at a time.  These "Special Issue" pages are constructed so that you can trace the history of a long-term issue and see how things have evolved over time. 

• Threats to Peer Review at NIH
  Since 2003, members of Congress has been periodically attempting to defund NIH-funded, peer-reviewed research projects.   As of July 2005, three separate defunding attempts have been made, and the issue was again raised as a potential threat in 2006.
   
• Basic Behavioral Science Funding at NIH  
  In September 2003, NIMH Director Thomas Insel announced a change in NIMH's research priorities that would result in the diversion of basic research dollars to the study of "health-relevant" topics.  That same year, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni chartered a committee to examine the status of NIH's basic behavioral science portfolio.