National Institutes of Health’s $2 Billion Budget Increase

Thanks to the newly enacted FY2016 Omnibus Bill, the NIH has been granted a substantial increase in funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

Did you hear that? That was a collective sigh of relief from scientists, researchers and health science professionals across the nation as the first significant increase to biomedical research funding has been signed into law as of December 2015.

For the last twelve years, applications for federally funded research grant awards have become fiercely competitive as a result of a perpetually stagnant research budget. Researchers and universities were facing an incredible amount of pressure to find alternative modes of researching funding.

Now, thanks to the FY2016 Omnibus Bill, some of that burden has been released. After more than a decade of waiting, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has finally received a much needed increase in funding, adding $2 billion dollars to the 2016 budget. This is the largest increase in over a decade.

The new funding agreement will make a dramatic difference for biomedical researchers. Programs like the NIH’s BRAIN initiative will receive more than double their 2015 funding with an $85 million increase. The bill also allotted substantial financial backing for Alzheimer's disease research and antibiotic resistance research, with $350 million and $461 million increases, respectively. Further, the budget increase will provide support to every NIH institute and center currently conducting biomedical and translational research.

To read the official statement from the Director of the NIH, click here

Also see The Atlantic’s article with more recent impressions from Congress and the Director of the NIH, available here

Originally Posted: 
Thursday, January 28, 2016 - 2:00pm