The position profile for COSSA's search to replace Howard Silver, who is retiring as COSSA's Executive Director, is now available.  According to the description, COSSA seeks a dynamic leader in the field of social science advocacy to serve as its next Executive Director. COSSA fills a unique role in the public policy arena, representing the broad spectrum of social science, as opposed to any one discipline. Since its creation in 1981, COSSA has been an effective champion for social science with an impressive record of achievement. The current political climate solidifies the need for COSSA's advocacy and lobbying work and underscores the importance of aggressively pursuing new ideas and strategies to increase the organization's impact. (Position Description)

France Cordova Nominated as Next NSF Director

NSF Political Science Program Cancels Proposal Target Dates for Rest of 2013

As a further response to complying with the Coburn Amendment to the FY 2013 final appropriations legislation, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Political Science program has announced the cancellation of its August 2013 research grant proposal deadline and its September 2013 dissertation grant deadline. In addition, the political science review panel will not meet again in 2013. (For the story of the Coburn Amendment see Update, March 25, 2013.)

On June 7, NSF issued a statement describing its plans to implement the Coburn amendment stating: "the Political Science Program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) will continue to engage panels to review grant proposals, using the two National Science Board approved merit review criteria (Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts)." To comply with the act, "the Panels will also be asked to provide input on whether proposals meet one or both of the additional criteria required -- promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States." (See Update, June 10, 2013.)

The new notice explains: "Because of uncertainty about the NSF budget for fiscal year 2014, the Political Science program will not have target dates in August 2013 (for research grants) and September 2013 (for Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants)." It goes on to assure political scientists that the program will adhere to its January 2014 proposal target date. The program also notes that it will still accept proposals at any time. The panel will meet again in the spring of 2014 to review proposals received by the January 2014 target date.

The hope is that by that time, the Coburn amendment would be history. With the likelihood of a Continuing Resolution funding the government into FY 2014, it will take some strong efforts to remove Coburn's restrictions on the program.

According to the Political Science program website, most of the awards made in FY 2013 have gone to Dissertation Research Grants, training workshops, and collaborative grants on automating political indicators.

Congress Leaves for August Recess: Appropriations System in "Total Chaos"

Reacting to the Senate's vote not to consider the FY 2014 Transportation/HUD spending bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee that produced the bill and the only Republican Senator to vote for bringing it to the floor, lashed out, declaring, "The whole system is in total chaos. It's too early to tell how it is all going to unspool now."

At the same time, the House leadership pulled its version of the Transportation/HUD spending bill from the floor because moderate Republicans balked at the severe cuts to highway programs, creating a situation where there were probably not enough votes to pass the measure.

Although both the House and Senate have made progress on the FY 2014 spending bills at the committee level, getting the bills passed on the floors has been much more difficult. The House has passed four of the twelve, while the Senate has passed only one. The House Appropriations Committee has completed ten of the twelve, with the Interior-Environment bill making it through the Subcommittee. The Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill had its Subcommittee markup scheduled for two weeks ago indefinitely postponed because of the drastic reductions to many programs in the draft released publicly.

The Senate Appropriations panel has completed work on eleven of the bills. It is missing the Interior/Environment bill as well. Yet, an attempt to bring Transportation/HUD to the floor was blocked by an inability to get support from a sufficient number of Republican Senators to reach the magic 60 votes needed to conduct business in the Senate.

Congress has left town for a five-week recess, not to return until September 9. What will happen when they come back is anybody's guess. The amount of legislative time to conduct business before the new fiscal year begins on October 1 is minimal. Leadership and staff are already in the process of putting together a Continuing Resolution (CR) that will keep the government running into the new fiscal year. However, some GOP Senators are making noises that they will try to block the CR if it includes funding for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. This would lead to a government shutdown.

As has occurred during the past few years, there is once again talk of some bargain between the Administration and Congress that would reduce entitlement spending, begin the process of reforming the tax code, and end the dreaded sequester. So far, lots of talk, including meetings of a bipartisan group of Senators with White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, but not much action.

One question also left hanging is whether the Coburn Amendment to the final FY 2013 spending bill restricting the National Science Foundation's political science program (see story above) can get removed from any FY 2014 funding legislation, whether it is a CR or Omnibus bill, which once again might occur later in the calendar year. Stay tuned!

Senate Confirms Thompson as New Census Director

OMB Suggests Agencies Learn How to "Harness" Research Findings from the Social and Behavioral Sciences

In a July 26 memo to the heads of departments and agencies, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) suggests one way to improve the "evidence and innovation agenda" is to use research findings from the social and behavioral sciences "to implement low-cost approaches to improving program results." OMB expects to conduct a workshop on this topic later this year.

