This overview is excerpted from Manatt on Health, Manatt’s subscription service that provides in-depth insights and analysis focused on the legal, policy and market developments.

On June 14, House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C) Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers published a “framework for discussion” proposing reforms to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The framework proposes structural reform to the NIH, stating that the Institutes’ “sprawling and siloed organizational structure” coupled with “decades of nonstrategic and uncoordinated growth” across the 27 institutes and centers (ICs) has “created a system ripe for stagnant leadership, research duplication, gaps, misconduct, and undue influence.” Most significantly, the framework proposes a restructuring which would collapse the 27 entities into 15 revised ICs with a goal of eliminating “the demographic- or disease-specific siloed nature of the current structure and ensure each IC is considering the whole individual and all populations across the entire lifespan.” The E&C Chair’s document includes a number of additional proposed changes to the NIH’s structure and policies. Feedback from stakeholders is requested by August 16.