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OECR Update An Introduction to the NIH Office of Emergency Care Research
An Introduction to the NIH Office of Emergency Care Research
By Jeremy Brown, MD
We are approaching the tenth anniversary of the Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and this milestone gives us the opportunity to think about how the office serves the emergency medicine research community. To increase the impact of the office for emergency care research and support SAEM members, we will use this column in SAEM Pulse to provide helpful information about the NIH and OECR, including topics such as NIH training grants, moving from such a grant to fully independent research, T programs and much more. But let’s start at the beginning and explain what the office is, how it fits within the NIH structure, and how the NIH works.
As its name implies, there is more than one institute at NIH. In fact, there are 27 institutes and centers, each with its own research focus. Some of these institutes focus on a disease or an organ. For example, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) focuses on a disease — stroke — but also on other disorders of the nervous system. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) focuses on diseases of the heart, lung, and blood. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease has, as its name implies, allergies and infectious diseases as its focus. The National Eye Institute carries out research on, well, the eye.
Other institutes focus on a population, rather than an organ or a disease. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has the pediatric population as its focus, while the health of those in their golden years is the mission of the National Institute on
Aging. Minority populations also have an Institute to address their health care needs, through the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. And rather uniquely at NIH, the National Institute of Nursing Research addresses the research needs associated with a profession — in this case, nursing.
In addition to these institutes, there are several centers at NIH. These include the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, which carries out research on the fundamental science, usefulness, and safety of complementary and integrative health approaches and the Center for Scientific Review, which is tasked with the review of the many thousands of grants that NIH receives each year.
It is within this milieu that the Office of Emergency Care Research sits. The OECR is an office located within NINDS. The office has an NIH-wide mission, and its purpose is to coordinate and foster clinical and translational research and research training for the emergency setting. As its name implies, the office is not only focused on research carried out by emergency physicians but addresses the needs of all those whose research touches on emergency care. Naturally, this is most often emergency physicians, but also cardiologists, mental health providers, pediatricians, and many others who are interested in emergency care research. The OECR office serves them as well. Its mission is to help emergency care researchers find the best institute to fit their research proposals, to catalyze and coordinate emergency care across NIH, and to represent NIH to other federal partners, such as the Department of Defense, whose work addresses emergency care.
As an office at NIH, the OECR does not have a budget to support research, and it cannot provide funding for emergency care research proposals, however worthy these many be. Instead, using the many contacts across NIH that have been developed over the years, the office helps match researchers with the institutes and centers that might best serve their needs. In addition, the office is directly involved with the emergency care research network that is supported by NHLBI and NINDS. This network, called SIREN, is focused on neurological and cardiovascular emergencies, and is managing several large clinical trials addressing traumatic brain injury and cardiac arrest, with more research proposals in the pipeline. The office has also organized conferences on several topics, such as trauma, coma, emergency care of the cancer patient, and increasing emergency care research.
In my role as director, I serve as a resource for emergency care investigators. If you have a research proposal that you would like to submit to NIH, but you are not sure how to do that or which Institute would be the best fit, a good place to start is with OECR. We can talk over your proposal, give you some feedback on its aims and on the research plan, and help find the right program officer with whom to speak. The Office has also released a Notice of Special Interest, that outlines which institutes are especially interested in receiving projects that focus on emergency care.
It is very important to speak with a program officer before you submit the proposal. The program officer has special expertise in a particular research area, such as congestive heart failure, or acute stroke, or critical illness in children, and their advice is always helpful.
In the next issue of SAEM Pulse, we will look at NIH training grants, whose purpose is to train junior faculty to become independent researchers.
You can learn more about the National Institutes of Health here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Brown is the director of the Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR) where he leads efforts to coordinate emergency care research funding opportunities across NIH. Additionally, Jeremy is the primary contact for the NINDS Exploratory and Efficacy FOAs and serves as NIH's representative in government-wide efforts to improve emergency care throughout the country. He is also the medical officer for the SIREN emergency care research network which is supported by both NINDS and NHLBI. Jeremy.brown@nih.gov