All this is part of the current Administration's attempt to help agencies use evidence and evaluations in budget submissions, priority setting, and program implementation. Especially in this era of budgetary constraints, OMB wants agencies to cooperate to improve government performance.

In providing guidance to the agencies as they prepare their FY 2015 budgets, OMB encourages them to "allocate resources to programs and practices backed by strong evidence of effectiveness, while trimming activities that evidence shows are not effective." OMB also expects the agencies to propose new ideas for developing evidence to improve existing programs.

OMB recommends cross-cutting strategies such as: 1) harnessing data; 2) conducting high-quality, low-cost evaluations and rapid, iterative experiments; 3) using innovative outcome-focused grant designs; and 4) strengthening agency capacity to use evidence through clearinghouses that help translate strong research into practice.

For the first strategy, OMB supports linking data across programs and levels of government, while still protecting privacy. It notes that a number of Federal agencies are currently "developing or using protocols and processes to share personally identifiable data to permit such linkages" while adhering to laws, regulations, and policies regarding privacy.

As part of the second strategy, OMB highlights that "major advances have been made in research regarding the influences that drive people's decisions and choices." These new insights into human behavior "can significantly improve policy outcomes at a lower cost." In addition, OMB cites the Hawaii Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program as an example that used administrative data collected for other purposes to keep evaluation costs low.

For the third strategy, OMB discusses pay for success, tiered-evidence grant designs, such as the Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund, performance partnerships and waiver demonstrations, and multi-phase grant competitions.

The full memo can be found at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-17.pdf. 

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, chaired by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), has marked up and sent to the Senate floor the Violent Content Research Act of 2013.

The bill calls for the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to jointly arrange with the National Academy of Sciences to undertake a study of the impact of violent video games and violent video programming on the behavior of children.

In introducing the bill on January 24, 2013, Rockefeller like many others was reacting to the killings in Newtown, CT. He indicated that one part of a "comprehensive approach" to coping with this tragedy "concerns violent content, including video games and video programming." He continued, "I have long had concerns about how the violent content that kids see and interact with every day affects their wellbeing. This is a very important issue, and one that deserves further research."

The committee chairman also criticized court decisions that have protected the video game industry, although he did not specifically refer to the 2011 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which overturned, using the first amendment, California's attempt to ban minors from purchasing violent video games. Rockefeller asserted: "Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better." He added: "These court decisions show we need to conduct additional groundwork on this issue. This [proposed] report would be a critical resource in this process. It could inform research by other organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control, and provide guidance to lawmakers."

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee, also reacting to Newtown, asked the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a report on youth violence. A Subcommittee of the NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economics Sciences directorate quickly produced the report Youth Violence: What We Need to Know. Part of the report dealt with violent video games and programming and a hearing on the report was held by Wolf's Subcommittee on March 19, 2013 (see Update, March 25, 2013).

There does not appear to be a companion to Rockefeller's bill in the House of Representatives.

Members of Congress Tell NIH Director to Continue Funding of Social, Behavioral and Economics Research

A Dear Colleague letter organized by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) to NIH Director Francis Collins has garnered the signatures of over 80 members of the House of Representatives. The letter affirms the signatories' "belief that the NIH should sustain its crucial support for behavioral, and social science research, including economics."

In writing to director Collins, the Members remind him that: "Support for these areas of research is consistent with the NIH mission to 'enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.'"

It further goes on to say: "The social sciences are instrumental to this progress, and researchers from economics, psychology, sociology, demography, history, geography, communications and political science, have all made contributions that build our collective knowledge on the determinants of health and provide the foundation for future policy action."

Specifically addressing the results of NIH-funded economics research, which a House Appropriations Subcommittee in 2012 threatened to eliminate (see Update, July 23, 2012), the letter notes how a number of findings address "some of the most pressing issues in health research including, how to promote healthy behaviors, stem the onset of chronic conditions, improve the productivity of medical care, and understand how socio-economic factors interact with communities to perpetuate health disparities among population groups."

The letter concludes by urging Collins "to remain steadfast in your support of social science research. Social sciences, economics in particular, have always been an important pillar of knowledge in our effort to improve national and global health."

The letter and the list of signatories can be found on www.cossa.org as soon as it becomes available.

A recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report discussed trends in firearms deaths from homicide and suicide in metropolitan areas for 2009-2010 compared to 2006-2007. The report finds that while homicide rates in metropolitan areas remain higher than the national average, 75 percent of cities saw a decline in firearm homicide rates since 2006-2007. The opposite is true for suicide: metropolitan areas have lower firearm suicide rates than the national average, but saw an increase in firearm suicides since 2006-2007. The report draws on data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the Census Bureau.

