The Office of Medical Applications of Research (OMAR), home of the NIH Consensus Development Program, has combined resources, staff, and key activities with the Office of Disease Prevention (ODP).

The new structure is designed to strengthen ODP leadership and its potential to coordinate NIH disease prevention research, according to a statement from the NIH. The hope is that the move increases collaborations on high-priority issues that come through both offices, and allows more effective research, especially in disease-prevention.

The statement sites OMAR staff expertise in designing research and reporting findings, as well as their network of contacts to involve key stakeholders to work on priority topics, as the reasons this merger will best support improved research efforts.

Both OMAR's "Medicine in the Media" course and the "Medicine: Mind the Gap" seminar series will continue under the restructure. NIH Consensus Development Conferences will be held less frequently, but will focus on the most relevant public health topics, according to the office. The "State-of-the-Science" conferences, though, will be discontinued.