A Quantitative Assessment of Fundamental and Targeted Clinical Research at NIAMDD

A QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL AND TARGETED CLINICAL RESEARCH ATNIAMDD ARLEY T. BEVER, JR.* Is fundamental clinical research relative to targeted research holding its own? To approach a factual answer to this question I was asked to analyse the extramural grant program of the National Institute for Arthritis , Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases over the past nine years. We selected NIAMDD in the belief that its broad, balanced, and stable program in the study of disease would yield a more "typical" picture than would a more single-mission-oriented institute such as the National Cancer Institute or National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The analysis was directed to grants which the institute classified as "humanrelated " (involving human subjects or materials) for the period 19701978 . Information on the grants was derived from three sources: a)Computerized Research Information on Scientific Programs (CRISP) from the National Institutes of Health's Division of Research Grants (DRG). This descriptor service identifies grants and categorizes them in detail. b)Information for Management Planning, Analysis, and Coordination (IMPAC), also from DRG. This computer system provides extensive administrative data on the grants, grantees, and grantees' institutions, ?Formerly assistant director of Research Analysis and Evaluation, Division of Research Grants, National Institutes of Health; and head, Office of Budget, Programming, and Planning, National Science Foundation. Present address: 9314 East Parkhill Drive, Bethesda , Maryland 20014. The author would like to thank each of these people for making the facilities of the National Institutes of Health available to him while working on this project: Thomas Malone, Ph.D., deputy director for Scientific Programs, NIH; G. Donald Whedon, M.D., director, National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases , NIH; Carl D. Douglass, Ph.D., director, Division of Research Grants, NIH; Carl M. Leventhal, M.D., deputy director, NIAMDD, NIH; George T. Brooks, Ph.D., associate director, NIAMDD, NIH. The author is particularly grateful to the following persons who supplied data and offered helpful suggestions and critiques during the course of the project: Lois Reed, chief, Program Evaluation Branch, NIAMDD, NIH; John James, Ph.D., chief, Research Analysis and Evaluation Branch, DRG, NIH; Joseph Brackett, deputy chief, Statistics and Analysis Branch, DRG, NIH; William J. Holliman, Jr., chief, Research Documentation Section, SAB, DRG, NIH.© 1980 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/80/2322-0152$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Winter 1980 ¦ Part 2 S25 together with independent scientific classification and description of grants. Financial information in these data refers to budgets, not expenditures . c) Abstracts of the grants, provided by NIAMDD for 3 of the 4 years we analysed (1972, 1975, 1978) and by the Smithsonian Scientific Information Exchange for the fourth year (1970). The abstracts were written by the grantees and described research objectives, highlights of the techniques to be used, and expected results. We obtained computer runs of the above data for human-related research grants supported in 1970 (637 grants), 1972 (825), 1975 (916), and 1978 (947), and analysed them according to the classification system developed by Dr. Richard L. Landau and his colleagues at the University of Chicago. Classification System The grants were divided into six major categories: Category 1.—Fundamental clinical research in which the investigator plans to manipulate experimentally and in a controlled fashion the research patients or subjects or their environments. (Category 1 was further divided into six subcategories and 40 third-level categories. It is not necessary to detail them here.) Category 2.—Service research or targeted research on the management of a disease, either in an individual or in a discrete population using known medical diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. (Includes two subcategories.) Category 3.—Research utilizing human sources of materials—tissues, organs, blood, urine, fluids, enzymes, hormones, any substance of human origin. The patients or subjects or environments are not manipulated experimentally. (Includes six subcategories.) Category 4.—Animal studies related to or in place of humans, or models for human experimentation; studies of man as a biological species, development of biophysical or biochemical tests. (Includes three subcategories .) Category 5.—Epidemiological studies—public health tests and records, epidemic histories. Category 6.—Miscellaneous—communications, data systems, conferences , grants to NIH study sections and other organizations; includes all remaining grants. The NIAMDD extramural program...