ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE OF BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH.

SEC. 203. ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE OF BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH. (a) In General.— Part A of title IV of the Public Health Service Act, as amended by section 151 of this Act, is amended by adding at the end the following section: “office of behavioral and social sciences research “Sec. 404A. (a) There is established within the Office of the Director of NIH an office to be known as the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (in this section referred to as the ‘Office’). The Office shall be headed by a director, who shall be appointed by the Director of NIH. “(b) (1) With respect to research on the relationship between human behavior and the development, treatment, and prevention of medical conditions, the Director of the Office shall— “(A) coordinate research conducted or supported by the agencies of the National Institutes of Health; and “(B) identify projects of behavioral and social sciences research that should be conducted or supported by the national research institutes, and develop such projects in cooperation with such institutes. “(2) Research authorized under paragraph (1) includes research on teen pregnancy, infant mortality, violent behavior, suicide, and homelessness. Such research does not include neurobiological research, or research in which the behavior of an organism is observed for the purpose of determining activity at the cellular or molecular level.”. (b) Report.— Not later than February 1, 1994, the Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (established in section 404A of the Public Health Service Act, as added by 107 STAT. 146subsection (a) of this section) shall submit to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives, and to the Committee on Labor and Human Resources of the Senate, a report describing the extent to which the national research institutes of the National Institutes of Health conduct and support behavioral research and social sciences research. In preparing the report, such Director shall (subject to subsection (b)(2) of such section 404A) state the definitions used in the report for the terms “behavioral research” and “social sciences research”, and shall apply the definitions uniformly to such institutes for purposes of the report. (c) Effective Dates.— The amendment described in subsection (a) is made upon the date of the enactment of this Act and takes effect July 1, 1993. Subsection (b) takes effect on such date.