IOM Presents Webinar on UN Post-2015 Development Report

On July 25, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) hosted a discussion on the recent meeting of high-level government officials from around the world to chart the path of global development starting in 2015. With the United Nations' (UN) Millennium Development Goals expiring that year, leaders are working hard to continue the progress made over the past 15 years while also addressing some of the more recent developments and needs as they relate to poverty, health, education, and quality of life. The panel included representatives of government, the private sector, academia, civil society, and youth. IOM's discussion was aimed at analyzing the goals and indicators that were established in the panel.

John Norris, a senior advisor to one of the authors of the upcoming 2015 Millennium Goals report, was first to speak about the progress that had been made. Norris started by explaining that he had seen remarkable advancement since the last time the panel met in 2000. Some of the statistics reflecting this progress were staggering: 500 million fewer people in extreme poverty and about three million children's lives saved each year. Four out of five children now get vaccinated for a range of diseases. Maternal mortality gets the focused attention it deserves. Deaths from malaria have fallen by one-quarter.

Although there was significant progress, Norris noted that major issues remained with uneven implementation even within single nations. There included areas in which groups were marginalized because of race, gender, religion, and caste. Another problem, Norris suggested, was an ongoing sense of competition and tension between the environmental and poverty-focused groups. He added that the panel was determined to find solutions that created environmentally sustainable and responsible economic development.

UN health specialist Kumanan Rasanathan spoke next on the some of the global health implications of the meeting and subsequent report. Rasanathan started by commending the panel members on successfully managing the competing views and priorities that were present. The panel, Rasanathan said, also succeeded in creating a transparent and participatory process for health advocates to work together efficiently. He was worried, however, that there may be too many specific targets and indicators and not enough resources for data collection and analysis. Additionally, he expressed concern about insufficient emphasis on the indirect contributors to health such as environmental and labor conditions.

Andrew Haines, a Professor of Public Health and Primary Care, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, closed out the webinar by voicing his concern over the general lack of emphasis on health within the report. Out of the eleven thematic groups, only one focused specifically on health. The list would be improved, Haines stated, by including universal healthcare and socioeconomic and environmental detriments to health.

Haines used livestock farming as an example of the unintended (and dire) consequences of economic development on global health. Livestock farming not only creates a large amount of greenhouse gasses before, during and after livestock production, but also leads to high animal byproduct intake, he declared. This intake can lead to cardiovascular issues and colorectal cancers. According to Haines, this is one of many crosscutting issues that worry health officials.

Overall, the speakers seemed very optimistic of the progress that has been made and the goals that have been set. All three panelists, however, also seemed worried about the uneven balance of economic development and health care progress. 

Child Marriage Subject of UNFPA Briefing

As part of a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) effort to call attention to child marriage, the Russell Senate Office Building recently hosted a traveling photography exhibit, "Too Young to Wed," featuring photographs of young girls in forced marriages. A briefing on "Ending Child Marriage," co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), was held on July 25. Margaret Hempel, Ford Foundation, moderated the panel.

Stephanie Sinclair, a Pulitzer-winning photojournalist whose photographs make up the Too Young to Wed exhibit (the pictures and more information are available here) led off the briefing. Sinclair explained that she first encountered child marriage during her work as a conflict photographer in Afghanistan. While visiting a hospital in 2003, she discovered that a number of young girls had attempted to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire, many of whom were married. Sinclair noted that some of the girls she photographed for the exhibition were married at ages as young as eight. One sign for optimism was that all of her pictures were taken with the permission of the families and communities, a sign that some are ready for change. Sinclair shared the story of a mother, married as a child, who wanted to stop the wedding of her eight-year-old daughter, but lacked the resources and knowledge to convince her husband. Sinclair and her colleagues elicited the cooperation of a nearby hospital, which sent an ambulance to the rural village as part of a reproductive health campaign. The information about the health risks of child bearing to young girls gave the mother the tools she needed to make the case for stopping the marriage to her husband.

