The COSSA Annual Meeting and inaugural Social and Behavioral Science Advocacy Day will be held in Washington, DC on March 9-10, 2015. The meeting will feature presentations from federal agency leaders and other officials and will provide an excellent opportunity to network with others from throughout the social and behavioral science research community. New in 2015 will be the first-ever Social and Behavioral Science Advocacy Day in which COSSA members will have an opportunity to educate their elected officials about the value of social and behavioral science research and the importance of federal funding. Additional details, including registration information, will be available in early 2015.

• Deputy Assistant Director
• Division Director, Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS)
• Division Director, Social and Economic Sciences (SES)

According to the release announcing the draft policy, exceptions would be allowed if local IRB review is necessary to meet the needs of special populations or where it is required by federal, state, or tribal laws and regulations. Wider use of single IRB review in multi-site studies is expected to help achieve greater efficiencies in the initiation of studies across NIH's entire clinical research portfolio.

Several NIH institutes and centers, including the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke have been supporting the use of a single IRB in multi-site studies. NIH director Francis Collins noted that the use of single IRBs in multi-site studies will "reduce duplication of effort, speed the initiation of important research, and save time and taxpayer funds."

NIH has a number of policies designed to promote the distribution of research results and guide funding recipients in disseminating their results, including the NIH Data Sharing Policy, the NIH Public Access Policy, the NIH Research Tools Policy, and the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy. According to the NIH, a recent study found that the results of less than half of NIH-funded clinical trials had been published in a peer-reviewed biomedical journal within 30 months of trial completion. "Selective publication of the results of some trials and not others - or publication of incomplete or partial findings from a particular trial - can lead to inappropriate conclusions about the usefulness of particular therapies."

Compliance with the new policy will be a term and condition in the Notice of Grant Award and a contract requirement in the Contract Award. When the final policy is issued, NIH will provide more specific procedural guidance.

Comments are due on the draft policy by February 19, 2015. For more information see the notice.

More information can be found in the Federal Register Notice. Comments are due December 30, 2014.

"The social sciences and humanities are indispensable to understanding and addressing contemporary global challenges, and to grasping emerging opportunities. Every challenge the world faces has a human dimension, and no solution can be achieved without enlisting the support and efforts of individuals, communities and societies," according to the Leiden Statement: The Role of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Global Research Landscape, released in November. The Statement's signatories are the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the China 9 grouping of leading Chinese universities (C9), the Australian Group of Eight research-intensive universities (Go8), the Association of East Asia Research Universities (AEARU), the Russell Group in the UK, RU 11 Japan, and the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities. The Statement's purpose is to "restate and champion the fundamental role that the social sciences and humanities play in the new global community." Accordingly, the Leiden Statement calls for "an expanded role" for the social sciences and humanities in confronting problems via interdisciplinary research.

Read on for more details. 

The report notes, "Although the precise causes of the decline in patient harm are not fully understood, the increase in safety has occurred during a period of concerted attention by hospitals throughout the country to reduce adverse events." In a blog post, AHRQ director Richard Kronick called the results "unprecedented," and observed, "More remains to be done, but we should mark the progress we've seen to date because it shows that we are finally on the right track."

The purpose of the FOA is to increase the breadth and scope of the topics that can be addressed with systems science methodologies. Accordingly, it calls for research projects that are applied and/or basic in nature, have a human behavioral and/or social science focus, and employ methodologies suited to addressing the complexity inherent in behavioral and social phenomena, referred to as system science methodologies. The funders also seeks to promote interdisciplinary collaboration among health researchers and experts in computational approaches to further the development of modeling- and simulation-based systems science methodologies and their application to important public health challenges.

Participating institutes, centers and offices include: the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences (OBSSR), Cancer, Aging, Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, Child Health and Human Development, Dental and Craniofacial, Environmental Health Sciences, Mental Health, Nursing, and the Office of Disease Prevention.

The funding opportunity announcement (FOA), Family and Interpersonal Relationships in an Aging Context (PAR-15-042), notes that it is widely recognized that families and relationships with intimate partners and close friends represent some of the most significant social forces in a person's life. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence that "suggests that the family environment, including both family of origin and family networks forged in adulthood, can profoundly influence and shape lifespan trajectories of health and the experience of aging. The Institute explains that while well-replicated associations between various family and interpersonal relationship variables and health outcomes have been documented in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, in both humans and well-characterized social animal models, the mechanisms through which these relationships might mediate and moderate well-being and health outcomes are not well understood.

NIA is seeking studies that examine interrelations between multiple domains. Relevant research topics include: life course studies, the family as a context for genetic and epigenetic expression, family structure and family dynamics, allocation of resources, the family as a context for decision making and behavior change, relationship status and quality, and interpersonal affilial relationships and social support.

The National Institute of Justice's (NIJ) Bridging Research and Practice Program (BRP) provides funding to former NIJ grantees to disseminate and share their findings with practitioner audiences. The goal of the program is to ensure that the research reaches as broad an audience as possible.

The program supports such activities as presenting at professional practitioner-focused conferences or webinars; publishing in trade journals or other practitioner publications, including blogs; recording videos or podcasts for practitioner audiences; and engaging in other reasonable means designed to reach these audiences. The amount of funding provided will vary depending on the activity proposed. The funds can also be used to cover registration fees, lodging, travel, per diem, consultant pay, and other transportation costs.

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Additional information on how to apply is available here.

COSSA Annual Meeting & Advocacy Day, Washington, DC, March 9-10, 2015

A list of COSSA members' annual meetings and other events can be found on the COSSA web page.