Wednesday, May 19th, 2021
Help Congress explore U.S. biomedical research and any other issues relevant to the National Institutes of Health by sending your questions that lawmakers could raise with NIH leadership.
The mission of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) "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." NIH research has, for example, opened new treatment avenues for rheumatoid arthritis, leveraged electricity to treat lost neural function, and reduced the threat of bacterial meningitis. NIH has also played a major role in responding to the pandemic, for instance, jointly developing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, and launching the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative to speed innovation in the development, commercialization, and implementation of technologies for COVID-19 testing.
On Tuesday, May 25, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies will hold a hearing to assess U.S. biomedical research and all other issues relevant to NIH. NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, or alternate high-level NIH officials, will be present to answer Congress’ questions. The Subcommittee wants to hear your thoughts on topics such as U.S. biomedical research priorities, innovative models for research funding, the commercialization of fundamental research discoveries, platform technologies, R&D infrastructure, future pandemic preparedness, political interference in science, factors impacting Americans’ health, or vaccine and therapeutics development and manufacturing, among other issues.
This is your opportunity to provide questions and ideas that you think lawmakers should raise during this key hearing. We’re counting on you to contribute your objective views, comments, personal stories, or questions related to these issues, all of which will be anonymized, collated, posted on the web, and conveyed to the Committee for use in its hearing. Your name and affiliation will not be connected with any hearing questions you suggest, unless you tell us otherwise.
Contribute the questions you think Members of Congress should ask NIH leadership via our new platform for connecting the S&T community with policymakers
We have launched our new web interface for connecting the S&T community and policymakers, engineered by and hosted on POPVOX. POPVOX is a nonpartisan online platform for civic engagement and governing. The new platform enables our community of scientists, engineers, technologists, and other subject matter experts to engage in an asynchronous discussion, share resources, and pose questions for consideration by Members of Congress and staff.
You will receive a separate email from info@popvox.com requesting that you create a POPVOX account and sign in to the "hub" that we created specifically for this hearing. You can navigate within the hub to review resources relevant to the hearing, suggest questions Senators could ask, and discuss the issues.
On Friday afternoon, we will be inviting congressional staff to engage in discussion with our community via the hub.
Kindly make your contributions via the new platform by Friday at noon ET. Thank you for helping us to improve models for connecting the S&T community and policymakers!
