In a May 23 appropriations hearing, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Monica Bertagnolli, MD, answered questions before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
In her opening remarks, subcommittee chair Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) highlighted the difficult fiscal environment, citing that the overly restricted discretionary funding caps stifle critical investments across agencies, including at the NIH. She stated that she hopes Congress can return to a bipartisan consensus around supporting increases in NIH funding. Baldwin highlighted priorities such as women’s health research, cancer research and prevention, and Alzheimer’s disease research and expressed concern over slow progress on long COVID research. Subcommittee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) also expressed support for bolstering investment in the NIH. Throughout the hearing, she raised the challenges facing rural states, praised the NIH’s Institutional Development Award, and stressed the need to find bipartisan ways to fund joint priorities including cancer, Parkinson’s, ALS, and Alzheimer’s disease.
In her testimony, Bertagnolli highlighted the NIH’s impact across the country and previewed the launch of two new programs. The first aims to connect patients with research discovery no matter where they are located. This program will enlist primary care clinicians to assist patients, in any community, in overcoming health challenges. The second program will focus on enhanced data collection, following the work of the All of Us program, utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning. Bertagnolli stated that by engaging government, industry, and academic partners, the NIH will enable health innovation on a national scale, supporting secure research access to data with advanced analytics and computational power.
- Washington Highlights