42 U.S.C. § 285c–4 — Advisory boards

(a) Establishment: The Secretary must set up three advisory boards inside the Institute — the National Diabetes Advisory Board, the National Digestive Diseases Advisory Board, and the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Advisory Board. The law calls each one an "Advisory Board." (b) Membership; ex officio members: Each Advisory Board has eighteen appointed members, plus ex officio members who don't vote. - The Secretary appoints twelve members who are scientists, physicians, or other health professionals. They can't be federal officers or employees, and they must represent specialties relevant to the board's diseases. - The Secretary appoints six more members from the public who know about these diseases. At least one must have the disease themselves, and at least one must be a parent of someone who has it. - Of all eighteen appointed members, at least five must be trained or experienced in health education, nursing, data systems, public information, or community program development. - Certain federal officials are automatic ex officio members: the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Director of NIH, the Director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the Director of the CDC, the Under Secretary for Health at Veterans Affairs, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, and the Division Director for the relevant diseases (or their designees). The Secretary can add other federal officers or employees as needed. - The National Diabetes Advisory Board also gets four more ex officio members: the Directors of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Eye Institute; the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; and the Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (or their designees). (c) Compensation: Members who are federal officers or employees serve for free — they don't get paid extra beyond their regular government salary. Other members can be paid, but not more than the daily rate for a GS-18 federal employee, including days spent traveling. (d) Term of office; vacancy: An appointed member serves a four-year term, but no term can run past the board's expiration date. Someone filling an unfinished term only serves the rest of that term. A member can keep serving after their term ends until a replacement is sworn in. If a seat becomes vacant, the Secretary must fill it within 90 days. (e) Chairman: The appointed members pick their own chairman. (f) Executive director; staff: After consulting the Board, the Secretary must give each Board an executive director and one more professional staff member. The Secretary must also provide any additional staff, consultants, information, and support services the Board needs to do its job. (g) Meetings: Each Board meets when its chairman calls a meeting, or when the Institute's Director asks for one — but at least four times a year. (h) Functions of the National Diabetes and National Digestive Diseases Advisory Boards: These two boards must: 1. Review how well the disease research plan (described in section 285c–7) is being carried out, and update the plan regularly. 2. Advise and recommend to Congress, the Secretary, the Director of NIH, the Institute's Director, and other federal agency heads on how to carry out and revise the plan, so resources are used well. 3. Stay in contact with other advisory groups working on the same diseases — at federal agencies, the coordinating committee, and key non-federal groups. (i) Subcommittees: Each Board may create subcommittees, hold workshops and conferences, and collect data. Subcommittees can include Board members and outside consultant experts, and can meet as often as needed. (j) Termination of predecessor boards: The old National Diabetes Advisory Board and National Digestive Diseases Advisory Board — the ones that existed on November 20, 1985 — end once their replacement boards under subsection (a) are appointed. The Secretary had 90 days after that date to appoint the new boards. Members of the old boards could be reappointed to the new ones under the same rules as subsections (b) and (d), but at least half of the old Diabetes board's members had to be reappointed to the first new Diabetes board.