Overall Program Assessment - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 39

which represents about 7 percent of the AFF Program budget ($238 million)
for 1997-2006. That percentage, which would increase with the inclusion of Ag
Center intervention research, demonstrates a substantial commitment by the AFF
Program.
The annual number of NIOSH full-time equivalents (FTEs) working on agri-
culture has ranged from the current low of about 60 (in 2006) to slightly more than
90 in 1999. A breakdown of cumulative FTEs for the 10-year period by program
goals shows about 270 FTEs (43 percent) devoted to health effects, about 140 (22
percent) to surveillance, about 110 (17.5 percent) to control systems, about 70 (11.1
percent) to health promotion, and about 40 (6.4 percent) to priority populations.
That distribution reflects only NIOSH FTEs and does not show the distribution of
Ag Center personnel by AFF Program goals. It is difficult to evaluate the inputs for
the Ag Centers because the evidence package presents the overall funding and does
not provide more detailed information on how funding was distributed among
centers and toward which goals the funds were allocated.
It is difficult to assess the adequacy of AFF Program budget and staff allocations
without some type of benchmark or reference research program for comparison.
The AFF Program could accomplish more with additional funding, but there is
no way to assess the performance of the program without additional information
or metrics. Regarding staff inputs, a simple comparison of the ratio of FTEs to
intramural research dollars shows that the AFF Program has a higher result (62
FTEs/$9 million = 6.9 in 2006) than other research agency or institute intramural
programs, such as that of the National Cancer Institute [1766 FTEs/$687 million
= 2.6 in 2006 (NCI, 2006)] and that of the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences [468 FTEs/$167 million = 2.8 in 2006 (NIEHS, 2007)]. The ratio
of FTEs to budget dollars is 5.5 FTEs/$1 million for NIOSH as a whole in 2006
compared with 0.6 and 0.9 for NCI and NIEHS, respectively. That metric may not
be appropriate for comparing intramural staffing for research programs of such
widely different scope and size, but the result suggests that NIOSH staffing levels
are at least as high as those of other organizations when standardized according
to funding levels.
Despite the fact that the total number of FTEs associated with the AFF Program
seems to be adequate, the management structure and its influence on the effec-
tive use of production inputs would also need to be considered. The management
structure of NIOSH is based on the divisions, laboratories, and other administra-
tive organizational components, whereas the research programs are organized in
groupings that cut across the divisions. As a result, a tabulation of FTEs for the AFF
Program includes scientists and engineers in the divisions and laboratories who do
not report to the director of the AFF Program. That most probably limits the abil-
ity of the AFF director to manage and allocate resources, and this limitation could