IG Reviews Financial Conflicts of Interest, Foreign Affiliations in NIH Grant Process

The Office of Inspector General (IG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released three reports on September 25, 2019 that analyze the procedures in place at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for reviewing financial conflicts of interests, vetting peer reviewers, and ensuring grantees appropriately disclose all sources of research support during their grantmaking process. According to the IG, about 3 percent of NIH grants awarded in fiscal year (FY) 2018 involved researchers with financial conflicts. The report found that although NIH has made “substantial strides in reviewing the financial conflicts that institutions report,” it “lacks quality assurance procedures in its review process” and “cannot identify-and does not plan to identify-whether investigators’ financial conflicts involve foreign interests, but is identifying foreign affiliations through a clarification of its requirements for pre-award reporting.” The IG recommends that NIH perform regular “quality assurance reviews of the financial-conflict information in its online system to ensure the adequacy of its oversight.” Regarding peer review, the IG found that NIH “gives little attention to foreign affiliation beyond requiring a justification for reviewers who are not based in North America.” The IG recommends that NIH “update its guidance on vetting peer reviewer nominees to identify potential foreign threats to resea...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news