Rachel Vogelstein, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Fellow and author of Ending Child Marriage: How Elevating the Status of Girls Advances U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives, shared some pragmatic reasons to pursue this issue. Child marriage is more prevalent than people think, she explained. One in three women ages 20-24 (67 million people) were married before they were 18. Five million girls under 15 are married each year. India accounts for 40 percent of all child marriages worldwide, but the practice is seen throughout South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Vogelstein explained how ending child marriage is in the U.S.'s self interest. First, it would contribute to increased economic growth and stability in developing countries. Because girls are commonly taken out of school when they become engaged, they receive less education, which undercuts their earning potential (and thus the country's per capita income growth). Girls in these countries are also more likely to become single mothers through marital abandonment than by becoming pregnant out of wedlock, so child marriage perpetuates a cycle of poverty. Second, ending child marriage would have significant global health implications; early childbirth has very serious health consequences for both the mother and child. These ongoing risks undercut U.S. investments in global health. Finally, ending child marriage could contribute to greater security abroad, as the most unstable countries tend to have a higher prevalence of child marriage. Vogelstein concluded by pointing out that the Violence Against Women Act, reauthorized in March 2013, requires the Secretary of State to develop and implement a strategy to prevent child marriage; ending child marriage globally is not only in the U.S.'s interests, it is now law.

Call for an Evidence-Based Approach to the Problem

Jennifer Redner, Girls Not Brides, discussed strategies to eliminate child marriage worldwide. She called for a multi-sectoral, evidence-based approach consisting of five elements: 1) preventing these marriages from taking place, 2) empowering girls at risk of being married, 3) addressing community needs, 4) targeting areas that are "hot spots" for child marriage, and 5) diplomatic initiatives. Redner suggested that areas of focus be identified by data-driven selection that takes into account where girls are being married young, where girls are dying in childbirth, literacy rates, contraception needs, legal environments, and existing complementary initiatives. She also recommended that new programs start small, but incorporate scalability and evaluation into their initial design. She shared five ways to approach the problem: 1) working directly with married and at-risk girls, 2) educating and mobilizing parents, 3) putting more resources into schooling, 4) providing economic support, 5) promoting international efforts and negotiations (for example, child marriage is not an issue that is incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals).

Priya Nanda, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), discussed efforts to end child marriage in India, where nearly half of all women aged 20-24 were married before they were 18. Nanda observed that one of the more insidious effects of child marriage was the way it shapes girls' destinies and identities; child marriage affects how families view and invest in their daughters even before they are engaged-- their value is seen in their ability to make a good match. India is in the process of implementing a national strategy to end child marriage (although it has been illegal since 1929). States and districts have been developing action plans to implement the strategy. Since there is no single policy lever to pull that will stop child marriage, solutions must be comprehensive and address many contributing factors. One strategy that seems to have some positive impact is conditional cash transfers, which consist of payments to families whose daughters do not marry before they turn 18.However, Nanda explained, such programs have not yet been rigorously evaluated. ICRW is currently undertaking a study to measure these programs' effectiveness. ICRW's report, Solutions to End Child Marriage: What the Evidence Shows, is available for download.

Tradition cannot be "extracted at the cost of fundamental human dignity."

Kate Gilmore, Deputy Assistant Director and Assistant Secretary General of UNFPA, pointed out that if the number of women married as children were a country, it would be three times the size of France. Given its scope, Gilmore argued, child marriage should be viewed as a mainstream--not marginal--problem. She took issue with child marriage apologists who view it in the context of cultural relativism, arguing that the girls being married off are also holders of culture. She asserted that tradition cannot be "extracted at the cost of fundamental human dignity." Gilmore concluded by asking the audience, "how can it be that we haven't declared this a humanitarian crisis?" UNFPA's report, Marrying Too Young, is available online.

The panel responded to a question about data gaps and pointed to a number of opportunities for researchers. They mentioned the scarcity of data about rural areas (where these practices are concentrated) and identified the Middle East/North Africa and Central and South America as regions where data is particularly limited. They also called for age-disaggregated data and more focus on vital statistics. Some topics that should receive more attention are the impact of child marriage on boys and men and how norms are shifted.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Improving Health Care Systems (IHS) program within the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) are seeking applications (RFA-AG-14-009, Clinical Trial of a Multifactorial Fall Injury Prevention Strategy in Older Persons) to conduct a randomized clinical trial of a multifactorial strategy for preventing serious fall-related injuries among non-institutionalized older persons. Injuries that result from falls pose a substantial public health burden, especially among other persons with risk factors for falling. Serious injuries may be important facts that contribute to older persons' loss of independence.

Clinical trials focusing on reducing the incidence of falls have found that some interventions have substantial effects and others have little or none. A major determinant of the effectiveness of a fall prevention strategy is the degree to which the intervention team has control over the implementation of the intervention; strategies in which one team recommend preventive interventions for a patient and a different team implement them have been generally ineffective. Other obstacles to the success of strategies for preventing falls and injuries include: providers' lack of relevant knowledge, expertise and/or adherence to guidelines; geographic barriers to patients visiting health care providers and to providers' ability to assess and improve patients' home safety; patients' incomplete adoption of recommended self-management of risk-modifying behaviors; and lack of financial and organizational support required for planning, communication, and coordination among providers of the risk-reducing healthcare.

