NIH All About Grants Podcast: Ensuring Safe and Respectful Workplaces

David Kosub: Researchers deserve to be respected, treated with civility, feel safe in the work that they're conducting on behalf of NIH. When that doesn't happen, people don't feel safe. They don't feel comfortable. The research is affected. So what exactly is NIH doing to ensure a safe and respectful workplace wherever NIH-funded research is conducted? My name is David Kosub, and this is NIH's "All About Grants."

Announcer: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is "All About Grants."

David Kosub: All right. Welcome to the show. I am glad to say that we have two of my colleagues within the NIH's Office of Extramural Research here to join us for this conversation on ensuring safe and respectful workplaces. We have Dr. Patricia Valdez, she serves as the NIH Chief Research Integrity Officer, and also Dr. Elyse Sullivan, she also is a Research Integrity Officer here at OER. And welcome, you both, to the show.

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Glad to be here.

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: Thanks, David.

David Kosub: Absolutely. So let's just start off. What do we mean by safe and respectful workplaces?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Thanks, David. So as for the respectful workplace, we're referring to an environment free of harassment, discrimination and other inappropriate behavior where high-quality NIH-funded research can occur. And we do care deeply about the people who are engaged in NIH-funded research, and we recognize that the research may be negatively affected in the environment if the environment is not safe and respectful. We also want to note that when we refer to safety, usually what you think about is physical safety from, for instance, biohazards. In this case, we're referring to psychological safety, so this is another important point that I want to make.

David Kosub: And how do you actually ensure that NIH is ensuring a safe and respectful workplace? Does it apply to all the research that we're supporting?

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: So at NIH, we've had very longstanding policies that do require the recipient institutions to provide that safe and respectful work environment. So again this means an environment that is free from harassment, free from discrimination and free from other inappropriate conduct. That could be bullying or retaliation. And additionally we have a policy where institutions are actually required to report to us if someone who's senior key personnel on an award have been removed from their position or disciplined due to work environment concerns, and so this ensures that we, as NIH, become aware of issues in a timely manner if they're occurring at an institution.

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Yeah, and I'll add that this policy, this requirement, applies to all institutions receiving NIH funding now as a part of the NIH Grants Policy Statement. People should be aware that these requirements are part of the Terms and Conditions of Awards, and of course when we see concerns identified in training activities or conference grants, that definitely is something that we pay close attention to, and we will definitely address those very quickly.

David Kosub: And for those interested about the conferences, we recorded another podcast on this topic, so definitely check that out if you're interested. You both mentioned responsibilities. Patricia, you said Terms and Conditions of Award. Can you speak to more about these responsibilities? What exactly are recipients responsible for?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Yeah. So Elyse mentioned this previously. Now effective last year, on July of 2022, there's now a new requirement where the recipient institution must notify us of any individual identified as PD, program director, or PI, principal investigator, or other senior key personnel in an NIH Notice of Award, whether they're removed from their position or if they're otherwise disciplined due to concerns about harassment, bullying, retaliation or hostile working conditions. So in this case, the institution has to notify us within 30 days of the disciplinary action, and that notification has to be submitted through our dedicated NIH harassment web form. So if the institution is reporting via this web form, there's certain information that must be included. So first, they have to note that the report is from an authorized organization representative. They need to include a description of the concerns. They need to note what actions they've taken including a timeline, and they also need to describe any anticipated impact on the NIH-funded awards including providing grant numbers that are involved.

David Kosub: And since we just talked about the recipient's responsibility, same thing goes for us. What are we responsible for? How do we actually handle these allegations?

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: Well, we take all allegations or notifications very, very seriously, whether they come from an institution or an individual reporting. So I'll walk through a little bit of the situation when we receive a report from an individual. So generally if we receive an allegation, we start by communicating with that individual who reported. We refer to them as the complainant. We communicate to ascertain, do we have enough detail about the concerns and who it involves? We also work with them to get explicit permission about what information we can share with their institution in the course of our allegation process. So sometimes this means that certain sections of their statement may be redacted, or they might want to provide an edited version that they feel more comfortable with us moving forward and sharing with that recipient institution. So we do have the ability to report anonymously. However, I do want to caution folks that since we don't have your contact information if you report anonymously, we can't ask those follow-up questions, and so if we receive too little detail in these, sometimes we're unable to move forward. So this is also at the point in time where we inform the complainant a little bit more about our process and what they can expect, and a key thing here that I wanted to note is that we do follow up with the institutions. We do take all of these allegations seriously, but NIH cannot take personnel or legal actions on behalf of non-NIH employees. Folks, these are not our employees. We have certain restrictions that we can take actions, and so we just want an expectation set about what NIH has the purview to do and where we really don't.

