Read on for more from the public release event and the report's recommendations. 

Election-year politics coupled with the need for immediate action to address the Ebola crisis in West Africa and authorization for U.S. action in Syria contributed to the speedy, bipartisan action on the CR. However, much less certain is what will happen after the November elections when Congress returns for a short lame duck session and attention will turn once again to avoiding a government shutdown and enacting final FY 2015 funding legislation. As previously reported, the final outcome largely hinges on whether the Republicans are able to win majority of the Senate next year. House and Senate appropriations chiefs are calling for consideration of a 12-bill omnibus appropriations package in the lame duck session so that the 114^th Congress can start fresh in January with a clean slate. However, should the Senate flip, there may be attempts to enact another short-term CR to give a new Senate Republican majority control over the final product.

Regardless, federal agencies will once again begin the new fiscal year with little clarity about their long-term budget outlook. Under a CR, agencies generally will be conservative with their spending and refrain from entering into new contracts and beginning new initiatives until funding questions are settled.

COSSA joined the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a COSSA Governing Member, and other groups on a letter earlier this summer outlining a number of concerns with SETRA, particularly relating to the independence and stature of NCES as a federal statistical agency. The bill as approved by the HELP Committee last week does not address the concerns expressed by the community. The bill now heads to the full House and Senate for final consideration before heading to the President for signature, which could occur when Congress returns for the lame duck session this fall.

Read on for more details on the bill. 

Murphy noted that in 2013, 9.3 million Americans had serious thoughts of suicide, 2.7 million made suicide plans, 1.3 million attempted suicide, and nearly 40,000 died by suicide; suicide is an American public health crisis that results in more lost lives than motor vehicle crashes, homicide, or drug abuse.  It is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, and the second leading cause of death for adults ages 25 to 34.  He emphasized that in 90 percent of suicides, an underlying diagnosis of mental illness was a contributing factor.  The Chairman emphasized that the research is lagging and evidence-based treatments often fail to reach those who can help.  "Suicides and suicidal behavior remains underreported, undertreated, and cloaked in a stigma," said Murphy. 

Read on for more on the hearing.

Beginning in January 2015, the policy will apply to all NIH-funded, large-scale human and non-human projects that generate genomic data.  The GDS policy replaces the Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) data sharing policy. According to the NIH, "A key tenet of the GDS policy is the expectation that researchers obtain informed consent of study participants for the potential future use of their de-identified data for research and for broad sharing."

Click here for more on the new GDS policy.

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), released Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey [NHIS], January-March 2014.This report found that in the first quarter of 2014, 41 million people (13.1 percent) were uninsured at the time of the interview, and 165.8 million people (61.8 percent) were covered by private health insurance plans--including 3.7 million people (1.4 percent) who obtained coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or state-based exchanges. This data may not be reflective of the surge in enrollment under the ACA that occurred late in the first quarter of 2014.

For more on these statistics, see COSSA's report from the September 8, 2014 edition of Update.

PCORI's authorizing legislation mandates that the Institute ensure that all primary research is peer reviewed and release research findings to clinicians, patients, and the general public in a timely manner. The draft proposal combines these two responsibilities (meaning that findings will not be made public until they have undergone peer review). The proposed peer review process opts not to rely on scientific journals' peer review, due to concerns about timeliness and the necessity of assessing researchers' compliance with PCORI's methodology standards. Instead, it proposes that PCORI coordinate the peer review of the research it funds.

Proposals are sought across four topics (with 11 corresponding subtopics): (1) Identity, Influence, and Mobilization; (2) Contributors to Societal Resilience and Change; (3) Power and Deterrence; and (4) Innovations in National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation.

White papers are due October 31 with full proposals due January 30, 2015.

The joint sign-on letter strongly urges Senators Reid and McConnell to resist bringing the measure to the Senate floor for consideration; the bill was reported out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 30. According to the letter, "This legislation would place harmful restrictions on medical and scientific meetings that would threaten scientific progress and increase federal expenditures on unnecessary administrative and reporting requirements. Federal support for, and participation in, scientific meetings has dramatically decreased over the last several years due to federal budget constraints and other policies enacted by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The proposed additional restrictions would further handicap research, implementation and collaborative efforts necessary to address serious public health threats and advance discovery of life saving treatments and diagnostics."

COSSA signed on to a similar letter prior to the Senate Homeland Security Committee's consideration of the bill in July.

More information on the America COMPETES Act can be found in COSSA's analysis. While NSF reauthorization legislation is not expected to become law this year, the Senate bill provides an important marker for consideration in 2015.