NIH needs to tighten oversight of foreign grant money recipients

It’s perfectly legal for federal agencies to make grants to foreign entities. Research and scientific good can come of it. But it requires oversight. The Government Accountability Office looked at how the Health and Human Services Department, and in particular the National Institutes of Health, oversees foreign grants, or money that went to grant sub-recipients in foreign countries, like China. For more on this, Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Candice Wright, the GAO’s Director for Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin And just on the question of who can receive federal grants, there is no one policy over which countries can get them that is cross-government. Is that correct? In other words, NIH maybe can give money to Chinese establishments, other agencies may not be able to.

Candice Wright So from the work that we’ve done in the past, we’ve certainly seen where agencies have made awards to foreign entities, including entities in China. But we also are aware that there are other agencies that have limitations on funding to certain foreign countries. For example, NASA not being able to provide funding to entities in China.

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Tom Temin And I imagine the Defense Department would not want to give, say, an artificial intelligence development grant to someone in China. Just to make an extreme example.

Candice Wright I can’t really comment on that because it’s not something that I specifically looked at.

Tom Temin No, we’ll get back to this report. And I’m guessing this was prompted by the controversy or the question surrounding the Wuhan laboratory. And so you were looking at the oversight. We won’t get into the science of how the virus got out or anything like that. But what were you specifically looking for here in this particular report?

Candice Wright So we were asked to look at the extent to which there was federal funding disbursed to three Chinese entities that included Wuhan University, Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. We were asked to identify if there was any federal funding to those three entities for the time period of calendar year 2014 through 2021. In order to do that work, we actually started with federal databases such as U.S.A. spending, to identify if agencies had made any disbursed funding to either of those three entities.

Tom Temin And what did you find?

Candice Wright So in our work, we found that there was one direct award from NIH, The National Institutes of Health made an award directly to Wuhan University for $200,000, where we saw that that amount of money was disbursed. This was the only award that GAO identified that was directly from an agency to one of the three entities. We also identified that there was funding that was made available through seven sub-awards to the three entities, and these totaled over 2.1 million. These sub-awards were from awards that were funded by NIH, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID.

Tom Temin So it’s really then knowledge of the sub-awardees that is of concern here.

Candice Wright Certainly. So there are reporting requirements for federal agencies to provide information on funds that are made to award recipients. That data is usually available in U.S.A. spending. What’s interesting, though, is that the extent of sub-award funding is not fully known. Award recipients are supposed to report data on first year sub-awards. There are some limitations, though, where that information on sub-awards below the first tier or if the sub award is below $30,000 is not required to be reported. We also identified in the course of our work that sometimes it can be difficult to fully understand the extent of funding that’s provided because the funding could have been provided under a different name. And so in two instances we found that there were two sub awards that were made to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. However, the funds were actually awarded under the name of the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology.

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Tom Temin We’re speaking with Candice Wright, director for Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics at the Government Accountability Office. So it looks as if China then maybe hides a little bit of who might be getting, which is not really a lot of money in the final analysis here compared to NIH, granting authorities is tens of billions. And this was a couple of million maybe that went to these institutions. So what do these results say to us? What are you recommending?

Candice Wright So the issue of sub-awards and the lack of visibility into them is something that’s been a long standing issue. It’s certainly a known issue in terms of the lack of visibility. And so what’s really important is really for there to be continued focus about how do we ensure that we get visibility into federal funding as it goes, not just said that first award recipient, but as it goes to those lower tiers. In the recommendation that we made, it was really for NIH to think about ways in which it can continue to enhance its oversight of awards, including foreign entities. We thought it was really important that they seek to identify different ways in which they can take immediate action to do so. We recommended that they take a look at their processes, their internal processes for how they oversee awards that involve foreign entities. And this was largely based on the work that we did, but also that of findings from the HHS Office of Inspector General, who had also made recommendations identifying the need to improve and enhance their monitoring of award recipients involving foreign entities.

Tom Temin And of that sub-award money that went to the Academy of Military Medical Arts and Sciences of China, who was the primary grant recipient there.

Candice Wright There were two instances where NIH had actually funded an award to Duke University that went to the Academy of Military and Medical Sciences. And then there was also an NIH award to what’s known as the Regents of the University of California that also had a sub-award that was made available to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. I will note that with respect to the NIH award, to the Regents of the University of California and the sub-award that was then made to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, it was actually terminated. So there were not actually any funds that were disbursed.

Tom Temin Got it. Do you think that is it possible to know whether the regents or Duke University knew who they were actually sending money to? I mean, sometimes China hides entities. They had a police station in the middle of New York City that nobody knew what it was. I mean, they’re pretty good at hiding their identity if they need to.

Candice Wright So I will note these particular awards, we were actually able to identify them in U.S.A. Spending and then did have some interviews with these entities. It certainly does appear that there was knowledge that the funding would be going to these entities based on the documents that we were able to review. Oftentimes, award recipients are expected to include information with respect to what sub-recipients may be receiving federal funding for research.

Tom Temin And this might be outside of the scope of your search here. But let me know if it is. But could it be simply that academics and they know other academics in the same field from around the world because they all go to their international meetings all the time, flying into the various capitals throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and so on. And to them, it’s just science to science as colleagues, and they might be not even aware of or just ignoring or naive to the political implications of, say, a sub-grant from a Duke or a Regents of California going to a Chinese military institution.

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Candice Wright Well, we’ve certainly seen in our work that when you think about the research in and of itself, it is supposed to be a collaborative endeavor where you’re learning from each other, sharing information. And so given that more collaborative approach, it’s not always the case, perhaps, that researchers might be thinking about some of the national security or other types of implications. And so over the more recent years, there’s definitely been a lot of attention being paid to this issue, really to try to raise awareness from the research community more broadly about the potential for security concerns that they should be mindful of.

Tom Temin And the recommendations you made to try to get better visibility into sub-awards deeper and deeper. Did the two agencies agree with you?

Candice Wright So our recommendation was only to NIH. And again, this is because of some of the reporting and findings that we had, as well as the inspector generals on some of the awards. And so the agency did concur and noted that it is planning to take action, and it had concurred also with the Office of Inspector General’s recommendations. What we thought was really important is that NIH, in its response to the Office of the Inspector General’s recommendations, noted that they were going to need to take some longer term actions that may not result in immediate changes. And we thought that it was really important that they while they pursue those longer term efforts, that they really think about looking at their own internal processes and things that they might be able to do much more quickly, again, to be able to enhance their oversight and monitoring of awards that involve foreign entities. We think it’s important that they look at those awards that involve foreign entities, especially foreign sub recipients, where we know that there is less visibility as you go down, trying to understand where the funding is going to different some recipients at various tiers.

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