NIH Has Made Strides in Reviewing Financial Conflicts of Interest in Extramural Research, But Could Do More

NIH awards more than 70 percent of its $37 billion budget to universities and other extramural grantee institutions (institutions). Identifying and managing investigators' financial conflicts of interest (financial conflicts) is critical to safeguarding the integrity of NIH-funded research. In 2008, OIG identified serious gaps in NIH's oversight of investigators' financial conflicts. More recently, failures by some investigators to disclose substantial contributions of resources from other organizations-including foreign governments-have raised new concerns about threats to research integrity. This report focuses on the need for robust oversight, follows up on OIG's prior work, and seeks to determine whether NIH has addressed the gaps that OIG previously identified in the oversight of investigators' financial conflicts. It also provides-for the first time-information about the total number and types of financial conflicts that institutions are reporting to NIH.