Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States invited me to witness the signing of this law at the White House lawn in the Rose Garden last month and without question it was a leadership filled with the whip to you the President of the United States Ronald Reagan. Thank you very much. Thank you. You did that. Well Governor Trean, Chairman Greene, I thank you very much distinguished gentlemen who here on the platform, your officers and you ladies and gentlemen it's a great pleasure to be back in this beautiful Bayou country. The today brings me a very special honor too. I understand that I'm the first sitting president to ever address the US League of Savings Associations. That makes me happy because when one thinks of the people who live by the values and traditions that made America great, faith in God, love of family and freedom, service to community and country, the leaders of your industry come immediately to mind. I'm told that when the US Constitution was less than 50 years old, a group of men met at Thomas Sidebotham's Tavern in Frankfurt, Pennsylvania. Their aim was to form a club to pool their savings to finance their homes. The Oxford Provident Building Association offered its first mortgage in April of 1831 to a local lamp lighter named Comley Rich and he used $375 to buy a home which still stands today on Orchard Street in Frankfurt and from that idea has grown the $625 billion savings and loan business devoted to the business of savings and home ownership. You can be very proud. I couldn't help reflecting as we flew down that New Orleans is too good not to enjoy. People who come here usually come to celebrate and you know something I thought I detected a smile or two on your faces. I heard a rumor around that Roy Green and some of you think the sun is beginning to shine again on savings and loans. Might that be true? You know thinking about what your group has been through reminds me the story of the three gentlemen who had departed this earth and were standing at the gates of heaven waiting for admittance. One was a surgeon, the other one an engineer, the third one an economist. They'd all been good upright people but it developed that there was only room inside for one. So St. Peter said I'll tell you what I'll pick the one who comes from the oldest profession. Well the surgeon stepped right up and he said well I'm your man right after God created Adam. He operated, he took a rib, created Eve so surgery has to be the oldest profession and the engineer said whoops no. He said you see before God created Adam and Eve. He took the chaos that prevailed and built earth in six days so engineering had to precede surgery. An economist spoke up and says just a minute who do you think created all that chaos? So chaos is what your industry faced in 1980. A situation that was created by people with noble intentions but without a solid grip on how the real world works. Housing, the bedrock industry that provides your daily bread had been brought to its knees. For millions of Americans the dream of home ownership was shattered by soaring costs, record interest rates and economic mismanagement. Between 1977 and 1980 in those three years the average monthly payment for a mortgage loan nearly doubled. Now those policies of big spending and big taxing left a trail of disappointment and broken promises. With the economy going haywire the thrift industry was trapped in the vice of an earning squeeze and over regulation. Others capitalized on the financial revolution of money market funds but there was no light at the end of your industry's tunnel. No way to make a new niche in the market and compete for the saver's money. Well I said before we didn't go to Washington with more snake oil remedies for quick fixes and we don't suffer from paralysis by analysis. We're determined to make America well again. We intend to rebuild this country not from the government down but from the people up. I believe the the true strength of America and her passport to greater glory resides on the streets where you live with the American family. Calvin Coolidge said look well to the hearthstone for there in all hope for America lies. The goal of our administration has been and will remain to restore to families communities and places of work their rightful positions of honor strength and leadership so together we can lift America to new progress and opportunity for all her citizens. The means of reaching that goal have been and will remain to liberate individuals deregulate markets and place limits on the size and authority of the federal government. No longer must government be allowed to ride rough shot absorbing the people's wealth usurping their rights and crushing their spirit. This is why the health of your savings and loans the community builders of America is so important to our future. So yes we designed a program to attack our economic disease at its roots and I know this comes as a shock to some after what you've heard the last few months but our program is beginning to do exactly what it was intended to do. In 1980 the growth of government spending was zooming at 17 percent annual rate. That was a blueprint for bankruptcy the end of our American way of life. We cut spending growth by nearly two thirds and today America no longer suffers from double digit inflation. Inflation has been beaten all the way down here in this 11th month to 4.8 percent so far this year. And I'll let you in a little secret we're not finished yet. 1982 could go down as our best victory against price increases in the last 10 years. We pledged to provide new strong incentives for Americans to invest in their future to save again to put their money in institutions like yours that supply the mortgage loans families so badly need. So we expanded the limits on IRA accounts and Keo plans. We cut the top rate of tax on interest and dividend income. We're reducing everyone's personal tax rate by 25 percent. We're aggressively pursuing deregulation of financial markets and we're discouraging or I should say encouraging business savings by permitting more rapid depreciation of plant and equipment. I'm pleased to report to you that an old fashioned American value thrift is making a strong comeback. Personal savings the lifeblood of your industry have not only reversed their decline but reached their highest level in six years. 17 percent of all American households opened up IRA accounts in the first part of 1982. With your help we'll see another big surge in the remainder of this year and in 1983. This greater pool of savings helped fuel the historic rise in the stock and bond markets which means more investment for jobs. So here's the clincher. This nation's nest egg is beginning to grow again. For the first time in nearly 20 years hardworking families can keep more of their income that they work so hard to earn. I happen to believe that's an important part of what justice and compassion are all about. Bringing down inflation and expanding the savings pool explains another piece of good news. In fact it's great news. We don't have a 21 and a half percent prime rate of interest anymore. The prime rate is down to 12 percent and mortgage rates your stock and trade are coming back down to. Now I hope that I'll be pardoned for pointing out that the conventional commitment rates for long term home mortgages peaked at nearly 19 percent in September of 81. That was the month before our program began. By last week the nationwide average had fallen to 13 percent. And I want you to know that we're determined to bring those rates down further. These are all reasons for hope. But we're also trying to go to the root of the special problems making life so difficult for your industry. Early on we appointed a presidential commission on housing headed by Bill McKenna to come up with responsible policy recommendations. And I realize I'm not impartial on this. But I just have to believe that Richard Pratt is the best darn chairman the federal home loan bank board has ever had. For many years of struggle your industry now has greater flexibility the instruments that can use to raise funds and a greater variety of opportunities for investing those funds including the variable rate mortgage. So now you can compete on a more level playing field. And that's not all. With leadership from Secretary Regan chairman Bratt. Branking committee chairman