Gone are the days when researchers can work in isolation and communicate with the world through papers in specialty journals read by small communities of like-minded scientists. In the competition for funds, the public and our elected officials need to understand and appreciate the benefits of biomedical research to the health and welfare of the nation and the economic vitality of our communities. The stakes are high and the biomedical research community cannot stay on the sidelines.

So, how can you become and advocate for research?  Here are some suggestions.

Start by connecting to a professional society

The Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) is comprised of over 30 discipline-specific societies including the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular biology (ASBMB), the American Physiological Society (APS), and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). In addition to hosting meetings and publishing, the societies have developed advocacy efforts to help shape public policy and mobilize its members.  They have created advocacy toolkits to help members get started. If you are not already a member, find the society or societies that most closely match your interests and join.  The costs of student and postdoctoral fellow memberships are very reasonable and by joining you receive reduced rates on meeting registration, journal subscriptions and publication costs.

Next, decide what issues are important to you and become informed. Subscribe to the FASEB Washington Update (http://washingtonupdate.faseb.org/) or other newsletters, blogs, and twitter feeds to stay abreast of legislative action in DC. As bills work their way through state and federal legislatures, watch for issues related to science policy, funding and training. A recent example is a proposal in the house version of the tax reform bill that would tax PhD tuition waivers, making it even more difficult for students to pursue advanced training, which is essential for the future of biomedical research.

Communicate societal value, ROI of your science

Advocacy requires developing effective communication skills that work with the public. No matter how excitedly you describe your work, don’t expect the public or a legislator to understand its importance or worthiness of funding. Instead, think in terms of accepted societal values.  Focus on the generation of new therapies and cures, education and innovation, economic impact, company and job creation, and American competitiveness in the world.  The ASBMB graphic shown above illustrates how NIH funding nurtures all of these goals. Make sure to point out the return on investment (ROI) for research funding.  Let them know that each $1 increase in public basic research stimulates an additional $8.38 of industry R&D investment after eight years.  You can also point out that the NIH’s Human Genome Project (HGP) has resulted in nearly $1 trillion of economic growth, a 178-fold return on investment at a cost of only $2 per year for each U.S. resident.

While it is important to convey the health improvement and economic impact of investments in basic research, it is also important to your personal story.  Legislators will be interested in your background and the pathway to your current position.  If you are a student, what led you to choose biomedical research?  What are your hopes, and what are you concerns for the future?  If you run a laboratory, what will you be able to do with adequate support and what will be lost if funds are cut?  It is often the personal stories that legislators remember.

Know your congressional representatives 

Legislators want to hear from their constituents (you!). The USF system spans three congressional districts.  USF Tampa (District 14) is represented by Rep. Kathy Castor, USF St Petersburg (District 13) by Rep. Charlie Crist, and USF Sarasota-Manatee (District 16) by Rep. Vern Buchanan.  We are very fortunate to have Congresswoman Castor as our representative in the House.  She understands USF, visits us often, and is a strong advocate for biomedical research. On the Senate side, Florida is represented by Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio. Bookmark their web sites, follow the issues and their voting record, and let them know your opinion when legislation is being debated.  Again, the professional societies have developed resources to help you get started. They provide draft letters and phone scripts for guidance.  There is even a civics refresher that illustrates the complex path a bill takes to become law (www.asbmb.org/Advocacy/Toolkit/WorkWithCongress/).

Meet with legislators to help get your message heard

Lastly, a face-to-face meeting with your representative is an excellent way to have your views heard.  Members of congress split their time between DC and their home districts, and you can schedule a meeting in either place.  Before your visit, review the issues and prepare your comments. Be aware that the schedules of Congressional members are very busy and meetings can be very short, so your message must be focused and well rehearsed.  Think elevator speech.  Know the political party of your member and review their voting record, their special interests, and on which congressional committees they serve. In preparing your remarks, assume that the legislators and their staff are well-educated generalists.  Your issue is one of many that will compete for their attention on any given day. Do not be disappointed if you meet with a staff member instead of your representative.  Congressional staff members are often the content experts who advise their bosses on issues.  Keep your message simple and do not use technical jargon.  Avoid partisanship and express your concerns without complaining or suggesting programs that should be cut to support research.

