A Reflection on Impact

Some of you may have heard me quote a thoughtful essay by Daniel Shapiro and Kent Vrana (both of Pennsylvania State College of Medicine) that is critical of research institutions promoting what funds they’ve received over what scientific progress those funds have supported. The authors argue that instead of using a ranking system to measure success that favors number of grants and dollars, we should consider a new system that focuses on the efficiency by which the science was conducted and how the research contributes to answering questions that are meaningful to science. With that in mind, it’s worth reflecting that it has been more than two years since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Let’s look back to the months of early to mid-2020 when the nation (and the rest of the world) faced a “novel” coronavirus, one which we knew could be fatal and for which there was little knowledge about how it spreads and no known effective treatment, limited diagnostic tests, and no vaccine. How did NIH make fast and meaningful contributions to respond to the pandemic? On February 21, 2020, weeks before many of us were sent home from workspaces, the international Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (or “ACTT-1”) began enrolling patients into a definitive randomized trial on remdesivir in hospitalized patients. The trial was largely (though not completely) funded by NIAID and NCI through existing large-scale contracts and cooperative agreements. The trial stopped enrolling patients on...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike COVID-19 innovation reflection Source Type: funding