New Evidence on the Allocation of NIH Funds across Diseases

Abstract

and Disease Categorization) database on funding for 107 diseases in 2008 and linked these to data on deaths and hospitalizations for these diseases. We used RCDC data and information from another NIH database-RePORTER-to determine institute-specific funding for these diseases and also funding by award type. We used these data to examine the overall responsiveness of NIH funding to disease burden, within-institute responsiveness, and the responsiveness of different types of NIH awards.Findings: Overall, we found a strong and statistically significant relationship between NIH funding and deaths and hospitalizations associated with a disease. We detected some evidence that more "applied" grant mechanisms-in particular, funding for clinical trials-are more responsive than other types of funding. We also found evidence of differences across institutes in their extent of responsiveness.

Health ROI as a measure of misalignment of biomedical needs and resources

“…HIV/AIDS, dementia, diabetes mellitus, breast cancer and perinatal conditions all received more funding from NIH than would be expected based on US disease burden, whereas depression, injuries and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder were relatively underfunded. Sampat et al 5 later undertook an expanded study of 107 diseases and found a statistically significant positive relationship between clinical trial funding and deaths or days in hospital. In another study, Vanderelst et al 6 specifically looked at data from low-income countries and found a weak association (r=0.1) between disease burden and funding.…”

Can Private Money Buy Public Science? Disease Group Lobbying and Federal Funding for Biomedical Research

“…However, as the Institute of Medicine (1998), Dresser (1999), and Sampat et al (2013) suggest, some grant mechanisms at the NIH-particularly RFAs and PAs-are more focused and allow the NIH to steer the direction of research in response to congressional guidance. RFAs and PAs are solicitations by the NIH for grant applications that address a defined research topic.…”

“…For example, many grants referenced a rare disease in the title and abstract but not in the thesaurus keywords, and many rare diseases did not have entries in the CRISP thesaurus. 13 Historically, the NIH has not reported data on funding by disease, but the agency's recent Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) initiative tabulates disease-specific funding data for a subset of diseases and for the years after 2007 (Sampat 2012, Sampat et al 2013. For the 33 diseases in our sample also listed on the RCDC, we compared our funding numbers for the year 2008 to those available from the RCDC (see Figure A1 of the supplementary appendix).…”

“…difficult (Sampat 2012, Sampat et al 2013. We next focus on grant mechanisms that observers of the NIH and participants in the budget process suggest are more commonly used to target specific diseases: RFAs and PAs.…”

Mobility, retention and productivity of genomics scientists in the United States

“…This could be of concern to policymakers and other key stakeholders. Relevant government and funding agencies should be aware of these ongoing trends and might have to rethink immigration policy, make available more federal funding for major scientific research initiatives, which are both basic and applied in nature 25 , and continue reinforcing the US innovation ecosystems and scientific entrepreneurship in the face of increasing global C A R E E R S A N D R E C R U I T M E N T npg…”