The National Institute of Health\u2019s mission 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. The goals of the agency are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In realizing these goals, the NIH provides leadership and direction to programs designed to improve the health of the nation by conducting and supporting research:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To align with their mission and goals, the NIH is focusing on Ongoing Administrative Burden Reduction Activities<\/strong> to reduce administrative burden and complexity. They will be striving to promote innovation, experimentation and evaluation in funding approaches; promote research integrity; enhance biosafety and laboratory safety; detect and disrupt foreign interference; and to develop a NIH\/national strategy for shared research resources. One of the first things they did was to reduce the number of notices of funding opportunity (NOFOs) by 50% relative to Jan. 2025. <\/strong>They also launched Highlighted Topics<\/strong> to replace the use of NOFOs focusing on specific research areas<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other examples of changes include the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Budget changes<\/strong> consist of the end the modular budget \u201cpilot.\u201d Researchers will no longer require detailed budgets in applications for non-complex grants which includes most research project grants. Budget justifications will be still be required so peer reviewers can assess the general reasonableness of the overall request. Certain cases will still request full budgets as just-in-time information. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Data Management and Sharing Plan<\/strong> will be simplified to 4 yes\/no questions with only explanations required for the no<\/em><\/strong> answers. The focus will shift from prospectively describing specifics to the general assent to sharing useful scientific data rather since it isn\u2019t always known in advance every data type that will be generated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach allows the NIH to focus on compliance in the cases where grantees won\u2019t share their data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basic Experimental Studies in Humans (BESH)<\/strong> is no longer considered to be a clinical trial. BESH projects seek fundamental information about human biology and behavior and do not have clinical outcomes, so they will no longer be considered clinical trials. The NIH re-interpreted definition of clinical trials<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOther Burden Reduction and Simplification Plans<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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