Garn I'll get this straight yet. And your active support your active support. I recently signed some landmark legislation as you've been told the Depository Institutions Act. And from now on you'll be free to compete for the savers dollar and we hope you agree this legislation can be the Emancipation Proclamation for America Savings Institutions. Now we're not promising a panacea. We're just saying as Winston Churchill did we'll give you the tools and you'll get the job done. This historic legislation can increase competition. It can open up a supermarket of services for small savers grant them greater access to loans a higher return on their savings. And when combined with recent sharp declines in interest rates it'll mean more housing more growth more jobs. It can mean we hit the jackpot. We think the next Congress can go even further with financial deregulation. There's a new spirit building in America a spirit of confidence optimism and hope in September we saw solid increases in the sales of new homes in the growth of housing starts and even more important in new housing permits. We still have a long way to go before we make things right again. Far too many people are still hurting but we believe the turnaround in your industry signals a turnaround in the rest of the economy and that's mighty good news for America. So the question now is where do we go from here. Well let me tell you a few places we're not going. We're not going back to the policies that left America with record inflation record interest rates on the worst peacetime tax burden in our history. We will not negate all the good that we accomplished in these first 22 months. Compromise must not mean incremental retreat on principle. We cannot permit the Congress to take away the third year of the people's tax cut or the indexing provision and we're not going to allow them to do that. This would mean a net tax increase of about $3,000 over the next five years for a typical working family. It would compromise incentives to save just now beginning to pay off and it would send up the white flag of surrender to big spenders. Reducing deficits on paper by raising taxes on people invariably leads to more red ink not less. We intend to press forward for a constitutional amendment to bring back something millions of Americans have never known a balanced federal budget. We intend to press forward for our enterprise zones proposal to bring new jobs growth and hope to the most dispersed areas of our country. Above all we intend to wage a full court press for economic truth. What this economy needs to grow stronger to become more productive and competitive to create new jobs and to ensure higher real wages and incomes for our people is the power of investment savings and finance investment and investment creates growth. Tragically our rate of savings and net investment in America during the last decade has been pitifully weak. Less than half that of our principal competitors in Europe and Japan. A little more than a year ago we passed our program of tax incentives to begin correcting the investment gap. It represents a mere down payment on what needs to be done. We don't need fewer incentives to save and invest we need more incentives. And let's quit kidding ourselves. We will not solve the problems of unemployed auto workers and steel workers with another giant temporary public works program financed by depleting still more of the nation's precious seed corn. Over a seven year period ending in 1981. Government spent 66 billion dollars on so called job programs and during those seven years unemployment increased and the economy worsened. What the unemployed need most is a broad based economic recovery. We must seek out and develop new markets around the world make our goods more competitive accelerate job training and give greater incentives to the pioneers creating products technologies and jobs for our future. Every decision we make must be weighed as to whether or not it will help restore our economy. The answers to the challenge of the 80s don't lie in the make work programs of the 60s and 70s. Our decade long trend of rising unemployment was not caused by highway potholes. Repairing America's infrastructure is important. Indeed it's necessary. And I'm considering an initiative for that. But our highest priority is to restore America's industrial power to get America back on the cutting edge of growth through greater investment. The investment challenge is America's challenge for the 80s. For the sake of every citizen who wants and needs a job. I asked the Congress to work with us on initiatives that will move America forward not backward. The American people weren't put on this earth to become managers of decline. Now deficits are a great threat because government borrowing each up savings that should be financing investment. When I arrived in Washington we faced a trillion dollar debt. This year Uncle Sam was borrow one hundred and ten billion dollars just to pay the interest. And we face large projected budget deficits in the future. A propaganda campaign would have you believe these deficits are caused by our so-called massive tax cut and defense build up. Well that's a real dipsy doodle. Because even after our tax reductions are fully in place they will barely neutralize the enormous payroll tax increases that were approved in nineteen seventy seven. One installment of that increase wanted to affect last January. And there will be a tax increase on some or all of the people every year from now on between now and nineteen ninety. Either by raising the amount of pay that is taxed for Social Security or by raising the actual tax rate. During the next five years our planned defense increase will come to less than two percent of the gross national product. Or seventy billion dollars at the nineteen eighty two level of gross national product. As a matter of fact defense spending is a share of gross national product. Will be the below the level that it was in nineteen sixty. Which was before our Vietnam build up. And more importantly before the unprecedented Soviet build up. Defense spending is thirty percent or less of our total budget. It used to run regularly around half. Of the federal budget. There's simply no escaping the truth. Current and projected deficits result from sharp increases in non defense spending. If the United States is to meet its investment challenge. We must get the growth of non defense spending under control once and for all. In the. In the past two weeks I've been conducting an intensive review of our economic and budgetary situation. Difficult choices lie ahead. They'll require political courage. No one ever said that democracy was easy. But we do know that democracy works if we make it work. So once again we're asking for your help. We need your support at the grassroots as we put together a program to reduce projected deficits. It must be a balanced program that brings deficits down without violating our goals of reducing the burden of taxation. Protecting the needy. And moving forward with our program to rebuild America's badly neglected defenses. I believe we can do this. And I know the American people will respond to reason and leadership. I hear the cynics who have given up on our country. They're so quick to run down America to find fault with everyone but themselves. To hear them talk no one feels concerned for a fellow citizen or cares about our future. Sometimes they give the impression the United States is dying from cirrhosis of the giver. Well I traveled a little bit. I receive a letter or two. And let me tell you the spirit of America is good. Her heart is strong and true. Never has the world known a more generous and industrial people. Maybe we don't always see them on the news. But ours is a land of quiet unsung heroes. They spend a lifetime giving themselves to their families, schools, churches and communities.  