NIH Slated for 7 percent Budget Cut

The President has proposed a $38.7 billion budget for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal year (FY) 2021. This translates to a $3 billion or 7 percent cut in the agency’s funding compared to FY 2020. The NIH budget request includes a $50 million initiative to use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a better understanding of the causes of chronic diseases and to identify early treatments. This plan is in line with the Administration’s “Industries of the Future” effort, which supports using and developing AI across sectors. The budget would provide $50 million for the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative that plans “to build a connected data infrastructure to enable childhood cancer data sharing from multiple sources; to identify opportunities to employ that data better for patients, clinicians, and researchers; and to develop and enhance tools and methods to extract knowledge from the data to directly address challenges in caring for children with cancer.” This 10-year, $500 million initiative proposed by the President doing his 2019 State of Union address is now in its second year. Another priority for NIH in FY 2021 would be research on tickborne diseases. The proposal includes $44 million in additional funding to accelerate NIH’s priorities outlined in its Strategic Plan for Tickborne Disease Research published in 2019. The budget for NIH also includes $404 million in funding made available through the 21st Century Cur...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news