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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
4
MAY
2016
Public Affairs
Creators of National
Longitudinal Study on Public
Health Honored with Golden
Goose Award
Five researchers, whose determined pursuit of
knowledge about the factors that influence ado-
lescent health led to one of the most influential
longitudinal studies of human health — with
far-reaching and often unanticipated impacts on
society — will receive the first 2016 Golden Goose
Award. The researchers are
Peter Bearman
,
Barbara
Entwisle
,
Kathleen Mullan Harris
,
Ronald Rindfuss
,
and
Richard Udry
, who worked at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, to design and execute the National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add
Health for short.
The social scientists’ landmark, federally funded
study has not only illuminated the impact of social
and environmental factors on adolescent health —
often in unanticipated ways — but also continues
to help shape the national conversation around
human health. Their work has provided unantici-
pated insights into how adolescent health affects
wellbeing long into adulthood and has laid essential
groundwork for research into the nation’s obesity
epidemic over the past two decades.
“Five bold researchers wanted to learn more about
adolescent health. Who knew that one federal study
would change the way doctors approach everything
from AIDS to obesity?” said Rep.
Jim Cooper
(D-
TN), who first proposed the Golden Goose Award.
“Decades later, this work is still paying off, help-
ing Americans lead longer, healthier lives. America
always comes out ahead when we invest in scientific
research.”
The Golden Goose Award honors scientists whose
federally funded work may have seemed odd or
obscure when it was first conducted but has resulted
in significant benefits to society. The Biophysi-
cal Society is a supporter of the award. The five
researchers will be honored with two other teams of
researchers —yet to be named — at the fifth annual
Golden Goose Award ceremony at the Library of
Congress on September 22.
NIH Leaders Reiterate
Commitment to Basic Science
To demonstrate National Institute of Health’s
(NIH’s) commitment to supporting basic re-
search, all of NIH’s senior leadership and Institute
and Center directors signed a letter to the editor
of
Science
, published March 25, reiterating NIH’s
commitment to basic science. The letter makes clear
that the NIH leadership is responding to feedback
that it is viewed as favoring applied research over
basic research in the awards it makes. NIH Director
of Extramural Research
Mike Lauer
, wrote about
this letter to the editor as well as NIH’s commit-
ment to funding basic research in a March 25 blog
post. In the post he writes about how funding
basic science is at the core of the NIH mission. He
also points out that an analysis of the NIH bud-
get shows that over half of NIH’s research fund-
ing supports basic research, but the number of
basic research applications submitted to NIH has
decreased.
The effort to show this commitment has also made
its way into grant application instructions. The in-
structions for the public health relevance statement,
required to be completed by applicants, have been
updated to make clear that a proposal could have
short-term or long-term contributions to human
health. The instructions now read:
Using no more than two or three sentences,
describe the relevance of this research to public
health. For example, NIH applicants can describe
how, in the short or long term, the research would
contribute to fundamental knowledge about the
nature and behavior of living systems and/or the
application of that knowledge to enhance health,
lengthen life, and/or reduce illness and disability.