Research!America

Advocating for science, discovery, and innovation to achieve better health for all:in 2022, research!americaResearchamericaca, along with our more than 300 alliance member organizations, worked to advance funding and policy priorities aimed at speeding medical progress, strengthening our nation's public health system, and assuring our nation sustains its vital standing as the global leader in science and innovation. To help keep members informed in real time, research!americResearchamericaca held 46 alliance member meetings featuring exceptional leaders from government, academia, and industry on timely topics, such as misinformation and disinformation, human genomics and precision medicine, gain of function research, combating health disparities and fda regulatory policy. Research!americResearchamericaca advocated for increased federal funding for the national institutes of health (nih), centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), food and drug administration (fda), national science foundation (nsf), the agency for healthcare research and quality (ahrq) and the advanced research projects agency for health (arpa-h). Research!americResearchamericaca conducted 87 congressional meetings; provided congressional testimony focused on nih, cdc, nsf, fda, and ahrq; and authored 74 letters, including sign-on letters to congressional leadership.

Global health r&d advocacy: in 2022, research!americResearchamericaca expanded its global health r&d advocacy program, completing the first year of a multi-year grant project funded by the bill & melinda gates foundation. The goal of the project is to increase united states government non-official development assistance (oda) funding for global health research & development, with particular emphasis on advancing innovative cross-sector partnerships and other efficiency-creating r&d strategies, including platform technologies and global clinical trial networks.

Science outreach and civic engagement: research!americResearchamericaca increased its commitment to supporting early career scientists by hosting its second early career summit. Research!americResearchamericaca also offered microgrants for graduate-level science policy and civic engagement initiatives. As in past years, the program is highly competitive with 20 grants funded out of 68 applications from across the country. We released a new report, "the research!americResearchamericaca microgrant program: exploring its impact on early career scientists," which takes a deep dive into the initiative. Research!americResearchamericaca continues to coordinate and support the science and technology action committee, an initiative that has brought a diversity of thought leaders together to make the case for a far bolder approach to bolstering the nation's r&d capacity, including significantly increasing the percentage of the gdp devoted to science investment.

Advocacy programs: in collaboration with our members we held a number of programs to highlight the impact of medical research and innovation. We hosted a convening of leaders from academia, non-profits, and philanthropy to discuss how to normalize bidirectional engagement with the public within the culture of science. One of the key takeaways was the need to better understand the nature of civic science training in the u.s. In order to fill gaps and create actionable broader support. Research!americResearchamericaca also served as the u.s. conveners for a global economist impact study to better understand researchers' own perspectives of the state of science. More than half of the u.s. Researchers who responded want training to better communicate with the public. We continued to assess public sentiment about science and research through three public opinion surveys in 2022: our major, annual omnibus survey in january 2022; in partnership with Virginia tech, we surveyed virginians' views on the economic impact of biomedical research and opinions on other public health and science issues; we commissioned a national public opinion survey on brain health and brain health research. In addition to our individual surveys, our america speaks! : poll data summary, volume 22, draws from the previous years' surveys and serves as a resource for elected officials.

National health research forum:research!america hosted the three-day national health research forum virtually. The forum explored how, together, we can defeat threats that rob us of health, hope, and time. The forum attracted an audience of more than 1,100 and featured 70 speakers, including 13 high-ranking government officials.