Remember, a meeting is a very effective way to get your message heard, but it does not substitute for letter writing and other forms of advocacy.  After your meeting amplify your message by posting on social media. Finally, be sure to send a thank you note to each person you met.

In this time of intense competition for public funds, we cannot be complacent and let others speak for us.  Become an advocate for biomedical research.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Deschenes, PhD
Chair, Department of Molecular Medicine
Sr. Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education
USF Health Morsani College of Medicine

Anna Cheng is the first student at USF Health Morsani College of Medicine to receive the prestigious fellowship

Tampa, FL (April 28, 2017) – Anna Cheng, a second-year medical student at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, has been selected to join the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) 2017-18 Medical Research Fellows Program.

Cheng is the first University of South Florida medical student to receive the highly competitive fellowship, known as the Med Fellows Program, which allows exceptional medical, veterinary and dentistry students to conduct rigorous, mentored laboratory research at top institutions across the country. She was among 79 students nationwide chosen by HHMI for the 2017-18 program.

USF medical student Anna Cheng

Starting this summer, each fellow will spend a year pursuing basic, translational, or applied biomedical research at one of 32 academic or nonprofit research institutions across the United States. The awardees include medical students from universities such as Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Yale.

Taking a year out between her second and third year of medical school studies at USF, Cheng will move in June to Boston, where she will work in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute laboratory of David Pellman, MD, a professor of pediatric oncology at Harvard Medical School.  There, surrounded by other students, postdoctoral fellows and HHMI investigators, she will pursue her studies to uncover the basic chromosomal mechanisms underlying genomic instability that can potentially lead to cancer. In particular, she is interested in the genetic abnormalities involved in a childhood cancer known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Cheng started dabbling in the scientific method as a high school student. Science had always interested her, but when her best friend and her godmother found themselves in a fight against cancer, Cheng decided to narrow her scientific focus.

“My best friend was diagnosed with leukemia and my godmother with ovarian cancer. I wanted to understand why – to figure it out,” she said. “Yes, I was interested in cancer research, but I had personal factors that really drove me.”

During her undergraduate studies at Duke University, Cheng continued to make time for lab research, fitting it in over summers and in between coursework. And though she valued the experiences, the fleeting glimpses of bench time only whet her appetite for more. The Med Fellows Program, she says, provides her the opportunity for more sustained exposure to research. Her goal following graduation from the Morsani College of Medicine is to become a physician-scientist, likely specializing in pediatric hematology-oncology.

“I hope to emerge from this research year as a more adept scientist,” she said. “The program’s experience isn’t really just a year. It’s something that will serve me well for the rest of my career.”

For more information on the HHMI Med Fellows Program, including a list of the 2017-18 awardees, go to https://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmi-awards-medical-research-fellowships-79-students.

USF Health
USF Health’s mission is to envision and implement the future of health. It is the partnership of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, the College of Pharmacy, the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, the Biomedical Sciences Graduate and Postdoctoral Programs, and the USF Physicians Group. The University of South Florida, established in 1956 and located in Tampa, is a high-impact, global research university dedicated to student success. USF is ranked in the Top 30 nationally for research expenditures among public universities, according to the National Science Foundation. For more information, visit www.health.usf.edu

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute plays an important role in advancing scientific research and education in the United States. Its scientists, located across the country and around the world, have made important discoveries that advance both human health and our fundamental understanding of biology. The Institute also aims to transform science education into a creative, interdisciplinary endeavor that reflects the excitement of real research. HHMI’s headquarters are located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.

Media contact:  
Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications and Marketing
(813) 974-3303 or abaier@health.usf.edu

Samuel A. Wickline, MD, has been named the first director of the USF Health Heart Institute – an important step in realizing USF Health’s goal of creating a world class cardiovascular medicine and research program at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and Tampa General Hospital.

Dr. Wickline will join the University of South Florida on Dec. 1 from Washington University in St. Louis. There he is the J. Russell Hornsby Professor in Biomedical Sciences and a professor of medicine (cardiologist), with additional appointments in biomedical engineering, physics, and cell biology and physiology.