We've seen a triumph too often in our lives to stop believing in it now. Above all, let us remember the mountain of strength that offers the greatest hope and inspiration for all. I believe with all my heart that standing up for America means standing up for the God who has so blessed our land. We need God's help to guide our nation through stormy seas. But we can't expect him to protect America in a crisis if we just leave him over on the shelf in our day-to-day living. There's a lovely old hymn which says, when morning light lights the eastern skies, oh Lord, thy mercy show on thee alone our hope relies. Let us, thy kindness, know. Trusting in him, believing in each other, working together, we will rebuild America, the land of our dreams and mankind's last great hope. I told you that I get a letter or two. The other day, there were a group of young people, teenagers at the White House. They were from all over the United States, from your towns, your states. They were young volunteers who have engaged in volunteer, kindly deeds and charitable work in their communities. And they gave me, leather bound, a book of handwritten letters that each one of them had written about, what this meant to them. And just one incident from one of a little girl who, you know, that very special Olympics for the children who were retarded. And this little girl is going to be held here, I believe, very shortly, the World Olympics. But this little girl was to help out with just one of the more local Olympics. And it was raining cats and dogs.  And she was pretty depressed and she was cold. And she wondered what she was doing there. And then she saw a little boy, one of the participants, one of those handicapped children. And he looked cold and wet. And as if he was wondering what he was doing out there in the rain. And she went over to him and handed him the ball and said something to him nicely. And she told me what it meant that then, in that instant, he looked up, put his arms around her and said, I love you. And suddenly she said it couldn't have been raining anymore. The sun must have been shining. And she said just from that one thing from that little child, she said, I learned the joy of service and why we're doing these things, these volunteer things. That's our children. We can't have done everything wrong if we've got kids in America that feel that way and are doing what they're doing. Thank you for inviting me to be with you today. God bless you all. That was just superb, Mr. President. You have honored us with your presence. And we of the savings alone industry will be forever indebted to you for it.  Mr. O'Connell. Mr. President, the locations has had a special medal struck. On the front is a portrait bust of Isaac Shellcross, with the words, founder, U.S. Savings and Loans System. And on the reverse is printed presented to Ronald Reagan, president of the United States, to mark his address before the 90th annual convention of the U.S. League, November 1982. On behalf of the U.S. League and all of its member thrift institutions, it is my great honor and pleasure to present this medal to you, Mr. President, as a token of our deep gratitude for your efforts on behalf of the Savings and Loans business and on behalf of the thrift industry. Mr. President.


All right, you guys what is up? We're doing it again. It's either gonna be the worst idea of my life Or the best okay, but we're cracking into the 2019 NFL's top 100 list it came out yesterday today's date guys We're gonna keep with the the whole theme of tracking the date because I don't know when this video is gonna come out So when it does you guys will know exactly how long it's taken Because the date is The 24th of July, it's 9 30 in the morning and the top and the the bottom 10 You could say from number 100 from number 100 to number 91 has just come out on the NFL's channel I've had about 10 or 15 messages telling me that it is out. I know it's out. It's been out for 24 hours We're gonna have number 90 to number 81 coming out in about two hours.  We're gonna be doing number 100. I have no idea who it is I'm excited to see not sure if we're gonna do three players per video two players per video one player per video I'm not sure if we're gonna do any research on the players I'm just keen to get back into some live You know live videos live reactions. I am sorry That the top 100 greatest players of all time took so long to come out the video that you see probably just before this one Will be Jerry Rice. I hope you enjoyed it. It went for about 35 minutes. I'm so sorry And you know after watching it back just recently again. I made that video probably seven months ago But my opinions remain the same I gave you guys a bit of a story time on on my rugby career and how it panned out and How I never actually played professional rugby?  No because it's not over. I'm only 28 and it's not over. So with that being said I want to say Welcome back to the channel.  No, they don't so we've got from number 100 to number 91 There's a few names. I recognize this one There's one name I really recognize which is number 93, but we won't go there yet. We'll give him his time and his place Let's do it number 100 Eric Weddle Safety for the Rams. Let's go Decent sound here guys because we're not using the green screen For these first 10 we're gonna go back to the old school have the little box down in the corner I'm sorry if that doesn't work for some of you guys, but we are in a pretty confined space here And I'm doing the best I can I'm gonna stop talking now Okay, okay, there he is number 32 for the the Ravens, but now he's with the Rams Okay Oh When do you shave it? Holy shit, that is a decent effort He reminds me of Julie and Edelman with that and actually I just saw an interview of Julie and Edelman recently talking about his Super Bowls And he shaved his beard off too What's happened? He looks completely different. I would not have recognized Edelman one bit without that beard It's crazy.  That was the main reason why I cut mine off because my mum liked it.   Oh, yeah, look at that footwork in the pocket They see a coach I Like it He's actually like hey coach. Have you seen? display two years ago clip San Diego No, nobody nobody has why no, no, we haven't made settle down with Let me try and turn up this turn up this volume man It's not enough volume in here I'm gonna love this Oh I've already seen more in this first video than I saw in the last six months as far as actual Breaking down play guys. I've had a bit of a break. I've had some personal issues.  In fact, I sold most of it in January and we're in July now. So it's six months on I'm about to have my second trial.  He must have such good awareness man. Get there. He's fast, too. Oh nice I can't wait to have my team back. You know what's gonna have one of the games online We're gonna go make the play winner envision it see it It's gonna happen. So let's go be green That's it quick word from the coach appreciate that that's all you need to say Appreciate that coach. Did you make top 100 this guy kid?  Isn't he I can tell anyways guys We've got a running back next boom straight into the running backs number 99 Derek Henry Haven't heard of him before plays running back for the Titans. In fact When I played career mode on Madden, I made myself number 27 for the Titans because that was only that was one of the Only teams that that didn't have number 27. I think it's retired actually not sure who it was But I played running back for the Titans for two seasons and got rookie of the year But it's on Madden, and I think by the time this video comes out Madden 20 will be out And I can't wait to watch that so anyways guys if you have enjoyed this video. I've decided to make it just one Moving into the next one possibly if I get through it, you know a little bit quicker I might put two or three together, but this one's just one number number 100 Eric Weddle Safety for the Ravens, but now the Rams apparently I'll see you in the next one


