As Congress grapples over additional funding for medical research, an advocacy group is trying to lay on the pressure with a new podcast that highlights innovations funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Five initial podcasts in the series called “Amazing Things” explore how NIH-funded researchers recently have developed new treatments for people with Type 1 diabetes, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, kidney disease and cancer. The podcast is hosted by United for Medical Research, a coalition of leading research institutions formed to persuade Congress to provide new funding for NIH.
“As the podcasts illustrate, NIH funding is enabling truly amazing things,” said the group’s president, David Pugach. “Yet, these stories also highlight the fact that this type of work only happens when researchers have access to reliable funding over many years.”
The House provided NIH with a $2 billion funding boost in a spending bill passed in December, the agency’s largest cash infusion in more than a decade. But lawmakers are divided over whether to make additional NIH funding mandatory or discretionary in a medical cures bill currently stalled in the Senate.
Medical research is a priority among members of both political parties, but Democrats and Republicans have had trouble agreeing on how to keep NIH funded sustainably so that researchers can plan and projects can continue on a steady trajectory.
The Conservative Reform Network, an advocacy group founded by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, issued a paper Monday calling on Congress to provide a more consistant flow of medical research funding instead of one-time cash infusions. But it also urged any additional spending to include reforms to prevent waste.
“The lack of sustainable, predictable funding has made it difficult to invest in new research and new researchers,” the group wrote. “It is crucial that new investments in medical research be accompanied by reforms that reduce waste and improve the efficiency and rate of return of taxpayers’ funds.”
