Health Research

Health care research is essential to improving clinical treatments and finding new cures. I strongly support increasing federal funds for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the country’s top-notch federal agency for supporting and conducting research on disease prevention, causes, treatment, and cures. NIH research plays a key role in domestic job creation, economic growth, and in bettering the lives of millions of Americans.

Adequate funding level is vital in order for NIH to sustain its mission of improving health through medical science breakthroughs and maintaining international leadership in science and biomedical research. To achieve that goal, I fought successfully with other Democrats, the efforts by Republicans to cut NIH funding in past budgets.  In the end, for FY 2011 and FY 2012, NIH will receive $30.7 billion. The President’s FY 2013 budget maintains funding for NIH at current levels. I am committed to ensuring that in FY 2013 there is strong funding for NIH and other important medical research, so I have sponsored a letter to increase NIH funding to $32 billion. 

Health care reform created the Cures Acceleration Network, which is setup to perform vital research aimed at translating basic science into cures for diseases.  Because of health care reform NIH is able to embark on new research programs that provide essential funding for scientists to identify promising new drugs faster and test their efficacy and safety more accurately.  Learn more about new NIH initiatives here.

• My efforts to increase NIH funding in the FY 2012 Final Budget

(Updated April 12, 2012)