National Institutes of Health Town Hall Meeting on Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Tuition, Fees and Health Insurance Policies

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The purpose of this notice is to announce that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will hold a Town Hall meeting to hear comments and insights concerning possible revisions to certain fiscal policies that govern the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA), which comprise institutional training grants (T32 and T34s) and individual fellowships (F30, F31, F32, F33). The meeting which is open to the public will focus primarily on the funding of educational costs such as tuition, fees and health insurance provided through institutional training grants. The meeting will be held November 30, 2005 in the Natcher Conference Center, Room E1/E2 on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Background: NRSA programs currently support over 17,000 predoctoral and postdoctoral research training positions mostly in the nation's academic laboratories. While the budget for the NRSA programs grew smartly during the five years in which the overall appropriation for the NIH was doubled, since fiscal 2003, the last of the growth years, the appropriation for NRSA training programs has grown rather modestly. Given this reality, the NIH must re-examine aspects of its NRSA policies that m