NEW YORK — The White House on Monday called for a nearly 10 percent increase in annual funding for the National Institutes of Health as part of President Joe Biden's budget proposal for fiscal year 2023.
In the budget, the president is seeking $49.04 billion for the NIH in the upcoming fiscal year, $4.3 billion more than the $44.73 billion the agency received in fiscal 2022.
A number of institutes would see increases in their funding under the proposed budget, including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which would receive a $157 million increase to $2.77 billion, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which would be allocated an additional $201 million for a total of $660 million in fiscal 2023.
The biggest increase would go to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which would receive a $4.0 billion increase in funding to $5.0 billion for fiscal year 2023. The White House said the additional money would help "drive transformational innovation in health technologies and speed the application and implementation of health breakthroughs."
Institutes seeing funding cuts under Biden's proposal include the National Cancer Institute, which would receive $6.71 billion in the upcoming fiscal year versus $6.91 billion enacted in fiscal 2022, and the National Human Genome Research Institute, whose budget would fall $10 million to $629 million.
The White House noted that the budget includes $12.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health to support "research and development of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against high-priority biological threats, including safe and secure laboratory capacity and clinical trial infrastructure."
In total, the budget proposal seeks $88.2 billion in mandatory funding over five years across multiple agencies "to prepare for future biological threats in support of objectives within US national and global biodefense and pandemic preparedness strategies and plans."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, would receive $47.47 billion in fiscal 2023 under the president's budget proposal, a massive increase over the $14.73 billion the agency was provided for fiscal 2022. The CDC would receive $28 billion in mandatory funding for pandemic preparedness efforts including vaccine preparedness and medical countermeasure development, enhanced domestic and global disease surveillance, expanded laboratory capacity, and a strengthened public health data system.