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Right, and so we cannot mediate employment disputes or suggest employment actions. This is something that we do often hear. Now I want to just stress also that institutions have their own processes and procedures that they must follow, and so for instance, they may require that an individual report to a certain portal or to a certain office, and so this is why we strongly encourage people to also report their concerns to the institution. That could be, again, whatever their institution reporting procedures are. This could be human resources, EO or their title IX coordinators. So that's something that I would definitely recommend to people.

David Kosub: With all this initial stuff, you're getting this information from the complainant and the person making the allegation. What's next? What do we actually do with that information?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Right. So once we have enough information, the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research then sends a letter to the institution. This letter usually goes to the vice president for research at the institution or someone with a similar title, and so this is, again, in response to the notification from the institution. The letter will include a description of allegations or notification as well as a request for information which can include the following. So again, this is ... I mentioned earlier that it was in response to notification of the institution. This is also relevant for notifications that come in from individuals. So we'll want to know whether the alleged events were linked to any NIH-funded activities. We want to know the timeline and any details of any restrictions that are placed on the person of concern related to the allegation. We'll also want to know what steps has the institution taken to ensure that NIH-funded research is being conducted in a safe and appropriate environment. Now, when the person of concern is a PI on NIH grants, we're going to want to know who was overseeing the NIH award if the PI, if that PI was not able to act in a wholly unrestricted manner. So we'll also want to know whether the institution sought prior approval from the funding institute or center, IC, for any change in PIs, if appropriate. And then ... And finally, we'll ask about the institutional policies that address inappropriate conduct. And so again, we want to make sure that the institution has appropriate policies in place. If we see any improvements that could be made, we will suggest that to you then. So the letter is sent. The institution is asked to respond within 30 days of receiving the letter, and so once we have the response back, we'll do more assessments and more reviews. So we want to know, if the institution did investigate, whether there was a finding. Was the allegation substantiated? Also, in some cases, this might be the first time that the institution is hearing about some allegation. And so in that case we want to know, okay, what is the institution going to do now? Are they going to investigate this now? What's the next step for them? We'll also want to know what impact ... We'll want to make sure that they're telling us what impact, if any, there's been on NIH research. We also want to know if any of the identified risks to research staff or students have been mitigated. We want to make sure that any trainees, for instance, that are involved with this allegation or notification are safe. And of course we want to know what actions have the institute ... what other actions has the institution taken or what safeguards they put in place to ... while investigation is ongoing or perhaps after a finding? How are they handling the situation at that point?

David Kosub: Definitely seems like an iterative process, probably a little bit lengthy and pretty thorough to go through this entire process, and that's ... It's a lot of stuff to institute, it sounds like. You mentioned the allegation being substantiated. What exactly does that mean for us? What do we do if an allegation is substantiated?

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: So really our goal, our ultimate goal here, is to ensure that the environment is safe, is conducive to high-quality research. So in order to make that happen, we work hand-in-hand with the institution to ensure that the appropriate actions, whatever they may be for the situation, are taken, and Patricia described that a little bit in her previous answer, and it's ... There's not one size fits all here. There's ... These vary widely depending on the exact situation and exactly what happened, but sometimes this looks like working to identify a replacement PI on an award, requiring additional monitoring or reporting to us, monitoring the environment. Sometimes also if there's a pending award, that could be held until some compliance issues are resolved. So again, these actions widely vary depending on the exact nature of the situation, but really we're trying to identify how the environment can be safe and conducive to high-quality research.

David Kosub: I see, and you mentioned the replacement PI. What about in a situation where a PI, principal investigator, may up and leave and go to a different institution? Some folks may have heard it called Passing the Harasser. What are we actually doing to stop that?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Yeah, thanks. That's something that we're very concerned about, and so in these type of situations where this could potentially happen, we always want to reiterate to institutions that the grants belong to institutions, not to individuals. Again, this is not that person's grant that they can take with them to the new institution. The grant belongs to the institution, and institutions can keep the award. They can identify a new PI and continue the work, or they could also bilaterally terminate the award. And I want to mention that one of the issues that we've seen is when the institution is investigating, and the person then moves to the new institution at that point before the investigation is complete. Sometimes the institutions will then decide to drop the investigation. So then the person goes on and moves on to the new institution, has no findings. He or her has no findings against them, and the new institution has no idea, and the behavior then continues. And so we want to make sure that institutions are notifying us as soon as possible, especially if there are concerns involving active awards because the last thing we want to happen is to have this person move to the new institution, take an NIH award with them and continue the behavior. So we are definitely working with institutions to stop this behavior.

