Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research

Since 2020, Congress has appropriated $12.5 million dollars of annual funding for NIH to conduct research on firearm injury and mortality prevention, studying the underlying causes and evidence-based methods of prevention, including crime prevention.
Goals as identified in the appropriation are:
"Given violence and suicide have a number of causes, the agreement recommends NIH take a comprehensive approach to studying these underlying causes and evidence-based methods of prevention of injury, including crime prevention. All grantees under this section will be required to fulfill requirements around open data, open code, pre-registration of research projects, and open access to research articles consistent with the National Science Foundation’s open science principles. The Director is to report to the Committees within 30 days of enactment of this Act on implementation schedules and procedures for grant awards, which strive to ensure that such awards support ideologically and politically unbiased research projects"

Competitive peer reviewed applications are reviewed for scientific and technical merit by a scientific review group; and for program relevance by a national advisory council/board. Applications are reviewed for merit and relevance by NIH scientific staff.