Reducing Administrative Burden in Laboratory Animal Research: What Have We Done Recently and What ’s Coming…

Pat Brown, Director, NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare The 21st Century Cures Act called for NIH to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reduce administrative burdens associated with laboratory animal research programs, while maintaining high standards of animal welfare as well as the integrity and credibility of the research. We jointly released a final report in 2019 outlining steps to accomplish this goal, and have since worked together to implement many of the recommendations. We wanted to take this opportunity today to share some of NIH’s progress and how you can remain involved. What we discuss here can also be found on the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) dedicated 21st Century Cures page. The site and accompanying news feed are regularly updated as new guidance, resources, and related content become available. You can also watch this recently released webinar to learn more. Let’s look at some of our activities to date: One of our earliest efforts was harmonizing our annual reporting timeline with that of USDA, simplifying submission timelines for reporting. The reporting period is now October 1 – September 30, which aligns with the federal fiscal year and the USDA’s reporting period (instead of the calendar year). The Annual Report must be submitted to OLAW by December 1. A list of flexibilities is now available to help institutions conduct facility inspections more efficientl...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Administrative Burden Animal Welfare RFI Source Type: funding