David Kosub: Good to hear that we're doing something about it. I want to jump back to something that was mentioned earlier about the web form and potentially even making anonymous notifications. Can y'all speak more about this notification process and what could be done in some way?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Sure, sure. We have several channels where individuals can inform us of their concerns. So we have a web form, we have an email address, and we also have a phone number. So I would suggest, if you just do a search for NIH harassment web form on the web, you should be able to find that information pretty easily. Now, the web form in particular allows individuals to report a concern completely anonymously, as Elyse just went over, and I also want to just emphasize that even if you do disclose your identity when you report to us, we're not going to pass that information along to the institution unless you provide us explicit permission. We do our best to protect anonymity. However, we cannot guarantee that it can be completely protected. For instance, in some cases the institution will require that somebody, the individual, report directly to them. Sometimes if they're conducting an investigation, they'll want to hear your side of the story. And again, I just want to again remind you that institutions ... This is the same web form that the institutions use to notify us of findings, and so in that case, when you go to the web form, you'll see two buttons. One button is for the institution, and the other button is for the individual. So if you click on the button for individual, it'll take you to the proper site where you can enter the information that's required.

David Kosub: And on the subject of information exchange, it's ... What information might we be giving back to the recipient institution as a part of the work that we're doing here and similarly to someone who may have made a complaint?

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: So like we discussed, we do work with the complainant on exactly what information and level of detail can be passed along to the institution. This may mean providing some redactions or providing an alternate version to share with the institution depending on how concerned the individual is with remaining anonymous. We have some complainants who put their name there, and they say, "I've already reported to my institution. They know exactly who I am. I have no problem with sharing my name." There's other folks who would prefer to try to remain completely anonymous. So we seek explicit permission to share anything that we pass along. So, David, regarding your question on what we can then disclose to the complainant throughout the course of our process, there's really no summary reports or resolution document that we can share, and this is really due to privacy and confidentiality concerns. So we absolutely understand that it can be very unsatisfying to submit a complaint with us and then not hear back from us on what the resolution is. However, just know that we are doing everything in our power to address each and every allegation that comes our way, and even if you don't hear back from us, it doesn't mean that we're not actively pursuing that. I do want to note, though, if you've submitted a complaint to us, and the issue is getting worse or there's additional information that you think that we should be aware of, the situation is persisting or something of that nature, we do encourage people to contact us again via the web form or the email address to let us know that information. So just because we can't reach back out to you doesn't mean you can't reach back out to us with information if it's an evolving situation.

David Kosub: Thank you for that, and this sounds like a lot of work that goes into doing a lot of these ... reviewing these allegations. And how often does this happen? How many allegations are we seeing? Have there been any changes in recent years?

Dr. Patricia Valdez: Sorry, excuse me. Yes. So we started collecting ... or NIH started collecting the data centrally in around 2018, and since then we've seen a steady rise in the allegation reports notifications. For example, last year we handled about 185 allegations of harassment or related concerns from the extramural community, and this data is also available on our website. I'll note that. I also wanted to note that increase has been happening over the years for many years. In 2019, we started to see a large increase in the numbers, and that may have largely been due to the implementation of the web form and the new harassment mailbox that we put up, and so we started to hear more from the community. And I think there's been a general increase due to the awareness building and also the new reporting requirements that I talked about earlier. Last year, that went into place for institutions.

David Kosub: And those data that are on the website, they're actually updated at least a couple of times a year, so check them out, for those who are interested in seeing these numbers. Well, Patricia, Elyse, this has been great to hear more about the process of how we're ... how NIH is aiming to ensure a safe and respectful workplace. Before we go, I always like to leave the opportunity for our guests to share any final thoughts, any last-minute things that they want to make sure that they get across to the listener, and I turn the floor over.

Dr. Elyse Sullivan: Yeah, thank you so much for having us, David. This is such an important conversation to have, and I hope that this information is useful to folks out there. So in closing, I'll just say that again our ultimate goal is to ensure a safe work environment that's conducive to high-quality research. So if there are concerns, please do notify us. We really do take action, and we really need to know what's going on out there at the institutions. I know that, David, you mentioned resources on our website including data. We also have information on our process, links for finding help and some important definitions in terms of, what are the definitions of harassment and what not. So if you search NIH harassment, our website should be the first one that comes up.

Dr. Patricia Valdez: And I'll add that we're looking at a culture change, and as everyone knows, this takes time, but I think we have seen some promising improvements with just the past several years. So we do remain optimistic that we can make a difference, so thank you.

David Kosub: Absolutely. Elyse and Patricia, I truly appreciate this opportunity to hear how we're attempting to make a culture change and start a ... improve and encourage more safe and respectful workplaces out there. Just to reiterate, there are a variety of resources that are available on our website, so definitely come check them out, and if you would like to make a notification to us about a concern you might have, please do so. We want to hear them. This has been David Kosub with NIH's "All About Grants." Thank you.