[Okgrantsmanship] End of Year News in Research Funding: The $2 Billion NIH Budget Increase

[Mason, Linda]

The $2 Billion NIH Grant Budget Increase

After over a decade of minimal to no increases in the National Institutes of Health<http://www.forbes.com/companies/national-institutes-of-health> (NIH) budget, this past Friday, President Barack Obama<http://www.forbes.com/profile/barack-obama/> signed into law a bill that would increase the NIH budget by $2 billion ($30 billion to $32 billion). The benefits of this increased investment go well beyond the scientific and educational communities and could help the common folk.

First some specifics of the new legislation. The president signed the bill shortly after the House of Representatives passed the legislation by 316 to 113 vote, with 95 Republicans and 18 Democrats voting against the legislation. The $2 billion increase will include an additional $350 million for Alzheimer's research, $200 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative, $85 million for the BRAIN Initiative, and $303 million for combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

This congressional report<http://www.faseb.org/portals/2/pdfs/opa/2008/nih_research_benefits.pdf> summarizes the impact that the NIH had had as of 2000. This included the observations that well over half of key medications would not exist without NIH support and that NIH research has led to changes that have saved and improved millions of lives. The impact has undoubtedly grown since this report was issued fifteen years ago. In fact, the report may underestimate the impact. For example, it did not fully account for the fact that many healthcare, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are founded by people who at some point in their careers worked in an organization funded by the NIH...even if they do not officially attribute their products to the NIH.

For years the United States has been a world leader in biomedicine, public health and health research and science. But this top position is far from a birthright. Many other countries such as China and Singapore are pouring resources into biomedical and public-health research. Many talented scientists have been moving to other countries<http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetraedupree/2013/09/25/us-scientists-are-leaving-the-country-and-taking-the-innovation-economy-with-them/> due to the stagnation of NIH funding levels, which is creating a "brain drain" from the United States. Failure to keep scientific funding at least on par with inflation could also result in fewer people entering science, which could further threaten the U.S.'s position in the world.<https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Fonforb.es%2F1QTBjzV&text=Lack%20of%20scientific%20funding%20could%C2%A0also%20result%20in%20fewer%20scientists%20and%20threaten%20the%20U.S.%27s%20position%20in%20the%20world> Maintaining any leadership or any "dynasty" requires continued investment and hard work. Complacency can bring down even the most entrenched front-runners. Moreover, with the healthcare industry so large and employing so many people, success of the industry could benefit the overall economy. For example, the Johns Hopkins medical institutions alone, which includes the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health<http://www.jhsph.edu/>, School of Medicine<http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/> and Health System, is the second largest employer in the State of Maryland<http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-rg-mdbusiness21-story.html> (and this does not even include the many other parts of Johns Hopkins University that also receive NIH funding). [On a similar note, Oklahoma higher education supports the economy of the State of Oklahoma. Expenditures of the Oklahoma public higher education system generate $9.2 billion in economic output impacts in the state and support more than 85,000 Oklahoma jobs.]

Linda Mason, Ed.D.
Coordinator of Grant Writing
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
655 Research Parkway, Suite 200
Oklahoma City, OK 73104
405-225-9486 desk
405-706-8757 cell
405-225-9230 FAX
lmason at osrhe.edu<mailto:lmason at osrhe.edu>
www.okhighered.org/grant-opps/<http://www.okhighered.org/grant-opps/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.onenet.net/pipermail/okgrantsmanship/attachments/20151228/c59ae696/attachment.html>