In the span of one week, NAVREF delivered testimony before two separate Congressional bodies — making the case that veterans' research is in crisis and that Congress must act to protect it.
Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Workforce Roundtable
On May 19, NAVREF Board Vice Chair and NCIRE CEO Rebecca Rosales testified at a Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Roundtable on VA Workforce and Hiring, representing NAVREF and the nationwide network of VA-affiliated nonprofit research and education foundations.
NAVREF Board Vice Chair and NCIRE CEO, Rebecca Rosales, and SVAC Ranking Member Senator Blumenthal
Her message was direct: VA's centralized hiring system, rolled out for research positions in 2024, has become an emergency for the veterans' research enterprise.
Before the transition, hiring timelines at NCIRE — one of the largest VA-affiliated nonprofits, administering approximately $69 million in research annually at the San Francisco VA — averaged 17 days. Today, that number stands at 167 days. Nearly a year after implementation, the system has not delivered the improvements VA leadership promised.
The consequences are not abstract. At the Seattle VA, an NPC-administered traumatic brain injury study has been on hold since December 2024 because a single essential staff member cannot be hired. At the San Francisco VA, eight clinical trials for heart failure treatments with a combined expected enrollment of around 150 patients are being canceled due to lack of staff. At the Boston VA, an Alzheimer's study remains on hold after two researcher candidates abandoned their applications after months of waiting with no end in sight.
These are not administrative inconveniences. They are veterans losing access to clinical trials and innovative therapies that are unavailable anywhere else.
Rebecca called on Congress to require VA to publicly report monthly hiring time metrics, tie leadership accountability to performance on workforce issues, and fund the centralized HR system at a level sufficient to actually deliver on its promises. When Senator Blumenthal opened the roundtable by citing NAVREF's own data on the 17-to-167-day timeline shift, it was clear the message had already landed before Rebecca said a word.
Senate Appropriations: Protecting NIH and Indirect Costs
NAVREF also submitted written testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education, and Related Agencies, urging the Subcommittee to sustain robust NIH funding and protect the integrity of the negotiated indirect cost rate process.
The testimony made a point that is easy to miss in broader policy debates: VA-affiliated NPCs are not universities. They do not have access to tuition revenue, state appropriations, endowments, or diversified clinical margins. The median negotiated indirect cost rate among NPCs is approximately 31.5 percent — far below the roughly 55 percent average at major research universities — and that rate reflects the true, audited cost of running compliant research operations.
Proposals to cap indirect cost recovery at 15 percent would not create efficiency. They would create collapse. Indirect cost recovery funds the grants administration, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, data systems, and clinical trial operations that make federally funded research possible. Cut that infrastructure and you don't save money — you lose the $135.8 million in NIH funding that NPCs administered in FY2024, along with the veteran-focused research it supports.
NAVREF's asks to the Subcommittee: fund NIH at $49.9 billion, protect the negotiated indirect cost rate process, and require transparent reporting on VA research hiring failures.
Read our full testimony here: Senate Subcommittee for Labor-HHS
