Collins Sets Five Themes for NIHAugust 17, 2009
The new director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) laid out his priorities today, spending his 1st day on the job speaking to his staff and reporters. Physician-geneticist Francis Collins said he plans to emphasize five "themes," including health care reform and translating research into medicine. Collins also sought to allay perhaps the biggest concerns about his nomination last month by President Barack Obama, saying that he will protect investigator-initiated science and that his religious interests will not influence how he runs the agency.
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As for management issues, Collins has chosen to retain Raynard Kington as his principal deputy director. Kington served in that position until becoming acting NIH director after Elias Zerhouni resigned last fall. Collins expects to hold off on finding a permanent director for the alcoholism institute because of an ongoing discussion about whether it should merge with NIH's drug addiction institute. Asked about NIH's intramural program, he is "resistant to the idea that [the program] is in need of some sort of dramatic redo" but is pondering whether to create a pool of intramural money that, like NIH's Common Fund, could be used to fund crosscutting research quickly.
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