Thank you. I have the pleasure of presenting this a case study of sorts using applied improvisation If you are familiar any of you with doing the work we call DNI diversity and inclusion That's what this talk is going to speak to the work that I've been doing in it in the last two years I'm going to jump right into it. So if you are not particularly familiar With the terms DNI I wanted to kind of put something that kind of just kind of get a definition of sorts So that we could be familiar with it and diversity inclusion work is mainly around the space of sensitivity Using different businesses whether it be nonprofit or for-profit. It's sort of making your workplace Sort of diverse and equitable Now we talk about that in many different ways. We could talk to about as far as gender race culture faiths or sexual orientation, but there are many other ways to as well Now that's of course the tip of the iceberg we often say that just saying that definition is not enough We often say in the space of DNI that it's we're often going in and working with Individuals and and often when I'm working with them It's just a tip of the iceberg and what I'm trying to do is just really open themselves up to sort of this Dialogue and this conversation around what that means and so what I find is This this quote sort of from a really great quote that highlights that it's great to seek out diverse candidates and Include them in the company culture, but what happens next right? How does one go further in creating an actual space that truly embraces differences so I Find that applied improvisation works wonderfully for that because what it does is It speaks to this term Intersexuality sectionality that's easier word to write than say And so intersectionality now. What does that mean? That is actually this sort of field that's been really popularized in the last kind of it last five to ten years of What separates or makes me unique? I could relate to some of those things that may also to someone I mean right in my workplace a fellow co-worker or a manager I could relate to maybe What makes them different or? The same so sort of these differences in other words my religion of being maybe the only Jewish person at a mostly Christian workplace I could sort of relate to that feeling to someone is that on the other spectrum someone who is maybe gay or lesbian or Transgender and they're the only one in a maybe heterosexual mostly Workplace so we could find some similarities in there and that's that's where I find that applied improvisation sort of could speak to Now how do we do that? And I think it relies completely on making space for the different folks Emotions and using empathy to do this so diversity inclusion means allowing employees to actually bring their whole selves Into into the space and it kind of bring it to the table So it's hard to do that though. It's easy to say, but it's hard to do that in the workplace. These are actually Businesses and I do most of this work In banks some of the top banks in the United States the United States I've been working with for the last two years and there's reasons why a lot of those Businesses are actually regulated and mandated to do this work. Well, that's even makes it you might say well great, right? That actually puts a challenge because people are in a way forced to go through this training Let me explain how I kind of manage this so I'm lucky enough to be working at this wonderful place called coca-biz coca-biz is actually a part of this Non-profit arts center based in st. Louis, Missouri coca The first four letters coca-biz gets its name from coca, which is actually the third largest fully arts integrated complex in the United States, so it's multi its opera its dance its Fine arts its theater. It's all those things under one roof and coca has been around for a little over 30 years And coca-biz has only been around 10 years and what the mission of that The the kind of the problem that we're solving is using arts To actually go into corporations and businesses and use the artist the dancer the storyteller the musician to kind of Touch on these topics. What can you with the art and so myself using improvisation was a perfect match And so we created about two years ago this program called acting with awareness that was specifically addressing this idea of diversity And and sensitivity training Mostly again in think of these big banks, you know these big corporate banks What we found was that This is something that was radically different when we actually went into spaces And and that photo is one of my colleagues Kathy Bentley who is a playwright and a director What we found is that we were giving them different tool sets They were used to kind of like just really going through workbooks and manuals and PowerPoints But what we were doing is we're actually playing those theater games theater games and then unpacking them So one of the processes that where we start this where it's anchored is in this really Prime the kind of the first game that we play and it's really anchors the whole day It's it's based on a game that is used often in many Theater classrooms Which is sometimes called I like cake or truth chairs where everyone sits in a circle And there's only enough circle of enough chairs except for one person in the center and the center person has to say something True about themselves and if it's true for anyone in the circle They all have to move and it it sort of creates this one person's gonna end up always in the center Well, we've morphed that into a different version of that where it's called where I'm from and the first level We play it and this game is played for about 45 minutes to almost maybe quite an hour The first level is just geographical so people stand in that center and they have to say the phrase where I'm from There were mountains or they might say where I'm from the streets Never were quiet right and then whatever's true people move right the next wave We go into where I'm from a cultural truth. So I'm from women always stayed home and raised the family right or where I'm from You didn't see to same-sex couples holding hands Right, and then the last way is personal That's the last process where they will start to get up after about 30 40 minutes and start to kind of say where I'm from my dad Didn't see me pretty much until I was about 17 Right something real personal so this goes on for a while and you could see this is sort of an example of a Really literally a bunch of executives at a multi-level. They could actually be management and actually bank teller could be a VP It could be someone that works behind the scenes and they are all in that circle and they're doing this We go from this process directly to creating Tableaus so the groups have to kind of get in pairs and then pairs get into four sums and then four sums get into groups of six or eight and they have to pick a where I'm from that resonated to them and After they do that they build a tableau and the tableaus are Amazing what we see out of these tableaus are things that these groups have never addressed or never tried and and and From the tableaus, there's just there's nothing about it other than watching them produce them make them and then reaction The conversations we have a great critiquing format that really gets people to kind of address they don't get to respond we critique in a positive way or questionable way and These are some of the ones that actually came from one of the recent one that I did Where I'm from our marriage was illegal 20 years ago. Now the person who said that Was saying it because they were in an interracial was an african-american woman But when they translated the tableau a group they did it too. That's a those are high-level two VPs from a bank Who are heterosexual? And they actually got to recreate that tableau Where I'm from bombs were used to kill black and brown people this bank is the headquarters is based in Birmingham, Alabama and so For them that was a real and some of the people that are there living actually remember it as a child and Where I'm from I saw death all around me growing up Where I'm from black and brown people were the service workers And I have one more here where I'm from interracial dating was forbidden So they get to kind of sort of create these tableaus and you could see there's Laughter in some cases and there's some cases there's tears and the whole point and function of this is to kind of move them through this process of Of warming them up and getting to play the game and in the process of playing the game They actually lose all the all those things that separate us in the workplace, right? And they're actually able to finally have a conversation now. I'm not gonna lie people do have triggered moments There is sometimes people that will have a Argument or a feeling and that's processed in the last portion That's why we save a lot of time in 90 minutes to even more than that Sometimes we take a break and come back in a debrief to talk about those things It's all about starting the process of a conversation So if you're interested in this space I empower all of you to kind of really think about how you can bring those different co-workers together using that Intersectionality and empathy. Thank you


