I
107TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. R. 973
To amend the Public Health Service Act with respect to the operation by
the National Institutes of Health of an experimental program to stimu-
late competitive research.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 13, 2001
Mr. ISTOOK (for himself, Mr. POMEROY, and Mr. WICKER) introduced the
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce
A BILL
To amend the Public Health Service Act with respect to
the operation by the National Institutes of Health of
an experimental program to stimulate competitive re-
search.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘National Institutes of
Health EPSCoR Program Act of 2001’’.
SEC. 2. EPSCOR PROGRAM AT NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF
HEALTH.
Part A of title IV of the Public Health Service Act
(42 U.S.C. 281 et seq.) is amended—
(1) in section 402—
(A) by striking subsection (g); and
(B) 
by 
redesignating 
subsections 
(h)
through (l) as subsections (g) through (k), re-
spectively; and
(2) by adding at the end the following:
‘‘SEC. 404E. EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM TO STIMULATE
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH.
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—
‘‘(1) ENHANCING RESEARCH COMPETITIVENESS
OF ELIGIBLE INSTITUTIONS.—The Director of NIH,
acting through the Director of the National Center
for Research Resources, shall in accordance with
this section establish a program for the purpose of
enhancing the competitiveness of eligible institutions
in obtaining funds from the national research insti-
tutes for conducting biomedical and behavioral re-
search.
‘‘(2) ELIGIBLE INSTITUTIONS; EPSCOR STATES,
COMMITTEES, AND FISCAL AGENTS.—In this section:
‘‘(A) ELIGIBLE
INSTITUTION.—The term
‘eligible institution’ means a research entity lo-
cated in an EPSCoR State.
‘‘(B) RESEARCH ENTITY.—The term ‘re-
search entity’ means a non-Federal entity that
conducts biomedical or behavioral research, in-
cluding an individual or organization.
‘‘(C) EPSCOR STATE.—The term ‘EPSCoR
State’ means a State for which—
‘‘(i) the aggregate success rate for ap-
plications submitted to the national re-
search institutes by research entities in the
State has historically constituted a low
success rate of obtaining funds from such
institutes, relative to such aggregate rate
for research entities in other States; or
‘‘(ii) the average of the annual aggre-
gate amount of funds received for the 5
preceding fiscal years by research entities
in such State pursuant to successful such
applications was not more than 1.08 per-
cent of the total amount that was received
during such years by research entities in
the States under grants, cooperative agree-
ments, and contracts awarded by the na-
tional research institutes to support the
conduct of biomedical and behavioral re-
search.
‘‘(D) NIH EPSCOR COMMITTEE.—
‘‘(i) IN
GENERAL.—The term ‘NIH
EPSCoR committee’ means, with respect
to an EPSCoR State, the single committee
established for the State under section 113
of the National Science Foundation Au-
thorization Act of 1988 (Public Law 100–
570), except as provided in clause (ii).
‘‘(ii) EXCEPTION.—A committee re-
ferred to in clause (i) is not an NIH
EPSCoR committee for a State for pur-
poses of this section unless, when such
committee carries out activities pursuant
to this section, the following conditions are
met:
‘‘(I) The membership of the com-
mittee includes individuals who are
representatives from the principal
nonprofit and for-profit biomedical
and behavioral research entities in the
State.