In emphasizing its heightened focus on the disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest—especially the disclosure of “Other Support” such as outside or foreign funding and in-kind contributions —the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a new notice last week placing additional requirements on researchers and research institutions.  Specifically, the Notice, NOT-OD-25-133, mandates that institutions that receive NIH funding must provide training to faculty and researchers designated as Senior/Key Personnel on their obligation to disclose the receipt of “Other Support.” Other support “includes all resources made available to a researcher in support of and/or related to all of their research endeavors, regardless of whether or not they have monetary value and regardless of whether they are based at the institution the researcher identifies for the current grant.” See NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS) 2.5.1.

According to the Notice, effective October 1, 2025, all recipient institutions must implement such training and maintain a written and enforced policy.  Under the policy, and as provided in the NIH GPS cited above, Senior/Key personnel will be required to disclose all research activities and affiliations, both active and pending, regardless of monetary value and whether activity is based at the institution listed on the current grant.

Notably, the NIH Notice did not include details on how the NIH would enforce whether research institutions offer the training and enact the written policy.  Based on past practice, we anticipate that NIH potentially would ask for personnel to sign some sort of certification attesting that the requirements have been met.  Of course, the requirement to sign any type of certification as a condition of receiving federal funding comes with inherent False Claims Act enforcement risk.

The Notice was also vague on what the training should entail. It cited the fact that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), in conjunction with the NIH and the Department of Defense, has developed an online research security training for the research community, available here. NSF recently issued its own Notice (No. 149) providing updates to NSF Research Security Policies, including research security training certifications from proposers and individuals identified as Senior/Key personnel, that come into effect on October 10, 2025.  While similar in scope, the Research Security training modules offered by NSF require coverage of a broader range of topics than this new NIH requirement and are in no way interchangeable.

More importantly, the new NIH notice represents yet another sign that federal funding agencies under the Trump Administration are continuing to place an increased reporting onus on researchers and research institutions.  Although the precise requirements for implementing the required Other Support training and maintaining the written policy are somewhat unclear from the text of the Notice, research institutions would be well advised to take all necessary steps toward compliance by the October 1, 2025 deadline and to undertake a review to ensure that reasonable procedures have been developed and implemented before attesting to any potential certifications.

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Feldesman LLP’s Education Practice Group has advised research institutions on how to navigate new regulations, policies, and restrictions on federal funding announced by the Trump Administration.

Because the legal landscape regarding these issues continues to evolve for federal funding recipients, please join Feldesman’s Monthly Briefings for Federal Grantees: Key Updates and Developments webinar. The next webinar in this series will take place on August 19, 2025.

If you have specific questions, please contact Feldesman partner Mindy B. Pava at mpava@feldesman.com or Managing Partner Ted Waters at ewaters@feldesman.com.