All right, why don't we come back into session? I'll turn this over to Rudy to introduce the next two presentations. Right. So we have a couple of concepts to present to Council, and I'll just remind the Council members that before an Institute in IH can release funding opportunity announcement that has dedicated funds associated with it, the concept has to be approved by an advisory committee in an open session, something that the public has access to. NHGRI always uses the advisory council, and that's so that you guys always know everything that's come across the transom here. So we'll have a presentation. There'll be an opportunity for discussion, and when the discussion is completed, I will ask for a vote from the Council. I'll be asking you to approve the concept. So the first concept is for the Center for LC Resources and Analysis, and it's going to be presented by Nicole Lockhart, Division Director in the Division, sorry, Program Director in the Division of Genomics and Society. Madam Division Director, go forward. I know. I was excited. Maybe you had inside information. I didn't know. Good afternoon, everyone. I am presenting on behalf of a team from the Division of Genomics and Society. So over the past year, we have gathered feedback both informally and formally on challenges within the LC research community. Overall, these challenges can be categorized into two general areas, access and analytical. In terms of access, we have heard from multiple distinct groups that LC research findings are often less known and used outside of areas where NHGRI is a central influence, despite potential broad applicability to other research areas. Accordingly, the implementation and policy relevance of LC research may be under-realized. Although measuring such impacts is challenging, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and the media could stand to benefit from LC expertise, but they often don't know where to turn. While the diversity of disciplines and methodologies used in LC research is a strength, it also results in LC research studies being more difficult to locate. There is no established means of sharing LC research data, tools, or products. Further, the wide range of methods used in LC research leads to publication in a wide variety of journals, with currently over 400 different journals represented in our LC database. Finally, there is no single society or meeting outside of the LC Congress, which fully captures the breadth of LC research. In terms of analytical challenges, the breadth of methods can make cross-study analyses difficult, and it can be particularly challenging where studies employ methods from different disciplines. Systematic synthesis of LC findings across studies from different disciplines would be valuable and could serve as a state of the field on a particular issue. Our methods assessment could improve rigor and study design. And as you are all aware, NIH has a renewed focus on rigor and reproducibility. Making measures and instruments publicly available and easily located would improve rigor, reproducibility, efficiency, and access. After an initial consultation with the Genomics and Society Working Group of Council about some of these challenges in the fall of 2017, the LC program held two public webinars in March to gather broader feedback. The webinars were attended by approximately 80 participants from across the full spectrum of LC research in terms of discipline, career stage, and mechanism of NIH funding. Participants urged ongoing and increased collaboration between LC research, genomics, and other fields of biomedical and clinical research to ensure that research findings are translated into meaningful outcomes. Most participants supported the general idea of broader sharing of instruments, measures, and tools utilized in NHGRI-funded LC research. Such an effort was viewed as a means of increasing multidisciplinary research, rigor, reproducibility, and transparency. Sharing was also seen as particularly important for trainees or new investigators who may still be building their collaborative networks. However, opinions about sharing primary LC data were mixed, with some participants favoring increased data sharing using existing resources as a means of increasing transparency and rigor. But other participants were unsure of whether such sharing would be worthwhile, particularly for qualitative data where the context of how the data was collected is very important. Support was also heard for efforts to summarize and or conduct meta-analyses across LC research, either focused on a particular topic or to summarize findings in genomics LC for potential application to other fields. A combined executive summary from the two webinars is currently available on our LC website. The purpose of the Center for LC Resources and Analysis would be to provide LC researchers with an established platform to share their research tools and products related to genomics, to serve as a resource for curating and synthesizing research on key topics in the field, highlighting new findings and providing access to these works, and to convene LC researchers for both small and larger scale transdisciplinary projects and meetings to develop a more synergistic and integrated LC research community. In regards to the first objective related to resource sharing and coordination, the Center will provide LC researchers with established and stable platform to share their research tools and products. The Center will collect, index, store, and make publicly available data collection instruments, data dictionaries, and study methods from NHGRI funded LC research and ensure appropriate annotation of such resources. Further, the Center will track and maintain a central database of LC scholarship and its products, including journal articles, books, websites, tools for genomic researchers, and clinical and educational interventions. The Center will collaborate with the NHGRI to identify and prioritize research tools and products for inclusion. And where appropriate, the Center will collect and coordinate information on how to access data from NHGRI funded LC studies, including data that is shared through existing repositories or resources. However, the Center will not serve as a repository for primary LC research data as these data tapes are too heterogeneous to be effectively aggregated at this point. The Center will conduct usability testing and evaluation activities to assess the ongoing needs of LC and genomic investigators and other relevant stakeholders to improve utility of the Center. The intent of such testing is to ensure that the diverse set of potential users are able to find, access, and effectively use Center resources. All resources and tools developed by the Center will be portable and easily transferred if needed. In terms of the second objective related to data integration, synthesis, and translation, the Center will also serve key analytical functions, including summarizing LC scholarship via meta-analysis and literature review, integrating and synthesizing LC research data to identify areas of consensus, disagreement, and research gaps. And they will conduct or organize methods assessments to improve rigor and reproducibility. Finally, the Center will coordinate and support convening of LC researchers around common issues. Examples could include planning and executing the biennial LC Research Congress. Organizing topic-centered webinars, workshops, or meetings generating scholarship. Such activities could be focused on particular areas identified through the Center's data to integration and synthesis activities, or on more general topics related to methods or translation of findings to policy. The Center will also facilitate LC scholars' response to current and emerging issues. This function will help address two phenomena, the lag time between the time issues emerge and results from investigator-initiated research are published, and issues being raised in the media or policy circles that LC research has previously tackled. These activities will combine to help build a more synergistic integrated LC research community and in some cases to broaden the LC audience. As a means of achieving these objectives, the Center will develop and execute an outreach and engagement plan to help bring LC research and center products