42 U.S.C. § 283k — Biomedical and behavioral research facilities

(a) Modernization and construction of facilities: The Director of NIH, acting through the Office of the Director or through the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, may give grants or contracts to public and nonprofit private organizations. This money can expand, remodel, renovate, or change existing research facilities, or build new ones, subject to the rest of this section. "Construction" and "cost of construction" include building new structures and changing existing ones, including architects' fees — but they do not include the cost of buying land or making improvements outside the building site. (b) Scientific and technical review boards for merit-based review of proposals: This section creates a Scientific and Technical Review Board on Biomedical and Behavioral Research Facilities. The Director of NIH can only approve a grant application under subsection (a) if this Board has recommended it for approval. The Board advises the Director and the Council of Councils (set up under section 282(l) of this title) on running this program. For every grant application, the Board judges its merit, considering the requirements in subsection (c), and reports its findings to the Director and the Council, following the same procedures used under section 289a of this title. For applications it recommends approving, the Board also recommends how much money the grant should be. Each year, the Board writes a public report describing its work that year — summarizing spending under this section, listing the types, numbers, and dollar amounts of applications it recommended but that the Director did not approve, and giving its own recommendations for improving how this section is run. The Board has 15 members appointed by the Director, plus any temporary or ad-hoc members the Director thinks are needed — all of them, including temporary members, get a vote. No more than three Board members can be federal officers or employees. The Director must make sure Board members are highly qualified, by training or experience, to do peer review. Collectively, they must have experience planning, building, financing, and running biomedical or behavioral research organizations; know how to judge whether an institution needs a research facility, including for dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health; know how to weigh competing grant applications against the country's overall research needs; and have experience with "emerging centers of excellence" as described in subsection (c)(2). The Board can hold workshops and conferences and collect data, and it can create subcommittees that meet as needed. Each member serves a 4-year term (a member filling a vacancy serves out the rest of that term), with staggered terms set by the Director, and a member cannot be reappointed until a full year has passed since their last term ended. Members who are not federal officers or employees are paid, for each day they work on Board business, at the same rate as members of other national advisory councils under this subchapter. (c) Requirements for grants: The Director can only make a grant under subsection (a) if the applicant meets several conditions. The Director must find the applicant competent to do the kind of research the facility is meant for. The applicant must give satisfactory assurances that: the facility will be used for that research for at least 20 years after construction is done; the applicant will have enough money to cover its share of the construction cost; the applicant will have enough money, once construction is finished, to actually use the facility for that research; and the construction will either expand the applicant's research capacity or is needed to keep up or improve the quality of its research. The applicant must also meet the Director's reasonable qualifications on: the scientific and technical merit of the application and how well the proposed facility would expand research capacity and quality; the quality of the research or training planned there; how well the planned research fits the country's need for researchers; and the age and condition of the applicant's existing research facilities. Finally, the applicant must show a real commitment to growing its own research output. Out of the money appropriated for this section each year, the Director must set aside a share for "institutions of emerging excellence" — 25 percent of the first $50,000,000 appropriated, and up to 25 percent of anything appropriated above that. To qualify for this share, an applicant must meet the conditions above and also: have a workable plan to advance its research or training; run research or training programs that specially address a real U.S. health need; have a track record of productive research or research training; and either already be a designated center of excellence under section 293c of this title, or be located in an area with a significant population that has poor health status and that the applicant serves, or be located in an area that currently lacks health care technology, services, or research resources in a way that could hurt that area's health in the future — with the applicant working to protect that population's health. (d) Requirement of application: The Director can only make a grant under subsection (a) if the applicant submits an application in the form, and containing the agreements, assurances, and information, that the Director decides is necessary. (e) Amount of grant; payments: The Director decides how much any grant is, but it cannot go over 50 percent of the necessary construction cost (or 75 percent if the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is funding it), or, for a multipurpose facility, 40 percent (or 75 percent for that Institute) of the part of the construction cost the Director decides is proportional to how the facility will actually be used for the funded research. Once an application is approved, the Director must set aside the grant amount from available funds and pay it out — in advance or as reimbursement — in installments that match the pace of construction, as the Director decides. The Director can change that reserved amount later if the application is amended or the estimated construction cost changes. When figuring out the grant amount, the Director leaves out of the construction cost any other federal grant money the applicant has gotten or is assured of getting for the same construction, plus any non-federal matching funds required as a condition of that other federal grant. The Director can waive the 50/75 or 40/75 percent limits, at his or her discretion, for applicants that meet the requirements of subsection (c). (f) Recapture of payments: If, within 20 years after construction is finished, the applicant or facility owner stops being a public or nonprofit private entity (for a grant made through the Office of the Director), or the facility stops being used for the research it was built for (unless the Director decides, under regulations, there's good cause to excuse this) — the United States can recover money from the applicant or owner. The amount recovered has the same ratio to the facility's current value as the federal share of the original construction had to the total construction cost. The current value is set either by agreement between the parties or by a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the district where the facility is located. (g) Guidelines: By December 10, 1993 — six months after June 10, 1993 — the Director had to issue guidelines for grants under subsection (a), after consulting with the Council.