To amend the Public Health Service Act to require greater transparency and accountability within the grant-making process of the National Institutes of Health.
The GRANT Act of 2023 requires the National Institutes of Health to increase transparency in how it makes funding decisions by creating a database of all rejected research proposals and sharing detailed information about its grant-making process with independent researchers who request it. The NIH must establish the denial database within 180 days and update it at least quarterly, including explanations for why proposals were rejected. Researchers can request access to scoring sheets, reviewer comments, funded and unfunded proposals, employee performance data, and information about how the NIH funds projects below its funding threshold. The law requires the NIH to maintain this information going forward and make reasonable efforts to reconstruct historical records, though it will redact the names of peer reviewers and grant applicants to protect their identities. This legislation affects the NIH's operations and any researchers seeking to understand the agency's funding decisions, with no specific funding or timeline requirements beyond the 180-day establishment deadline for the denial database.
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