to the widening set of potential users. In order to be successful, the Center will need to effectively engage diverse expertise and end users. This plan should include innovative strategies to encourage and incentivize participation in the Center. Such participation would include contribution of tools and resources, access and use of such resources, and participation in center activities related to synthesis and integration. Their plan should also describe how they will connect LC researchers more directly to one another and to the Center itself. How they will ensure that genomic researchers, practitioners, trainees, funders and policymakers are aware of relevant NHGRI funded work, both past and present, and inform the LC community about the expanding genomic landscape. In terms of scope, while LC research is relevant to many fields of clinical and biomedical research, the scope of this Center will focus on LC research related to genetics and genomics. The Center will initially focus on NHGRI supported research as activities ramp up, but collaboration with international LC research efforts related to genetics and genomics will be considered in scope, particularly as the Center matures. The Center will also provide broad access to tools and products, including to researchers outside of genomics, in order to encourage the application of LC findings to other areas of science and medicine. Regular input on center activities will be provided by an external scientific panel with diverse expertise, including quantitative and qualitative research methods, outreach and engagement strategies, and data management and analysis. The external scientific panel will help assess milestones and ensure that the needs of the LC research community are considered in an unbiased and inclusive manner. The proposed Center would bring together LC research tools and products from across NHGRI, including from investigator-initiated researchers, the Centers of Excellence in LC Research, or SEAR program, and relevant consortia. And the Center would add value by further synthesizing and collating research on key topics. The Center would provide more equitable access for a broad spectrum of LC researchers, which may be particularly valuable for trainees and new and early-stage investigators. The Center would increase the availability and visibility of LC products and resources to other relevant NIH programs and international genomics efforts facing similar issues, and would serve as a key convener and source of expertise for the larger research and policy communities. While this Center would not replace existing NHGRI coordinating centers that are meeting the needs of specific programs or consortia, it would provide a central resource of LC tools, products, and expertise that could be consulted by and coordinated with other NHGRI consortia. We are currently envisioning a single U24 award starting in FY19. Total costs will be limited to $6 million over a five-year budget period, with annual, total annual costs not to exceed $1.5 million a year. We're envisioning that the annual budget will be less in the first two years as the Center ramps up to full functionality, and structuring the budget this way will hopefully allow some flexibility while still putting a cap on total costs. And we are currently in the process of consulting with other institutes and centers about possible interest or co-funding. This concept was developed by the whole team within our division. I would particularly like to thank Joy, Larry, and Dave for all of their help throughout this process. And our outgoing program analysts, Aaron Curry, was essential in developing a landscape analysis for us early on in our executive summary from the webinars. And our analyst, Maggie, was essential in making sure our webinars ran smoothly. And both of them are off to medical school, and we are very proud of them. I'd be happy to take any questions or comments you might have. Yeah, this is a wonderful idea, so congratulations on putting this together. Really only a couple quick comments about this. I think you've done a nice job in sort of assessing community needs with the outreach. So I think the process has been appropriate to put this thing together. Seems to me the main challenge is going to be outreach to those communities that are less typically integrated within the existing LC community. Everybody in the LC community is going to know about this sort of thing pretty quickly. It's those folks who are yet to be pulled in, the philosophers and sociologists and different people who will have to, you'll have to think about a creative marketing scheme for them. I agree with the notion of no primary data in the data set, but with some discussion about how primary data ought to be shared or more easily shared among investigators, certainly would be part of perhaps the center's activities. Any other idea I had with this with maybe a bit of a wild hair, but it seems to me a lot of folks coming to the LC world don't have a lot of genetics background. And a lot of the LC issues are pretty contingent on some of the subtleties of the technologies. And you want these folks to get up to speed as quickly as possible. So whether this might also serve as a resource for sort of educated descriptions of emerging technologies that make folks aware of strengths and weaknesses gaps with existing technology. So where would I go if I were a philosopher to learn a little bit more about CRISPR-Cas9 and how that, what is that thing and how do I understand a little bit more about it? And that enables them to be perhaps more educated in some of these issues, as well as to serve as an educator for others within their disciplines to have the tools, the illustrations, the concepts. So just an idea. Thank you, Jeff. I think we definitely would view this as kind of a bridge between the LC research community and the genomics community and some of that communication going both ways. I think the idea of what role it should play in terms of education and outreach is a really key concept and that's something we'll think a little bit more about in terms of how far we want them to push in terms of education. We do have a concern that we don't want their scope to be too broad when they're first getting started, but I think you raise an important issue that we can think about whether we should do that within this center or in some other way to help those who want to get engaged in LC research but maybe haven't had much exposure to genetic, to genetic surgeonomics, how to get them up to speed. I think that's really valuable. Yes, Gail? Yeah, I agree with Jeff. I think this is a really, is a much-needed initiative. I think you've covered an awful lot of topics and issues that I might have asked about. I'm thinking about how it'll look in a couple years and the role of expert advisor seems really important there because on the one hand, and I guess some of my experience with tools. Okay, so let me step back. I would like you to give some examples to the group who are not intimately thinking about tools, what different kinds of tools you mean. But one of the things that I, because I had the privilege of being part of our CSER 1.0 project at UNC, was working with a group who were not mandated to harmonize the tools of, let's say, trying to assess psychosocial distress upon hearing negative, positive, uncertain, genomic results from their sequencing. And then there were, you know, a lot of people have favorite measures. So then, you know, I think in the next round with CSER 2.0, there's been more of a mandate to say, you know, there really are some better and some worse ones. And regardless, it's crazy to have all these studies go on and not use the same measures. So, but that's embedded LC that's, those are projects that are, you know, that really are supposed to work together.  And I guess I'm wondering, I'm a little worried, but I'm interested in the question of the authority of this group.  