In the months before the January discontinuation of a three-year gun violence research initiative backed by the National Institutes of Health, emails between NIH staff indicated an internal split on the issue, according to a report from Science.
Here are six things to know.
1. After the 2012 murder of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., President Barack Obama called on health agencies to fund firearm research. In response, the NIH devoted $18 million of its $34 billion annual budget to fund more than 20 firearm research projects. The program — titled Research on the Health Determinants and Consequences of Violence and its Prevention, Particularly Firearm Violence — ran from January 2014 to January 2017.
2. Physicians, politicians and health experts have called on the NIH to renew the gun violence research program following the mass shooting in Las Vegas Oct. 1.
3. A few months before the program's discontinuation, Valerie Maholmes, PhD, chief of pediatric trauma at NIH's child health institute, and Jane Pearson, PhD, chairperson of the suicide research consortium at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health, expressed a willingness to continue the program and said they'd received numerous inquiries into obtaining program funding from potential grantees, according to NIH emails obtained by Science under the Freedom of Information Act.
4. However, George Koob, PhD, director of the NIH's National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — the department coordinating the research program — said he wanted the word firearm removed from the program's official title.
"We are interested in supporting research on this association in its broadest sense," Dr. Koob explained in an email to Science. "Removing 'firearm' from the title would allow for a far more comprehensive solicitation of research on this topic."
5. Other emails suggest top NIH officials decided to let the program expire. At least one such email suggests the decision may have been made by Lawrence Tabak, DDS, PhD, principal deputy director of the NIH.
"I never made such a decision," Dr. Tabak told Science, adding that reviving the program is still under consideration. "[T]here has been no decision made not to reissue … We haven't stopped funding work in this area, and we intend on continuing to fund work in this area."
6. When asked by Science whether NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, made the call to let the program expire, NIH spokesperson Renate Myles told the publication "no such decision has been made."
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