Save-the-date: on May 21, 2014, tune in to NIA Council webcast
The Advisory Council of the National Institute on Aging is holding one of its thrice yearly meetings today. Did you know you can watch online? The next meeting is on May 21, 2014, from about 8am to 3pm EST. Please save the date! We invite you to tune in, so I hope you’ll mark it on your calendar.
How do I catch up on today’s meeting?
If you want to catch the last few minutes of today’s meeting live, it will run until about 2pm EST or until we complete all business. Here’s the link to access the live videocast [Editor's Note: link no longer active]. We’ll also put a link to the archived videocast on this blog when it becomes available after the session.
And here’s the agenda and meeting materials, so you can see which parts of the meeting are of greatest interest to you.
This videocast is a new service we’re offering to enhance your access to NIA and our decision-making process about grants and funding. We’re trying to enhance the archived version so that later, you can easily find the parts of the meeting that are most relevant to your work. If you have any other thoughts about how we could make Council proceedings more available to you, please let me know by commenting below.
What does NIA’s Council do?
You may also want some background information about our Council. Like the other Institutes at the NIH, we have a committee of experts that meets three times a year to advise our organization. NIA’s Council—the National Advisory Council on Aging, or NACA—takes these important actions when it meets:
- reviews the performance of major NIA Divisions and programs
- considers concepts for new initiatives or programs and decides whether to approve them
- hears brief reports from NIA grantees about research breakthroughs and new developments in aging, including Alzheimer’s disease research
- provides second level review of applications for NIA, in a closed session
Why is the Council meeting important to me?
NACA members don’t make final approvals, but their advice and direction is very closely heeded. You can learn more about:
- the NIA budget for research in 2014 and 2015
- new areas of research or new kinds of grants that the NIA is planning to fund
- the most exciting research that the NIA is funding
- plans for addressing policy issues—like tightening budgets—across NIH
Can I listen to the Council discuss my grant application?
No. As is the case with all NIH Council meetings, parts of NIA’s meetings are closed to the public and will not be videocast. Discussion of the merits of specific grants applications happens in the closed sessions, to protect the confidentiality of the scientific peer review process.
We open as much of the meeting as possible to you, and to the public, closing only those sessions where it is absolutely necessary.
Who is on NIA’s Council?
Our Council is comprised of science leaders whose backgrounds are as varied as the different divisions of NIA, as well as leaders of professional societies and representatives from groups interested in aging research, including Alzheimer’s. Others, from the Department of Health and Human Services and NIH, are members from the federal community with similar interests. You may know someone who serves on the Council. Or, you yourself may have served in the past (thank you!). Here’s the current roster.
So please, consider watching our meetings. And if you’re in Bethesda, Maryland, you are welcome to come in person to our open sessions. Here are all our NIA Council meeting dates for 2014 and 2015.