Would they say that to somebody who's like trying to, who's got a favorite tool? So one big question is the extent to which the second part of your data integration synthesis and translation part, which has this capacity, I think, to really offer advice about what's good and what's not good. How do you really quiz people and inform consent? You know that there's never going to stop being debates about that. So, so in the interest of trying to harmonize what, you know, what people are using, in the interest of saying, you know, 20 years ago, we've looked at that there's a lot of papers, you just don't know about it because you're too young, but it, but in, but I would just say, you know, there's some things about which there's going to be real debate and disagreement. And, and where would the room for that be in, in having a center like this? Because I think that might tend to alienate people not in the LC community. If they're not somehow, if that isn't sort of articulated as part of the objective, bring in opposing views on, you know, on methods, on tools, et cetera. Oh, okay, just a little too long, sorry about that. So this is something we've talked a lot about Gail, is the right balance here. And I, what we're currently thinking of is that this group would not necessarily serve as the arbiter of the right measure or the best measure, but I don't think I'm doing that. How many of I keep talking? Okay, so, but instead would collect those measures. So maybe instruments, maybe surveys, maybe interview guides and describe how they had been used. This tool was validated in this specific population for this reason. And describe how it had been used. Maybe you used a validated measure but made some adjustments based on your patient population, based on the community you're using it in. So would describe that, so it would be a resource for someone who's trying to figure out I don't know which scale to use for anxiety. I wonder if anyone's ever tried this in a similar population. In terms of the second objective, there we're really trying to think about some of the issues you raised, things like return of results or informed consent where there's a large body of work, but that data covers so many different disciplines and methodologies in terms of, you know, there might be legal data, interviews, focus groups, surveys in different populations. We know there are some gaps, maybe there are some populations that haven't really been studied, but we know there is some overlap. So trying to kind of in a systematic way look at ourself as a field and say, you know, what have we learned and where do we still need to go. Okay, so one more point and that is about the audience. So to a certain extent, do you see yourselves as being the audience of this? And so to answer the very question you ended there. I think we could be a potential audience. I don't think we're the main audience because even there with research gaps, one approach would be for us to write an RFA, so we need research in this area, but another approach would be R01 investigators could look at that resource and say, I never realized there was this key gap and I'm perfectly situated to address it. So we would be one audience, but I think we aren't building it for ourselves. Hopefully, I think there'd be a lot of other audiences, both the people currently in the LC research community and then as kind of a secondary goal, others who are maybe in a peripheral research area or others at NIH. NHGRI is really the leader in terms of funding LC research and bioethics research and we want to help our colleagues at other institutes and center fund work that's relevant to them. Yes, Rudy? So at the webinars, did you get an indication of who the users might be? In other words, did anything come out of the webinar that would indicate who the audience is for this? I think the people on the webinar, which were largely LC grantees already, but they were from a wide variety of backgrounds. So we had people who are current SEER investigators, R01 investigators. We had a lot of representation from trainees and a lot of them said pretty vocally, this would be really useful to me. Everyone is good about sharing, but you have to know who to ask. And when you're just getting started, you don't always know who to ask or you hear maybe someone did a study or has a tool. But so I think we did hear from a lot of the people we would view as potential users. I could. We also heard of a need for this from some other NIH program directors from different ICs. One of them, I forget, I won't say which I see it was, said they've been at meetings at scientific meetings and someone will stand up and say, someone should look at return of research results. Someone should study informed consent. And they have no idea that there's a whole body of work that would be relevant to them. So they were also saying, we know you exist because we are in contact with them, but our grantees need to know that this exists and find a way to learn more about it and to apply it to their own work. So, Nicole, I'm just very, very supportive of this. As you said, none of it. We don't need to reinvent the wheel and this just improves the efficiencies. I just, this is I think well set up as a U mechanism in the sense that one of the things is I think anyone on the outside continues to need to work with program staff a lot to continue to understand both throughout NIH and to be able to understand the programs that are going forward. So I hope it ends up being, you know, a very interwoven program in terms of program staff working with whoever does get the grant. Yes, we would certainly be involved. We will rely on them for a lot of expertise, but in terms of connecting them to different groups. That's, I think that's where we would see our role. So thanks, Nicole. I agree with primarily with what Jeff and Gail and Wendy have just said. I'm very supportive of this. I, you laid out a very clear rationale. I just had a couple of questions. So one thing was the emphasis on meta-analysis and synthesis, and yet primary data are not going to be shared. So if you could just say a little bit more about sort of what you'll be conducting these analyses on, and then really the rationale for not, it seems a little counterintuitive that we encourage data sharing and other aspects of genomic research, but here we're saying no primary data. And then my final thing was around the external scientific advisory committee, which obviously the merits are clear, but I'm wondering if you also thought about including representatives of the public or patients on that advisory committee. So those are my questions. So in terms of the primary data sharing, this is something we talked about with the genomics and study working group and both of the webinars and leaving it very open, so we weren't going to bias anyone. I think some of the reasons we are not currently thinking of doing that is there are repositories where you can share LC research data currently. They tend to be discipline specific, so they aren't really integrated. We didn't want to replicate those activities by having to build something that would work for all the different data types that our investigators collect. We didn't think we were necessarily the experts in how to do that, and we weren't sure if we'd be able to do it effectively. So instead we're taking the approach of encouraging sharing of data and put your data where it makes sense for you if you're a qualitative data researcher and you want to use this resource over here, that's fine, just tell us so we know. I think the other thing we heard pretty strongly from a couple different people is concerns around sharing qualitative data in particular that it's harder to share because it's very difficult to de-identify, and there was seen to be fewer potential uses for resharing or re-analyzing that data because the context of how it's collected is so specific, and someone coming in from the outside may not really be able to understand enough about the particular situation to really analyze it. With that being said, we are funding currently an R01 to Jim DeWa at Washington University who is looking at qualitative data sharing practices, and how to find solutions to some of those challenges. So that's something we are interested in. It just didn't seem like something we could kind of realistically do right now. In terms of the meta-analysis and synthesis, I think you raise a good point that that will be harder without primary data, and so for some of those activities we might need to try and get primary data or work with the investigators whose data is most relevant. I think it probably will be kind of case dependent, depending on what the particular issue is, and in some cases it might just be kind of collating. Here