Funding

Adequate funding is essential to a robust research enterprise.  And while multiple stakeholders, including our own coalition members, fund research activities, the NIH is the world’s largest funder of medical research. Following the effort to double the NIH’s budget during the late 1990s and early 2000s the field experience a lengthy period of flat or declining budgets before making some sizeable gains over the past half-dozen years.

The COVID-19 pandemic, particularly closures that resulted in the shutting of labs and the need to recreate work, was a sizeable setback to these efforts and was estimated to cost the NIH $10 billion in terms of work that was lost and that would need to be redone.

As the nation and world continue to emerge from the pandemic, a continued commitment to increasing funds for medical research at the NIH and for such increases to benefit child health research is needed. The Coalition will continue to support robust increases for the NIH as well as policies that ensure appropriate funds are made available to support pediatric research needs.