Notice Number: NOT-RM-06-018

Key Dates
Release Date: September 29, 2006

Issued by
National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director, Office of Portfolio Analysis and Strategic Initiatives (OPASI), http://opasi.nih.gov/

The NIH will soon be seeking voluntary input from the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public about innovative ideas for cross-cutting initiatives that will improve and accelerate biomedical and behavioral research and its impact on the health of the nation. Collecting this information is one of the initial steps in the process of identifying a new cohort of trans-NIH strategic initiatives for Fiscal Year 2008.

The RFI will be released mid-October 2006 in the NIH Guide and will provide an opportunity for respondents to comment on ideas nominated to date by NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) and by consultation groups that met during the summer. In addition, this RFI will seek idea nominations from the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public on ways to explicitly address barriers to research; accelerate translation of scientific discoveries into clinical practice; and fill research gaps that do not fall within the mission of any one Institute or Center. Approaches may be related to

• biomedical or behavioral research;
• research resources;
• methods development;
• research training; and/or
• research policies. 

All nominations submitted are initially screened to ensure they meet the Inclusion Criteria for OPASI Strategic Initiatives outlined below.

Inclusion Criteria for OPASI Strategic Initiatives :

The overarching goal of all Roadmap initiatives is to accelerate the discovery and translation of scientific knowledge into public health benefits. Roadmap is conceived of as a five- to ten-year incubator space for NIH initiatives that meet all of the following criteria:

•  Is the proposed initiative truly transforming could it dramatically affect how biomedical and/or behavioral research is conducted over the next decade?
•  Will the outcomes from the proposed initiatives synergistically promote and advance the individual missions of the NIH Institutes and Centers to benefit health?
•  Does the proposed initiative require participation from NIH as a whole and/or does it address an area (s) of science that does not clearly fall within the mission of any one IC or Office of the Director program office?
•  Is the proposed initiative something that no other entity is likely or able to do, and is there a public health benefit to having the results of the research in the public domain ?

Inquiry

Specific questions about this Notice should be directed to roadmap_ideas@nih.gov .