Three hundred and fourteen members of the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, including AAU and several AAU institutions, sent a letter asking the leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees to include robust investments in the FY22 spending package for the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and programs that work to improve the nation’s health and well-being. The letter also urged leaders to finalize the appropriations process as quickly as possible and to avoid continuing resolutions past December.
The letter praised the increases to the NIH base included in the House-passed and Senate draft Labor-HHS-Education bills and specifically asked for at least $46.4 billion for NIH’s base. It also commended the bills’ new investment for the proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and how the investment supplements, rather than supplants, the NIH’s base. “We strongly urge you to work swiftly in securing bipartisan, bicameral agreement on topline discretionary spending allocations and to ensure any final budget agreement reflects a strong commitment to the nation’s health,” the letter noted.