This year, 2010, marks 15 years since academic radiology’s efforts to improve National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for diagnostic imaging research coalesced into the Academy of Radiology Research (ARR) and launched a successful legislative effort toward the creation of a new NIH institute devoted to funding diagnostic imaging.
Five years later, at the end of 2000, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed a separate law creating the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). In the decade since, with vigorous effort from ARR, NIH funding to principal investigators in departments of radiology rose to $423,477,658, a pleasant increase from the $70 million awarded by the NIH in 1995.
During the 16 years prior to 1995, the effort to capture NIH attention and support had begun with a small conjoint academic group and had succeeded in increasing NIH awards from $44 million to $70 million. The ARR included many of the same academic radiology leaders, with firmer intentions, a much better understanding of how to relate to NIH grantsmanship, and a commitment to overcome prevailing NIH resistance to supporting imaging. Their defined objective was to seek the creation of a separate institute with a primary mission of funding diagnostic imaging and recognition that seeking improvements in medical imaging is defined and fundable, similar to biologic research funding. That led to NIBIB and continued funding from other institutes as well.
When the conjoint committee got organized in 1979, it worked with the NIH director’s staff to accept diagnostic radiology research proposals and to set up a continuing series of research proposal workshops to coach junior staff members on preparing grant applications. The committee, with support from several national societies and leading academic departments with research teams, hired its own lobbyists for several years. Then, with its restructuring as the ARR, it decided to go for its own institute. A talented executive director, Edward Nagy, was hired, who helped the ARR expand its structure and effectively politic the NIH new institute. After Ed Nagy’s death in 2006, the academy’s management and its continuing effort to advance support for radiology research was passed to Renee Cruea, who had been working with Ed Nagy as the director of government relations since 1998.
Since then, the ARR’s scope has been significantly broadened to focus on raising the profile of imaging research through collaborative efforts with the collaboration of additional stakeholders of the imaging community. The ARR has expanded its membership, increased revenues to fund additional grassroots advocacy initiatives, and created two divisions within the academy, the Coalition for Imaging and Bioengineering Research (CIBR) and the ARR Academic Council (ARRAC). CIBR was created as a way to engage all stakeholders within the imaging community, including patient groups, industry, and academic radiology departments. Currently there are more than 100 members of CIBR. ARRAC includes 30 academic radiology departments so that they can be engaged in various educational initiatives. ARRAC focuses on educating patient advocacy organizations about current imaging research in the pipeline at their institutions. The ARR, CIBR, and ARRAC collaborate on various task forces focused on public relations, scientific liaisons with patient groups, and educational outreach.
The current president of the ARR is Steve Seltzer, chairman of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The vice president is Richard L. Ehman, of the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Radiology in Rochester, Minnesota, and the secretary-treasurer is Jonathan S. Lewin, chairman of radiology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The president of CIBR is William G. Bradley, Jr, chairman of radiology at the University of California, San Diego. The chairwoman of ARRAC is Carolyn C. Meltzer, chief of radiology at Emory University in Atlanta. The annual budget of ARR is approximately $1 million. Renee Cruea has a staff of three others and an office in Washington, DC.
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