From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

There Is No Challenge Too Great for NIH

BY NINA F. SCHOR, DDIR

For the past several months, the word “challenge” keeps appearing everywhere. For many, it characterizes life at home or at work or in the grocery store. But from where does this word come, and what does it really mean? Doesn’t everyone in science and medicine love a good challenge? Isn’t that what drives many of us into careers in these fields?

According to the online etymology dictionary, Etymonline, the noun “challenge” was used in the early 14th century to mean “something one can be accused of; a fault; a blemish.” It comes from the Latin verb calumniari, which means “to accuse falsely, misrepresent, slander.” The accusatory connotation of the noun “challenge” is said to have begun to recede in the 15th century, but it was not until 1954 that it took on the sense of “a difficult task.”

On the NIH campus and perhaps throughout the federal government, it seems both the old and the newer meanings of challenge have colored the perceptions of some. Indeed, the duration of service of some of our workforce has been challenged, and it has become challenging to remain calm and focused on why we are all here at NIH and what it is that the people of the United States and around the world depend on us to do and achieve. But this is, in fact, what we must do, and it is the very definition of leadership that demands that those privileged to hold such positions enable, empower, and facilitate the maintenance of calm and focus in our whole NIH workforce.

It is a tribute to our dedication to our singular focus on health and the science that underpins it that, after more than seven years on the Bethesda campus, I do not even know the partisan affiliation of a single one of my colleagues, and I daresay I have never shared with any of them my own such affiliation. It is simply immaterial. We are here to understand, improve, and restore the health of our nation’s people and, through that endeavor, to do the same for people around the globe.

Within this column of the NIH Catalyst, those who read my words know that I have, in the past, been quite critical of our methods and our culture. I have tried to use both words and actions to move us, however asymptotically, towards a durable modus operandi that will ensure attainment of our vision of healthy people everywhere. But my eye and my goal have never swayed from that vision. It is too important and its targets are too precious to waste a single errant saccade!

I cannot do it alone, both because you may know a better or quicker path to the goal and because there is too much work to do for one person to do it. I am energized by my knowledge that I can count on all of you to remain steadfast and undistracted in the enterprise that brought us all to the venues in which NIH works day and night to bring health and understanding to all people and to enable all people to sustain this ideal long after we are gone.

NIH leadership is doing everything it can to enable its workforce to maintain that critical focus and the excellence of its work. Sometimes I think it is a shame that the outer walls of Building 1 are not transparent, as I suspect almost no one who is not within those walls has any idea how many hours, days, meetings, phone calls, and trips to various other government offices have gone into this effort. Please know that we see and appreciate all of you and remain excited about everything we know your science and medicine will make possible in the years ahead.