42 U.S.C. § 285b–3 — National Heart, Blood Vessel, Lung, and Blood Diseases and Blood Resources Program; administrative provisions

(a)(1) The National Heart, Blood Vessel, Lung, and Blood Diseases and Blood Resources Program ("the Program") may provide for: (A) investigating the epidemiology, causes, and prevention of heart, blood vessel, lung, and blood diseases, including social, environmental, behavioral, nutritional, biological, and genetic factors; (B) studying the basic biological processes behind normal and abnormal heart, blood vessel, lung, and blood function; (C) researching and testing techniques, drugs, and devices (including computers) for diagnosing, treating (including emergency medical services), and preventing these diseases, and for rehabilitating patients; (D) programs applying biological, physical, and engineering science to these diseases, especially devices that assist, replace, or monitor vital organs, and better tools for detection, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation; (E) programs for field studies, large-scale testing and evaluation, and demonstrating prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and emergency medical service approaches; (F) studying blood diseases and blood itself, and all aspects of managing blood resources — collecting, preserving, separating, and distributing blood and blood products; (G) educating and training scientists, clinical investigators, and educators (including in computer science) needed for clinical work on these diseases and blood resources; (H) public and professional education on all aspects of these diseases, including prevention, and on using blood and blood products and managing blood resources; (I) programs researching these diseases in children — including cystic fibrosis, hyaline membrane disease, sickle cell anemia, Cooley's anemia, and hemophilia — and developing diagnosis, treatment, and prevention methods for them; and (J) programs for studying, developing, and evaluating emergency medical services for people who become critically ill from these diseases. (2) The Program must be coordinated with other national research institutes that share responsibility for these diseases, with special emphasis on stroke research and coordinating it with the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke. The Director, advised by the Institute's advisory council, must revise the Program's plan every year and run the Program according to that plan. (b) In running the Program, under policies set by the Director of NIH, the Director: (1) may, after consulting the advisory council, hire up to 100 outside experts or consultants; (2)(A) may, after consulting the advisory council, acquire, build, improve, repair, run, alter, renovate, and maintain labs, research and training facilities, and other property needed for this work; (B) may make grants for building or renovating facilities; and (C) may lease or otherwise acquire buildings in or near Washington, D.C. for up to 10 years; (3) may sign contracts, leases, cooperative agreements, or other arrangements with public agencies or private parties needed to do this work; (4) may make grants to public and nonprofit groups to help cover the cost of caring for patients in hospitals, clinics, and related facilities who are part of research projects; and (5) must, after consulting the advisory council, run appropriate in-house training and education programs, including continuing education and lab and clinical research training. Experts hired under paragraph (1) get paid or reimbursed for travel and other expenses under Title 5, but only if they agree in writing to serve the full assignment or one year, whichever is shorter — unless they are separated or reassigned for reasons beyond their control that the Director accepts. If an expert breaks that agreement, the government can recover the money spent on their expenses as a debt, though the Secretary may waive some or all of that recovery.