“Please join me in warmly welcoming Dr. Wickline to USF Health. I’d also like to thank Dr. Stephen Liggett and Dr. Arthur Labovitz for ably serving as co-directors of the Heart Institute during its early planning and design phase,” said Charles Lockwood, MD, senior vice president of USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine, in announcing Dr. Wickline’s appointment.

“With a foundation firmly in place, we look forward to Dr. Wickline’s leadership in helping us build a state-of the-art cardiovascular institute positioned to accelerate USF’s path to preeminence.”

Samuel Wickline, MD

At USF Health, Dr. Wickline will be instrumental in helping design, build, equip and staff our state-of-the-art Heart Institute to be co-located with the new Morsani College of Medicine in downtown Tampa. That will include recruiting a critical mass of cardiovascular scientists at the forefront of interdisciplinary biomedical research to define the root causes of heart and vascular disease leading to new diagnostics and treatments.

He will also serve as Associate Dean for Cardiovascular Research, the Tampa General Hospital Endowed Chair for Cardiovascular Research and a professor of cardiovascular sciences in the Morsani College of Medicine.

As an accomplished physician-scientist with expertise in bench-to-bedside research, Dr. Wickline will complement USF Health’s growing cardiology service, and will bring to the university a longstanding National Institutes of Health grant portfolio of more than $1 million a year.  He studies the molecular basis of inflammation, cell death and atherosclerosis that cause heart, vascular and other organ diseases.

Much of Dr. Wickline’s pioneering research explores the molecular basis of pathological processes using novel imaging methods to detect early cell signatures in vivo and then using nanoparticles to treat a variety of cardiovascular conditions, including targeting atherosclerotic plaques that cause heart attacks. His translational work has led to the development of advanced cardiac imaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging of the heart to assess coronary artery disease.

Dr. Wickline earned his MD degree from the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, and completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at Washington University School of Medicine, in St Louis, where he joined the faculty in 1987.

During his career at Washington University, Dr. Wickline served as chief of cardiology at Jewish Hospital and helped initiate the first graduate program in biomedical engineering at Washington University. He led a consortium that works with academic and industry partners to develop broad-based clinical applications for nanotechnology and imaging.  He also established the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence with NIH funding.

Dr. Wickline has started several biotechnology companies, holds 17 patents, and has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed research papers.

A series of new papers in the journal Lancet discussing how to increase value and reduce waste in research includes a contribution by USF Distinguished Professor Benjamin Djulbegovic, MD, PhD.

Dr. Djulbegovic, professor of medicine and oncology at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, was a co-author of one of five papers published Jan. 8 in the Lancet series: “How to increase value and reduce waste when research priorities are set.”

The article explains why decisions about which research to fund should be based on issues relevant to the users of research — including patients, clinicians and policy makers – and more systematically account for what researchers already know or are investigating.

“The Lancet series effectively points out that at least 50 percent of research investment is wasted, amounting to billions of dollars a year,” Dr. Djulbegovic said.

Benjamin Djulbegovic, MD, PhD

About $240 billion a year is spent globally on biomedical research.  While the enterprise has yielded substantial health improvements, only about half of the study results are made public for use by other researchers and doctors treating patients.  And, 40 to 89 percent of published trial studies could not be replicated – critical to validating study findings – because the interventions tested were poorly or incompletely described.

In their report, lead author Dr. Iain Chalmers, Dr. Djulbegovic and colleagues point out that good research ideas often produce unanticipated results and these disappointments should not be deemed wasteful as long as “the way in which these ideas are prioritized for research is transparent and warranted.”

Unexpected results are different from avoidable or unjustified waste, which encompasses inefficiencies in the way research studies are chosen, designed, conducted, analyzed, disseminated and reported. It includes the tendency not to report or publish negative study findings, which can be valuable in saving time and money by indicating when a drug or medical device does not work, or may even harm patients.

In their Lancet article Dr. Djulbegovic and co-authors make the following recommendations for reducing research waste:

–          Investigate ways to improve the yield from basic science research.

–          Be more transparent about how research funders decide which research to support, making clear how they take into account the needs of potential users of research.

–          Systematically assess existing evidence before investing in additional research.

–          Strengthen, develop and use sources of information about research already in progress, insist on publication of protocols at the beginning of studies, and encourage collaboration.