Projects
Collins was instrumental in establishing the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) on December 23, 2011. In January 2013, Collins created two senior scientific positions on Big Data, as well as the diversity of the scientific workforce. Other projects he took on early in his tenure included increased support for Alzheimer's disease research, which was announced in May 2012; the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, announced by President Obama and Collins on April 2, 2013, at the White House; and in February 2014 the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP), a public-private partnership between NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 10 biopharmaceutical firms, and multiple non-profit organizations.
In 2014, Collins worked with the larger biomedical research community to create principles and guidelines to foster rigor and reproducibility in preclinical research, including incorporating sex as a biological variable to ensure differences in treatment response between men and women are addressed.
Beginning in 2014, the NIH provided multi-year grants to EcoHealth Alliance, which studied bat coronaviruses, including genetically engineering bat coronaviruses called WIV1, in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The grants were terminated in 2020 under the Donald Trump administration, during Trump's feud with China over the origins of COVID-19.
In January 2015, President Obama announced the NIH-led Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), later renamed the All of Us Research Program, in his State of the Union address. All of Us sought to extend precision medicine to all diseases by building a national research cohort of 1 million or more U.S. participants. In other precedent-setting actions during his time as NIH director, Collins announced in November 2015 that NIH will no longer support any biomedical research involving chimpanzees.
In December 2015, Collins and other NIH leaders released a detailed plan that charted a course for NIH's efforts over the ensuing five years. The NIH-Wide Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2016-2020: Turning Discovery Into Health was aimed at ensuring the agency remains well positioned to capitalize on new opportunities for scientific exploration and to address new challenges for human health.
In January 2016, President Obama announced a new initiative to galvanize the nation's research efforts against cancer. Fueled by an additional $680 million in the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget for NIH, the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative aimed to accelerate progress toward the next generation of interventions to reduce cancer incidence and improve patient outcomes.
In 2016, Collins instituted a number of clinical trial reforms to enhance protection of participants in research and improve reporting of research results in ClinicalTrials.gov. In 2017, Collins implemented the Next Generation Researchers Initiative to improve the odds for early investigators to win NIH grants.
To support the Administration's Stop Opioid Abuse Initiative, Collins launched the NIH HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative in April 2018. The NIH HEAL Initiative bolstered research across NIH to improve treatments for opioid misuse and addiction and enhance pain management. Also in 2018, Collins launched an initiative to address sexual harassment in science and change a culture that sends messages to women and other underrepresented groups that they don't belong in biomedical research.
In October 2021, NIH principal deputy director Larry Tabak sent a letter to Kentucky Congressman James Comer addressing NIH grants to EcoHealth Alliance. Comer, who has held hearings criticizing the use of U.S. federal funds for research related to bat coronaviruses in China, subsequently accused Collins of having potentially misled the Oversight Committee Republicans as to EcoHealth Alliance's activities.
In 2023, the Biden administration announced an initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States. Collins was the special advisor to President Biden on the hepatitis C elimination plan. Collins's wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on the elimination plan advocating that the U.S. commit the appropriate resources.
