No Growth in NIH Budget Expected for FY 2007
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is facing a second straight year with a level-funded budget, according to spending plans for fiscal year 2007. With a greater emphasis on biodefense and the NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research, all but three of the NIH’s institutes and centers would see budget cuts for a second straight year.
BWH’s Biomedical Research Institute will be paying close attention to what happens in Congress between now and October, when the new federal fiscal year begins. BWH relies heavily on that funding as last year’s research budget totaled $371 million with $224 million coming from NIH.
There is hope that a Senate resolution passed in March to add $7 billion in health and education funding to the $28.6 billion NIH budget plan will gain House approval. However, that hope must be tempered. “The end result may not be good if the NIH has to rely on continuing resolutions in the fall to begin its fiscal year without a budget approved by Congress and the President,” Frank Jones, director of Research Financial Analysis at Partners Finance, said.
“A major priority for the BRI is to maximize interdepartmental and interdisciplinary collaboration and thereby to create research synergies. We will thus be able to enhance our funding from outside sources, especially the NIH, by combining our already strong resources,” Barbara Bierer, MD, BWH senior vice president of Research, said. “We are confident that our approach to leverage the vast resources of the entire BWH research community will advance the return on investment for all our research, and our applications for funding will reflect this combined strength.”
The FY 2007 NIH request of $28.6 billion would be exactly even with the 2006 budget and down $66 million from the 2005 budget. After 15 percent increases between 1998 and 2003, growth in the NIH budget declined sharply to 3.2 percent in 2004, slowed even further to 2.2 percent in 2005, and reversed in 2006.
NIH projects a decline in the number of research project grants (RPG) for the third year in a row in 2007, down steadily from a high of 37,060 in 2004 to a projected 35,805 next year. Because of a large number of existing RPGs ending in 2006, NIH expects to offer 9,337 new RPGs in 2007, up 275 from this year. By comparison, there were 10,000 new grants awarded in both 2003 and 2004. Funded projects last 3.7 years on average, and nearly all are funded a year at a time in successive budgets.
After several years of funding one out of three grant applications, NIH now expects to fund fewer than one in five. NIH projects a decline in the success rate for new grant applications for the sixth year in a row to 19 percent in 2006 and 2007, down steeply from a high of 32 percent in FY 2001.
Several NIH institutes would see award rates below the 19 percent average. The National Cancer Institute, with a 20 percent award rate in 2005, projects a 16 percent award rate in the 2007 budget. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), most recently at 22 percent in 2005, projects only a 15 percent award rate in the 2006 and 2007 grant competitions.
A decline in application success rates traditionally accompanies an increase in application volume, and in such circumstances, BWH and Partners researchers have fared well in the past, according to Jones. “Historically, we have been able to increase our market share during difficult times,” he said.