NIH Funding: Reason to Celebrate...And Continue Advocacy

By Ross Frommer, Associate Dean for Government & Community Affairs, Columbia University Medical Center

When President Obama signed H.R. 2029, the Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2016, into law, it funded the federal government through Sept. 30, 2016. The bill was especially good news for health sciences research; it increased funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $2 billion, or roughly 6.6 percent, including $200 million for President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, of particular interest to Columbia, which declared precision medicine a university-wide priority in 2014.

This NIH budget increase is by far the largest since 2003, save a one-time funding bump in 2009 in the stimulus package. Advocacy from the research community seems to have had an impact: During the debate on the floor about H.R. 2029, many members highlighted this increase as one of the key reasons they were voting for the bill.

In September, I wrote that I felt that there was very strong bipartisan support for increasing the NIH budget in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The problem was that the overall budget caps made it very difficult to do so. Congress addressed this issue in October with a budget agreement that increased those caps. The budget agreement made an additional $50 billion available for discretionary spending, half for defense and half for non-defense.

NIH supporters swung quickly into action, seeking to use a portion of the new funding to increase the budget for biomedical research. On Nov. 18, 2015, 145 House members sent a letter seeking a $2 billion increase for the NIH. Two days later, a group of 100 House Republicans, led by U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., upped the ante by calling for a $3 billion increase. With the Republicans in control in both the House and Senate, this strong support from so many members of the majority party was crucial in securing the budget increase. It also made the $2 billion increase the fallback position.

In addition to the NIH increases, the bill the President signed before the holidays also included funding increases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (4.1 percent) and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Perhaps equally as important, it cut funding for the Agency for Health Quality and Research by only 8.5 percent. The House had wanted to eliminate the agency altogether and the Senate would have cut funding by a third. Also important is what the bill did not include. The salary cap will stay at Executive Level II and the bill did not get bogged down in debates over policy riders related to things like the Affordable Care Act and funding for Planned Parenthood.

Although funding levels for FY16 are set and there appears to be room under the budget caps to maintain or increase the $32.1 billion level in FY17, the real challenge will come in FY18. At that point, the increased funding authority will expire and sequestration will come back into effect. Of course, that is a problem with which the next president and the next Congress will have to deal, but that is why it is important that all who support the NIH applaud Congress for its strong support of the NIH and keep advocating for strong, sustainable funding in the future.

Constituents should let those members of Congress who voted for the NIH increase know how important this is and express their appreciation for doing so. The AAMC has set up a web portal to help you to do this easily. When filling out the initial information, please remember to use your home address and fill in "Columbia University Medical Center" in the box marked “Institution.” Note that the AAMC will only send your letter to those who voted in favor of the bill, which includes almost everybody from the New York City area.

Our advocacy efforts to date helped bring about the large NIH budget increase which we are now celebrating, but we must continue to push and remind everybody how important it is to keep funding for the NIH strong. Please feel free to reach out to the Office of Government & Community Affairs with any questions about advocacy or policy. We can be reached at (212) 305-8060 or at cumcgca@columbia.edu.