Congressional Update

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) FY 2004 budget is working its way steadily through Congress.  On April 8, 2003, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of the NIH, presented testimony on the FY 2004 budget to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. Dr. Zerhouni was accompanied at the hearing by each of the 27 Institute and Center Directors, all of whom were in attendance for the purpose of answering questions on their respective issues.

The Administration is requesting $2.7 billion in funding, which Dr. Zerhouni claims will allow NIH to support the agency's research priorities including supporting approximately one-in-three research grant applications.  Dr. Zerhouni pointed out that due to one-time costs covered by the FY 2003 budget, the FY 2004 research budget will technically increase by 7.5%.  However, after excluding increases for homeland defense, he noted that the research components of the NIH budget will only truly increase by 4.3%.

During his testimony, Dr. Zerhouni outlined the three themes of his “Roadmap” of the most compelling initiatives that the NIH should pursue that would make the biggest impact on biomedical research:

·         NIH  must uncover new pathways to scientific discovery.

·         There are changing dynamics of the research teams of the future. Because of the complexity and scope of today's scientific problems, traditional "mentor-apprentice" models must be replaced by integrated teams of specialists from numerous disciplines that were considered unrelated in the past.

·         There is a need to re-engineer the national clinical research enterprise for optimal translation of our discoveries into clinical reality including supporting multidisciplinary clinical research training career paths, introducing innovations in trial design, stimulating translational research, building clinical resources like tissue banks, developing large clinical research networks, and reducing regulatory hurdles.

Although no definitive schedule has been released, it is expected that the Subcommittee will mark-up a bill in early June. While no further hearings are on the calendar regarding the budget, the Subcommittee may schedule several disease-specific hearings over the summer.  Dr. Zerhouni presented similar testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education on April 1 and 2, 2003.