Data on the effects of falls prevention strategies on fall-related injuries is even more limited than that regarding the degree to which evidence-based practice guidelines are being implemented in the different practice settings and different populations. Additionally, there is sparse evidence about the effects of falls prevention strategies on other outcomes that are important to patients.

Letters of intent are due October 13, 2013. Applications are due November 13, 2013. For more information see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AG-14-009.html. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) and participating Institutes and Centers (Cancer; Eye; Heart, Lung, and Blood; Aging; Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; Child Health and Human Development; Deafness and Craniofacial Research; Drug Abuse; General Medical Sciences; Mental Health; Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine; and the Office of Disease Prevention invite Research Education Grant (R25) applications to develop, implement, evaluate and disseminate short courses in innovative methods for behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR).

The R25 grant mechanism is designed to support the development of creative and innovative research education programs for the development of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical researchers, or for public education and outreach on health-related research to a variety of audiences. Methodological domains of interest for the funding opportunity announcement, Short Courses on Innovative Methodologies in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (RFA-OD-13-009), include but are not limited to: study design, data collection, measurement, data analysis and visualization, modeling and simulation (systems science methodologies). While research education grants are not typically research instruments, they do involve experiments in education and/or dissemination of research knowledge that require an evaluation plan in order to determine their effectiveness. Accordingly, each application is required to include a plan to evaluate the activities proposed, as well as a plan for disseminating user-friendly course materials to the broader scientific community. Specific examples of appropriate topics include but are not limited to:

• Systems science methodologies (e.g., agent-based modeling, system dynamics modeling, social network analysis, microsimulation, discrete event simulation).
• Mixed methods research (combining quantitative and qualitative methods).
• Mobile and wireless health (mHealth) methodologies for the conduct of BSSR.
• Innovations in dissemination and implementation research methodologies.
• Quasi-experimental designs and other designs that complement randomized controlled trial designs.
• "Big data" mining, pattern recognition, integration, visualization and analysis which encourage hypothesis testing or analysis of BSSR research questions. The phrase "big data" in this FOA refers to large, diverse, complex, longitudinal, and/or distributed data sets generated from instruments, sensors, Internet transactions, email, video, click streams, and/or all other digital sources available today and in the future.
• Mediation analyses, moderation analyses or their combination (e.g., moderated mediation) Mediation analyses are those that explore the underlying mechanism or process giving rise to the observed relationship between variables. Moderation analyses are those that explore mechanisms or processes that govern the strength of the observed relationship between variables.
• Merging multiple iterations of experimental or survey data that contain common data. Merging multiple iterations of survey data to test for trends over time or obtain larger sample sizes for hard-to-reach populations.
• Statistical matching methods to identify the same cases in different datasets.
• Innovations in community-engaged or community-based, participatory research.
• Methods for analyzing and integrating spatial data with other behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) data.
• Methods to improve the bidirectional translation of knowledge of behavioral and social processes in humans and animal models (e.g., comparable behavioral testing paradigms in humans and model organisms).
• Innovative methods for integrating biological and BSSR data (e.g., analytical methods for the integrative study of gene and behavioral/social environment interactions).
• Innovative methodologies to improve policy relevant research.
• Cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analyses of behavioral, social, policy or public health initiatives.
• Innovative study designs, creative uses of existing data, and novel analytical approaches for cross-national comparisons of data relevant to health.
• Study designs, methods and analyses of early phase translation of basic behavioral and social sciences findings into behavioral interventions.
• Innovative methods for the analysis of longitudinal multidimensional data (e.g., growth curves) including issues related to missing data.
• Innovations in short, brief interventions and referrals to treatment (SBIRT) in medical and non-medical settings.
• Methods to develop common data element approaches for integrative behavioral interventions.
• Methods to develop translational tools for integrative behavioral interventions.
• Algorithms for measuring the construction of short, brief interventions and referrals to treatment (SBIRT) measurement and/or methods to evaluate the effectiveness of research delivery models in medical and non-medical settings.

Letters of intent are due October 14, 2013. Applications are due November 14, 2014. 

With Congress in recess until September 9th, Update will also take a summer hiatus. We will also return on September 9th to cover what promises to be a very interesting fall. Enjoy the rest of the summer!