are particular studies that are very relevant to a certain issue. There's not always going to be specific, this is the finding from the research, right? It's usually more nuanced than that. So I think that will be a challenge of how to do those analyses, and that is something that we of course will want, if this moves forward, we would want potential applicants to describe how they propose to take that challenge on. In terms of your third question about the external scientific panel, we've kind of only roughly talked about who we think should be on that panel. I think we could think about whether someone from the public would play a role. Is there a particular expertise you're thinking of, or a particular viewpoint you're thinking of? Yeah, I mean ultimately the results are going to be of greatest importance to the patients and the public. So I think they do have a very valuable perspective. Certainly there's organizations like PCORI that routinely have those perspectives on advisory committees. They're not just on specific research teams, but on advisory committees. And in terms of priority setting, as you make trade-offs between sort of what things you are going to be focusing on as you ramp up, I think that is always a very valuable perspective. And the only other thing I'd say about the meta-analyses is I get worried about the sort of inferences that you would draw if you didn't have sort of a complete data set, right, only from the people who were willing to share. So I'm sure you've thought about all those things because I do think that one of the values of this is, to Gail's point, you know, if we've already answered return of results multiple, multiple times across studies, then I think it's about, and we don't want people to repeat the same sorts of studies. It would be nice to be able to pull together all those disparate studies and make some sort of conclusion overall, you know, with all the usual limitations of meta-analyses or reviews. That's it. Thank you. This sounds like a much-needed resource, but it also sounds like yet another knowledge base. And what are the plans for long-term sustainability and funding? I thought you might ask that. So I think, especially coming after John Lorsch's presentation, that's a very relevant question, I think the thing that we are having a difficult time with is the other institutes at NIH fund very little biowethics research. So part of where we are now is trying to spread some of that and have them realize that this research is relevant to them and they should fund research in their own areas and that there's not only ethical, legal, or social implications of genomics research. Other people need to fund this work, too. So I think we are not at the point now where an NIH-wide solution will work. We are going to explore co-funding with other institutes and we have some interest from other institutes. And we will definitely follow up on that. We are pretty proactive in co-funding with other institutes in kind of both directions because there are a lot of cases where it's sequencing of children or sequencing of cancer patients or other things that kind of cross boundaries and we are happy to work with them and also co-fund something to encourage them. At this point we are thinking of this as more of an experiment or pilot. Right now there's not very much in this space at all. So I think we are willing to make an investment for the community and we'll see how it works and where the greatest strengths are here. But that's certainly something we're mindful of. We're a small program and we can't solve everyone's problems and that's part of why we're limiting to genomics and genetics. Yes, Jeff. So a million dollars a year is a lot of money. I wouldn't anticipate that there's a whole lot of infrastructure material costs here. Do you have a sense of what a staff center would look like, what sorts of expertise and time commitments this would entail? I'm going to make Dave answer that because he did a budget for this. That's a good question, Jeff. I mean, I think that you'd need, we think we'd need different kinds of expertise. You'd probably want either junior level or research staff, faculty to help. You can imagine one designated to do sort of analytical functions, one to do organizational and database functions. And we do imagine there will be a fair number of, so maybe two full-time sort of junior staff and then we want senior staff and probably in different areas of expertise, those might not all be at the same place. But we want people to be able to commit to the leadership and the analysis that have expertise in these areas. So substantial commitment from some PI level folks, I think. And then I think the other cost that we can imagine that gets you, goes up pretty quickly and gets you there is the idea of having some, the ability to convene groups, have meetings, travel people either to the center or somewhere else to have some productive workshops and start to create broader community, tighten our community and broaden it at the same time. I think that, so the meetings kind of add up quickly as well. 10 second rule on concepts. Any other questions for the staff? Okay, can I have a motion to approve the concept? Second. All in favor? Any opposed? Any abstentions? You're abstaining, Rafa. Okay. And Dan and Aviv and Jonathan Pritchard on the phone, if you just want to email your votes to me, that would be fine. So thank you, Nicole.


from Mid-State Technical College, Vikram Gill. Good evening everyone. Wow. I've heard some very beautiful and powerful stories tonight, and I feel very grateful for that opportunity. Before I start, I just want to say that I really liked what Ron said earlier about the people sitting on our tables being our rock. I, you know, the various supervisors and advisors, instructors, mentors, and friends that I've, you know, made and had over my experience at Mid-State has really, you know, it's really been what has made me successful. So thank you ladies for being here. My story begins in Superior, Wisconsin. As a first-generation American and the son of immigrants from India, I grew up in a loving home, but with a lot of pressure to succeed. I came out as gay at the age of 16 and spent several years feeling like my parents didn't accept me. I came to Stevens Point in 2010 to start anew as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and ended up taking advantage of my newfound freedom, but not in a good way. I started using drugs daily and was put on academic suspension after three semesters. My drug use worsened over the next few years and after a second failed attempt at UWSP, I hit my rock bottom. In 2017, I began attending meetings through a 12-step recovery program and finally found a community that would become instrumental in helping me stay clean and grow as a person. My journey at Mid-State Technical College began in the summer of 2017 and I discovered what I was missing in my education. Small class sizes, affordable tuition, and instructors who continually challenged and engaged me. I chose business management as my program and spent the first year getting re-acclimated as a student. In my second year, I decided to apply for two jobs, campus representative and student ambassador. Getting involved in student life was a big part of my success at Mid-State. Not only was I able to earn money, I was also able to network with some really great people who work at Mid-State. It was because of these networking opportunities that I realized my new goal, to build and develop my skills for a career in higher education. I've had many opportunities for personal and professional growth like being a delegate for Wisconsin Student Government in Madison, speaking to the entire faculty and staff at our in-service day, and participating in listening sessions with the President of Mid-State and seeing that my voice and the voices of my peers were actually being heard. I also made some great friends and lasting memories. I will be returning to UW-Steven's Point in the fall with several things. An associate degree in business management, confidence that I will be able to succeed this time around, leadership skills for my several roles at Mid-State, and a goal to work in higher education so that I may, in some way, help to give another student the same experience that I had in my time at Mid-State. Thank you all.